I’m not particularly hip to new social media sites: It took me a few years to even get a Facebook account, so when I first heard of Triberr I admit I ignored it. But author Kayelle Allen made me think twice about using the service. And I’m glad I did.

I’ve absolutely gotten more traffic to my blog since joining. I don’t know whether or not it’s boosted sales, but they can’t buy if they don’t see it, so I’m considering this a win.

(If you haven’t used Triberr, it’s a way to connect with other bloggers: you share links to their blog posts and they share links to yours, magnifying your reach. The bloggers are organized into “tribes” based on subject matter).

What’s not to like about that arrangement? Well, as I started working with it, I found ways to use it more efficiently and effectively.

1. Plan your sharing schedule with some care.

When you log into new posts you’re bombarded with pages of new posts to share (if you belong to enough tribes). It’s tempting to just approve a lot of posts and get out of there.

I filter the posts to my most important tribe, and then I share the ones from my friends or people who share a lot of my posts. I want to reward people who share mine and I want to help out my friends. I make sure these friends’ posts don’t end up going during the middle of the night.

Check for time-sensitive posts and approve those first. The bloggers will appreciate you.

More on managing this in the next point:

2. Manage how many approved posts you have

If you have your sharing setting for one post per hour and you share 40 posts, then it’s going to be 40 hours before the whole set gets shared. Some posts go in the middle of the night. And if you do the same thing the next day, some posts might not get shared for days. (One friend of mine had a 10-day lag on posts appearing, not useful if the post is time-sensitive such as for a contest or release date event).

Triberr limits you to 100 approved posts at a time, but if you do one an hour, that’s 4 full days’ worth of posts.  At 15-minute intervals, you’re down to a day.

I have mine set for 45 minutes between posts so I know approximately how long until a post goes live. I try to log into Triberr in the morning, so I can fill the day with posts.

3. Discover who your “friends” are with sharing stats

In the new layout, if you hover your cursor over the blogger’s icon on the “New Posts” screen, a stats section pops up showing how many posts they wrote that week, how many they shared and whether they shared your post.

Some bloggers post many times in a week and don’t share anything. No matter who they are, I ignore them. They aren’t playing by the rules so they don’t deserve exposure on my twitter feed. I’ve considered sending the freeloaders a message, since some people don’t really understand how to log in and share.

I reward people who share my posts. I also reward people who share lots of posts, even if it’s not mine. I figure sooner or later they’ll share mine.  However, when someone shares too many, consider the lag issue. I definitely check to make sure the person is sharing more than they are posting.

If a blogger posts once or twice a week, I’ll try to share all their posts. For a blogger who posts 10 times a week, I’ll share a few times.

4. Choose wisely: Facebook, Twitter, or both? (aka avoid overload)

At first I shared on both FB and twitter. Then I realized that when I shared on FB a lot of people thought they were clicking through to my blog. It also meant that any of my own links I shared got lost in the noise if I were to share the polite amount of posts each week on my FB wall.

Now I just share Triberr posts on Twitter. It’s a much more fleeting medium, and much higher-volume content anyway. My twitter followers still seem to find and click on my links even if I’m sharing Triberr posts too. One Triberr post every 45 minutes won’t overload these users the way it would on Facebook. (Remember point #2).

For friends and particularly great Triberr posts, I’ll manually share them on Facebook. See #5.

5. Use Manual Share to highlight specific posts (especially yours)

You can click the “manually share” link under the post. Icons for twitter, FB, etc., will appear. You choose to send just that post to FB. I do this for a select few posts. The post gets shared immediately.

You can also re-post anything. Go to the “Approved Posts” or the “Sent Posts” tabs and re-approve a post and it will get shared again after everything else in the queue. You can also manually share from these pages to post immediately.

I also do this for all of my own posts. I can control when they show up this way and I can post in several different time zones to make sure international users see my posts too.

Manually sharing a post does not interrupt the regular schedule of posting from the queue of approved posts.

6. Put more care into your blog post titles and use the title edit option on Triberr

I’ll lump these under one point, though your blog post title is KEY in getting your post shared and clicked.  If it’s too generic, too vague or doesn’t mention your name it’s a lot less likely to get shared or be of much use to you as promo. It’s a fact of life.  When I see a title like “Super busy week!” I don’t think it’s going to have much value added for my followers. They probably think it’s about me, or they just don’t care about my week (or some total stranger’s). When I have to prioritize which posts I share I’m going for the ones with meaty, interesting titles. And those will interest your followers too.

See that little pen icon next to the title of each post? I use it to add the blogger’s name if there’s any chance my twitter followers might think it’s about me. This also helps your friends by putting their name directly on the posts.

Even better, you can edit YOUR post title, add hashtags, etc. to make it more twitter-friendly.  Some writers do this on their blogs already, but if you don’t want to, make sure to add relevant hashtags once the post gets imported into Triberr. Just go to “My Posts” and edit the title there.

7.  Leave comments on other people’s posts

Triberr is great in that it lets you preview the post right on the site without clicking away. And there’s a handy comment box. Leave a nice message about the blog post and you’ll find that people will return the favor, and perhaps be more likely to share your posts in the future.

It’s social media, and that means give and take. Be social with the other bloggers on Triberr. It will pay off.

8. Think twice about whether your fleeting thought is really worth a blog post

Now that lots more people are seeing (and hopefully sharing) your posts, consider making each one more thoughtful and useful to your audience.  You probably don’t want to be one of those people with 12 posts per week because they probably won’t all get shared.

If the topic is of great importance to your own followers, go ahead, and don’t worry about what the Triberr friends think. Which leads to the next point:

9. Don’t change your blogging style just for Triberr

Keep blogging for your own fans and followers. They should come first, whether or not Triberr members keep sharing your stuff. If you have a large following, Triberr won’t make a huge difference to you anyway. If you’re starting out and you don’t have a group of fans with specific expectations, then using Triberr to best advantage will mean something different for you.

10. Check your blog stats

Monitor which posts are most popular and which sites are referring them. If you have a hit, try something similar a week or two later to see if the topic, timing, title, etc., are the reason or if it was just the randomness of the internet.

Feel free to share your own tips for making Triberr easier or more effective.

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