Blogging

LAST WEEK I provided an overview of the growth in the number of visitors to my website during a one year period. I attempted to show how I have used content and promotion to build it into a media for advertising my writing. This week, I will focus on one of the tools that has helped promote traffic to my website most successfully: Triberr. 
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By way of background, let me point out that I hadn't promoted my website prior to December, 2011, because I didn't have a product ready for delivery. My first novel, Rebels on the Mountain wasn't published until the end of that month. I knew from my experience as an ad man that teasing a product too far in advance of its availability was a bad idea. 

Once Rebels was published, I began promoting my website in earnest. Notice on the chart above that visits to my website jumped from less than 1,800 in December to more than 12,000 in January. The only change I made was to join Triberr.

Triberr is simple. It is an Internet application program that helps people form a tribe and collaborate. Several times each day it examines all of the blogs that the members of the tribe maintain and places a link to each new posting into the tribal stream.

Let's pause here and examine the terms I've used. They sound like standard English words with which you're familiar, but they're used in uncommon ways. Their meanings are slightly altered by the context.

  • Tribe: bloggers who consent to participate in a collaborative effort.
  • Collaborate: Work together and help each by promoting each other's blogs using social media.
  • Social Media: Twitter, FaceBook, etc., used to communicate with friends and followers.
  • Friends: People who share photos, videos, articles, links to webpages, and personal messages on FaceBook.
  • Followers: People who voluntarily subscribe to short messages containing with links to photos, videos, and links to webpages as well as brief personal messages on Twitter.
  • Tribal Stream: A list of articles built from the most recent blog postings of all members of the tribe.

Now, let's revisit that last idea. Triberr automatically builds a tribal stream from the most recent postings in blogs of all members of a collaborative tribe. Members of the tribe can see all of the postings of their tribe mates without visiting all of their blogs. The tribal stream only provides a sample of the posting. Members can see the whole posting simply by clicking on the heading for the blog posting.

Triberr also provides automated commands to tweet and share each posting. The tweets will be repeated automatically several times each day. In effect, tribe members are multiplying their power to reach a far larger audience than they could do on their own.

For example, when I joined my tribe, I had less than one thousand followers on Twitter and maybe thirty friends on FaceBook. However, as a member of the tribe, potential tweets promoting my blog postings rose to more than ten thousand and shares with Facebook friends rose to several hundred. Today, I have more than three thousand followers on Twitter. However, as a member of a tribe, my potential audience now exceeds 336,000! The secret is that our tribe has grown as well as our individual followings.

Is it any wonder that traffic to my website has grown since I joined Triberr?

Incidentally, Triberr is free. It only requires an invitation from an existing member to join a tribe. Once established on Triberr, you can begin building your own tribes.

If there is a downside to Triberr, it is simply this: The tribe that you're invited to join may not reach the same audience you'd like to reach. For example, I belong to tribes of writers. Almost all of them blog about writing and would like to influence people to purchase their books. It's kind of like a tribe of Eskimos trying to sell blocks of ice to each other. I think it's time for me to build a tribe of my own. I won't quit the ones I already belong to. My tribe mates have become good friends and I owe them a lot for helping me build my website traffic. However, I think it's time for me to reach another audience.

I will complete my series of blog postings about my tour of duty in Vietnam in a few weeks and plan on launching another series relating to the coming election this November. I belong to that class of persons who believe that it will be pivotal in American history. Inasmuch as history is my favorite subject, I would like to influence it.

There are a vast number of people in the country who want to alter the course of the nation, reduce the size of government, return to fiscal responsibility, and reestablish Constitutional controls, rights, and liberties. Now, I recognize that statement has probably offended some. I also recognize that nothing I say or do will alter your opinion. My objective is to find those who agree with me, and collaborate with them, to make our voices one and participate more effectively in the political process.

I have already created the shell for this collaborative effort: The American Choice tribe. I'm looking to fill it with like-minded people. Please use the contact form in this website to reach me, and I'll send you an invitation.
 


Comments

08/20/2012 17:21

Jack,

Grab job in creating a simply summary. I made a bookmark to share this info with some of the newer indie authors that cross my path on a daily basis. Thanks.

Reply
jim
08/21/2012 00:22

ok, I am in what next

Reply
08/21/2012 07:54

Triberr has indeed been a blessing to all of us who blog and want to build our Websites.

Reply
09/03/2012 16:30

Hi! This blog gives accurate and precise information, I was looking for. Thanks for sharing. I want to appreciate writers’ valuable efforts.

Reply
02/14/2013 01:36

The most important thing we are all after is traffic and that is exactly what this platform is meant to get you – hundreds of visitors with each new post your publish.

Reply
Jack Durish
02/14/2013 11:18

If website/weblog traffic was my goal, I would probably rank a success. Unfortunately, it isn't. I measure success in being "discovered" as an author, not as a blogger. I hit a target, just not the one I was aiming for.

Reply
02/26/2013 22:59

Triberr became quite popular lately, there are still a lot of folks, unaware of this great way to get targeted traffic.

Reply
03/06/2013 03:59

This article by Jack Durish focused on the tools for finding traffic to one’s website and also helps to trace the viewers of our website.This site greatly tells the idea for promoting blogs .I find it interesting and hope that this will be a great help for other visitors who like to start and make advamcements in their blog

Reply
Jack Durish
03/06/2013 10:35

If you post it, people won't necessarily come. You have to "advertise". Use every form of social media. Triberr will help multiply your reach through Twitter, but there are others that I write about in this series.

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    Jack in Vietnam, 1967
    My Promise: I will entertain you with original stories, challenge you with the opinions, reminisce over an interesting lifetime, and share my love of history and America.

    New postings appear approximately three times each week. 

    Guest postings are welcome: Use the Contact Form to request more information.

    Past postings: More than 500 postings have accumulated during 2011 & 2012. Some categories (listed below) are self explanatory, others require some explanation:
    • Blogging: Commentary on the art and science of maintaining a successful website/weblog
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    • Infantry School: A journal of my experiences in Basic Combat Training, Advanced Infantry Training, and Infantry Officer Candidate School in preparation to going to war in Vietnam.
    • Opinion: I am not a member of any organized (or disorganized) political party. My views tend to be libertarian. 
    • Sea Scouts: A journal of my experiences as man and boy with this branch of Boy Scouting (probably not what you'd expect)
    • Trifles: (Literary dessert) Original tales, too short to be called short stories and too long to be flash fiction
    • Vietnam: A journal of my experiences and observations of the Vietnam War while assigned to the 9th Infantry Division, 1967 to 1968
    • Writing: Personal observations on the craft of writing and the current condition of the publishing industry

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