This past weekend I created a tribe and was invited into four others; something was in the water! One particular tribe was formed by someone seeking multiple shares of his content, and thus he formed a tribe of 100 “power sharers.”
A handful of my peers are in the group; the other 95 I have not had the privilege of meeting. That’s almost a good thing…you want to be in tribes with people you’ve not yet met so you can read new material, share new content and build on your community.
I accepted the invitation on Sunday; by Monday evening I was exhausted having visited my Triberr stream more than four times that day to stay abreast of the posts that were everywhere from people I didn’t know (and thus could not gauge the quality of their writing).
I began to panic and truly wonder whether I should back out of the tribe and not engage. I thought I’d give it a week to see what happens and tough it out. It’s been a few days, but the volume of content/posts in my Triberr stream is absolutely overwhelming.
Adam Toporek gave me a tip that you can hide people from the stream; I didn’t know that. If there is someone littering the stream with poor-quality content, I’m going to need to check into that little tool.
What’s making me most nervous is my consciousness about being a good influencer. I don’t want to forward schlock; I’m trying to read before I forward; however, it’s impossible for me to read more than the title and the intro. (There’s a tip to pay special attention to your blog title and the introduction.)
There are definitely peeps writing excellent content in this bunch of 100 bloggers, and there is content I have no interest in. The breadth of content is amazing and having it all in one place is kind of exciting.
I’m getting a glimpse of some cool monetization from the mommy blogger and real estate sales person. I’m seeing ideas for content curation, and reviews by tech geeks, as well as many, many authors trying a go with blogging and book reviews.
What this “experiment” is doing for me is the following:
1. Immediate introduction to a variety of bloggers I don’t know.
2. Testing whether my peers in this tribe truly are power sharers. I’ve shared more of others’ content than they have shared of mine.
3. Getting a Twitter bump; more followers coming on board as a result.
4. Enabling me the opportunity to write this piece more neutrally (which is the right thing to do).
5. Showing me how Triberr should ultimately be used as a best practice.
6. Making me appreciate the tribes I’m in and the ones I’ve created of like-topic bloggers within my peer group and vertical.
7. Giving me a new appreciation for what Dino Dogan and Dan Cristo have built in this channel. We were there in its pre-infancy, and now look at it — astonishing growth and universe of bloggers all in one place.
Triberr comes and Triberr goes…bloggers should NOT underestimate its power to build influence, community, and brand. Trust me, I’m a case study.
