Twitter, Triberr, and Timelines
When I started Twitter, I was cautious. I didn’t know what to do, really, who to follow, and what to say. So I stayed quiet, followed companies, and watched for Tweetstakes. I actually won a lot of things off Twitter. I had a limited number of followers and I tried to keep the numbers I followed low. It was easy to keep up with my Twitter Stream.
But then I found a whole new community of writers on Twitter and I followed many others like me, all the while keeping my favorite companies and hoping for more free things. 🙂 I found fellow writers/agents who tweeted some helpful information. I found writers/agents who had an actual personality. And I found a few writers that actually became my friends.
I added more and more people to my follow list. It was easy to keep up when it was only 100 people or less. It was even pretty easy to keep up at 200. But then it started getting over saturated. I am still only following 499 at the present moment.
But I’m at the point I want to do some spring cleaning. People who do nothing more than promote their books. UNFOLLOW. People who do nothing but retweet other people. UNFOLLOW. These are two of my biggest pet peeves.
Well, I’ve kept those favorite published authors. You know, like Terry Goodkind and Naomi Novik. The ones you know don’t tweet their own twitter! Only to find out when their next book is coming out! 🙂 I’ve kept other published authors because they provide great insight and tips. I enjoy reading their blogs, like Jody Hedlund. I’ve even follow my favorite TV show writers….with personalities, and they tweet their own stuff! People like Paula Yoo and her kitties. She’s just such a sweetheart and loves to interact with everyone. In fact, I follow a lot of writers of Syfy, and those who’ve moved on to other things. Just to keep up with what’s going on in the biz, new shows to add to my To Watch list, and all around random other things.
I follow news and political figures too. But we’ll leave it at that.
But the ones who have no personal interaction….well, they’re rather boring, and eat up my timeline with crap tweets. I don’t have time for that really. I want to see how goofy people are. I want to see if they are as geeky as me. I want to hear a really snarky comment. You know…get a peek into their lives in 140 characters or less. So the more people tweet spam, the more I need to clean up. As it stands now, well, I’m sure I miss a lot of really good tweets because of it, and the fact that I’ve been too lazy to actually do the spring cleaning.
For me, Twitter isn’t about the numbers. But, rather, the quality. I don’t care how many people I follow, as long as they have character.
But there are other venues that I obsess over numbers. I don’t know why. But I do. Take for example my gaming habit (which really isn’t a “habit” but a binge). I only play whenever I have a chance…with most extracurricular activities in my life (TV, Quilting among others). So, I play the xBox. They have achievements. A certain amount per game and my goal has always been to get them all. While most of my games are near 100% completion, I’ve only managed to fulfill that goal a few times. Achievements are hard. My game love, Assassins Creed series, has my full OCD attention, though. Not only are there achievements, but inside the game each mission you can achieve 100% sync. I NEED THAT! I will play it over and over and over until I achieve the 100% sync and move on to the next. Eventually, I will get 100% on the entire game. Eventually.
Blogging is the same way it seems. I want to write and have people come read what I have to say. I advertise it on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. When I post a new post, I seem to always refresh the stats page to see if people are visiting, what pages they viewed, who referred them, and what search words brought them here. But, on average I have 5-10 people visit a day and only one or two comments per post–sometimes none. And I always wondered why. Am I just talking into the wind? Maybe I am just not that interesting….
<shrugs>
Then along came Triberr. People told me to join because their traffic to their blog tripled. How cool that was. So I jumped in. With both feet. I’ve joined 2 tribes with an effective reach of over 100k. Ok, cool. IF people would come visit. IF people would tweet me. IF, IF, IF.
So, I’ve been a member now for about 2 months. I’ve noticed more and more people are joining this network and my twitter stream has exploded into so many people tweeting everyone else’s blog posts. There is now no longer an easy way for me to see the character of the person I followed through the murk of Triberr tweets. I now find myself scrolling as fast as I can through thousands of tweets in an hour just to clear my timeline. I don’t read twitter anymore.
Yes, I’ve created lists of my favorite people I like to interact with, but even those streams are too cluttered. I follow hashtags now, as it’s pretty much the only way to guaranty that I see REAL tweets. Yes, a few Triberr tweets filter through because the blog title has the hashtag. But it’s probably important, since I follow the hashtag. 😛
I’m to the point I want to give up Triberr. I don’t care about the numbers anymore because Triberr has done nothing to boost my blog stats. And I mean NOTHING. Well, maybe I get 10 more people visit. But still no one comments. But 5-20 people visiting my blog versus thousands of cluttered Triberr tweets I have to skip over just doesn’t seem worth it to me. I know if I quit though, I will still have to swipe my stream at 50TPM (tweets per minute) because everyone else is doing it (Triberr).
I just read Lisa McFerren’s post about Triberr and wanted to comment. When I posted something that was pretty much this long, I decided to make my own post and link it in the comment instead. 🙂
I want Twitter back the way it was BEFORE Triberr! I don’t like it. I want the personality back! Not RoboTweets!
What about you? Are you part of Triberr? Has it increased your stats? Do you get more people commenting? How do you like your Twitter stream now? Do you like it? Do you not?
Saturday, May 12th 2012 at 14:44 |
i also hate following people who just promote themselves every hour on the hour and give nothing back to anyone else. even when they follow me, i choose not to follow back. i actually hate all of the retweeting of links and i ignore them for the most part. as you say, there’s no soul, no depth to those interactions. i think cleaning out your followers is a good idea. i have a few that could be trimmed too.
i haven’t used triberr and if all it does is clutter up your twitter feed even more and maybe it might even increase your visits to your blog, but without an increase in comments or interactions from followers, what good is it? when my number of visits increase but number of comments drop, i’m left wondering if people are actually reading what i write or just briefly glancing it over and leaving, not finding my posts interesting.
Wednesday, May 9th 2012 at 20:39 |
Progress is always a good goal, and it covers so much–research, reading in your genre(studying the market!) craft books, brainstorming…Eventually all that leads to WORDS!
I’ve been watching my stats since joining Triberr. I’ve added hundreds of followers, and my blog stats are close to 3k unique hits a month. I guess that is good. Many hits come from non-triber sites–SFFS snippets draws quite a few visitors. So am keeping with triberr for now. Also have met some awesome authors through triberr.
Monday, May 7th 2012 at 18:56 |
Great goals. You’ve already acomplished #3. You encourage me even when I go backwards.
😆
Monday, May 7th 2012 at 10:19 |
I think you and I initially met through #writemotivation, which I found through Triberr, LOL.
Back when I first joined Triberr, before it went public, my blog traffic went from 5-10 per post to several hundred per post, with my reach being around 150k. After Triberr grew so dramatically and Twitter became clogged with Triberr retweets, my reach increased to over 500k, and traffic dropped to about 50 per post.
I’m also missing the personal interaction on Twitter, even though I wasn’t terribly active with it to start with. I’ve actually considered opening another account to use for the Triberr retweets, LOL.
Right now, my blog is very quiet because I haven’t had time to blog and keep up with writing, so writing is priority. As I get ready to move back into blogging and make a serious attempt at building a readership, I’m trying to figure out if Triberr is worth the effort now, or if it’s more an annoyance to my followers.
Saturday, May 5th 2012 at 15:58 |
So glad you posted this. I’m such a lemming that I’ve been feeling like I really should join Triberr, but I’ve been resisting because I don’t read triberr tweets in my own timeline. They’ve become so much noise that I just skip right over them, so I don’t really want to contribute even more to the din. But I do still worry I’m missing out on my blog getting a wider reach. 🙁
Sunday, May 6th 2012 at 19:04 |
So, what have you decided to do? I think I’ll keep the triberr, at least for now. I will see if it bothers other people, or what have you. Everyone is doing it. So maybe everyone is actually skipping through them like I’ve been. Occasionally one will catch my eye. But the more people I follow on Twitter, the more I think I lose touch with. I do separate them in lists though, so I can at least follow the streams of those who interact with me. But even they get too cluttered sometimes. I’m still torn darnit! LOL
Saturday, May 5th 2012 at 02:00 |
hmmm… I wouldn’t have read this if not for triberr or if it hadn’t had that title….
Just some thoughts..
I try to find who’s live when I’m on and have a conversation with them.
I try to approve current posts not reapprove old posts. I see some of my posts of weeks ago being resent. I have just got invited to more tribes and have *met* some wonderful writers through triberr. I’m not in it for the increase in stats but quality of who I meet and that’s worked.
Sunday, May 6th 2012 at 19:06 |
Most of the people in my Triberr tribes don’t interact. This was actually the first post I’ve had that received comments FROM Tribe mates. I figured it would at least get people’s attention just by the title alone. 🙂 So, I’ll stay for a while longer. There have been one or two that actually have interacted with me.
Friday, May 4th 2012 at 21:24 |
I understand the frustration. However, in my case I have seen a rise in blog traffic. I have more than 100 visitors a day, most of them because of the Triberr tweets.
Of course, my reach is over a million. I didn’t see results until I had a much larger reach than you currently have.
It does clog the timeline at times, but I also read a lot of the blogs from these tweets.
Sunday, May 6th 2012 at 19:08 |
Thanks Mark. I’m still learning this whole Triberr thing. And I haven’t been invited to many tribes. I’m only in 2. But I’ve seen people swear by Triberr and I didn’t see any increase myself. I thank you for taking the time to comment. This post is the first that has brought tribemates to my blog AND comment. I guess, I just need to hold on a little longer.
Friday, May 4th 2012 at 19:19 |
You know, I was thinking the same thing. I mean, I lurked on Twitter for a long time and then became a notorious Re-Tweeter. This was either because of a funny joke, a motivational quote or some useful writing information. I could never think of anything intelligent to say hence the re-tweeting. 😆
I find that with Triberr its the same thing being re-tweeted over and over again to point of where its almost like spamming.
Friday, May 4th 2012 at 17:21 |
I’ve met a lot of cool folks through Triberr and gained a lot of exposure for my little blog, but I feel like I’m becoming one of the people who only tweet links. I have those people in my timeline too, those who follow merely to increase their numbers and who don’t really interact. It’s kind of frustrating, and I’m trying to avoid being one of them!
I find that using lists on Twitter helps; it makes it so much easier to keep up with the people you really care about keeping up with! 🙂
Sunday, May 6th 2012 at 19:10 |
Thanks for your blog that inspired this, Lisa! 😀 Glad you came by! I have lists too, and I need to learn to read them more often than the main timeline. I wish I could rearrange my tab in tweetdeck on my phone LOL
Friday, May 4th 2012 at 10:14 |
I agree, I’d rather have a handful of people who are interesting than a million people who mostly spew crap. I also won’t follow if they harp on political things of an opposite bent of mine in a way that makes them seem narrow minded, or anyone who expresses hatred towards people based on intrinsic things (race, gender, glbt, etc). Basically, I don’t suffer excess self promotion, idiocy, or hypocrisy. 😛