The term "starving artist" needs to disappear from the English lexicon.

In this video, Bryan Kramer, CEO of Purematter, and I briefly discuss the origins of Triberr, and then move into the discussion on how the creative class will rule to world.

Technology has enabled bloggers to publish their work directly to consumer, and even charge for their work. However, the creative class still has two problems left:

1. How to effectively distribute content, especially when competing with the noise-makers like Mashable, Buzzfeed, HuffPost, and the like.
2. And how to make a living doing what they love.

It's time for the creative class to cross the last mile. It's time for the term "starving artist" to disappear from the English lexicon.

This was taped yesterday in Nashville, TN at IBM's Smarter Commerce conference, in front of a live studio audience.

Click here to watch the video.

There are two things you need to do as the Founder of a multi author blog in order to take full advantage of Triberr.

1. Build a blog-wide tribe, and
2. Instruct your writers to build their own tribal network.

Let's cover both.

Build a Blog-Wide Tribe

It's a simple 3 step process.

I will use my favorite new multi author blog as an example in order to keep things concrete, but the same steps will apply to any multi author blog.

The Man FAQ (TMF) is a relatively new blog with seasoned writers who are well respected in their niche. They came together under the same blog because they love the subject of…well..manliness. And I'm all about that.

TMF was founded by John Swartz, and as the leader of TMF, the onus of responsibility for getting all his writers on board is on him. As it will be on you if you're in charge of your own multi author blog.

The First Step

So, first things first, John would start by creating the TMF tribe on Triberr. For a step-by-step, see How To Create a Tribe on Triberr.

Second Step

Then, John would invite his co-authors to Triberr. Once they're in the system, John would locate them and invite them into his TMF tribe. For a step-by-step, see How do I invite someone to my tribe?

Third Step

Everyone would use their own author-specific RSS feed.

This is probably THE MOST important piece. In order for each author to be correctly identified, each author would add their own feed. See How do I add my blog to Triberr?

This is very easy for John and his team. For one, they are using a great WordPress theme which already gives them individual author feeds without any extra effort, and since they are all tech savvy, it will be a piece of cake to find it.

So, for example, when Jen Upshaw Swartz goes to add her author-specific feed to her Triberr profile, she can make her way to Staff Directory link (as pictured below)

Click on her name, which will take her to the author page. Note the URL boxed in red.

All Jen has to do at this point is add /feed to the end of that URL to get her own author-specific RSS feed.

Jen would then use that as her blog feed in Triberr.

The Net Effect

The net effect of all this is two fold.

1. Posts would be correctly identified inside the Tribal Stream, and
2. When posts are shared, the correct author would get the social mention (credit)

Let's elaborate a little bit on those two points.

Correctly Identifying a Post

Mike Allton, of the Social Media Hat, is one of my absolute favorite bloggers. Mike hasn't done the above steps, so when he publishes a new post it looks like this in my tribal stream

And 9 times out of 10, this is perfect. Except when he has a guest author.

I went to check to see who wrote this post, and sure enough, it was a guest author.

This means that every time I share a post that has the incorrect author, I lie a little to my audience. They follow a link expecting Mike Allton, and they get someone else.

This reflects poorly on me, and it reflects poorly on Mike. And I don't think the guest author is getting much benefit.

Consequently, I tend to delete posts with a misidentified author, as do most people.

Social Mentions

Social mentions are the new authorship credit.

In the above scenario, Mike benefits from these incorrect social mentions, but the guest author doesn't. And since Mike is getting the content, I think it's only fair to give the actual author of the post the mention.

Unfortunately, Mike didn't invent the usurpation of social mentions. All blogs do this.

When you write for HuffPo, you don't get the social mentions, HuffPo does. Here's an amazing post by a good friend who DOES NOT get the mention, instead the mention is usurped by the blog.

If you ask me, the author should always come first. The platform comes second. And Triberr is built with this philosophy in mind.

It's these kinds of practices however, that have enabled blogs like HuffPo to build their brand and sell it for insane amounts of money without giving the authors who have built the brand anything in return. But I digress.

The point is, social mentions are the new authorship credit, and it should always go to the person who wrote the content.

Build Your Own Tribes

Getting back to our The Man FAQ example, once TMF tribe is in place and TMF authors have joined the tribe with their own author-specific feed, it's time for all authors to build their own tribal networks.

Building your own distribution network is easy, especially if you write awesome content, and are willing to share other people's amazing content. Locate your tribe from here.

I'm working on a comprehensive text for various tribe building strategies, but in the meantime, consider a local tribe strategy.

I hope that covers the steps as well as the philosophy behind how Triberr works. But if I missed something, or if you need help locating your feed (author-specific or otherwise), leave a comment below and I'l help you find it.

Do you want people to leave a comment on your post? Of course you do, here's why.

When a potential client -or even your mom- comes to your blog, they are unable to tell how much traffic you get. Instead, they infer how "well" you're doing by two things:

1. Social shares
2. Number of comments

Triberr get's you plenty of shares, but it's up to you to get comments. Here's how.

Link to video.

This video is Part 6, of my 7 part interview with Mike Brooks of the Nuclear Chowder fame.

All 7 parts can be found here.

Did you know that the very first blog post was published way earlier than previously thought?

And did you know that all major blogs have something in common?

How about the fact that we are about to enter an unprecedented shift in the way blogs are monetized that will change EVERYTHING?

These and other nuggets are presented here for your edutainment.

Enjoy.

1. The First Blog

The very first blog post was published  40,800 years ago in El Castillo, Spain. And it was an infographic.

We get so hung up on the details. Like, which platform is best? Is it WordPress? Blogspot? Something else?

And we get hung up on the best format to communicate in. Should I publish my knowledge as text, audio, video, infographic? Which one is best?

We often forget that the only thing that matters is the expression.

Humans have this impulse to communicate, and our voice will do everything it can to find a pair of ears willing to listen. Everything else is secondary.

And when someone tells you that the Infographics are the latest craze, you tell them it's been done before in El Castillo, Spain. 

2. Everything is Blogging

A book is just a really long blog post.

As far as I'm concerned, every form of expression is Blogging. I would exclude direct person-to-person communication, but every other form of expression is just that. A form of expression. These days, we just call it blogging.

I think this is a great way to approach blogging.

Many businesses have no idea how to blog. They are paralyzed with fear to even start, and for a good reason. They are being asked to enter a brand new arena. The publishing arena.

Imagine a Carpenter from 50 years ago starting his own magazine. It would require a whole different skill-set, wouldn't it?

However, I think approaching a company blog as if you're about to publish an old timey magazine is a really good way to think about blogging.

Pick your favorite mag and model your company blog after it. And if you still need help, contact me.

3. Blogging will Save the World

Now that everyone can broadcast their voice, all we have to do is give the individual author the distribution power of large media sites, and this will equalize the world.

Blogging will save the world.

I know it sounds like a tall order, but once upon a time, having access to knowledge was reserved only for the privileged. And then the printing press changed all that.

The next big change will liberate individual authors from dehumanizing distribution channels (Google, Amazon, iTunes, HuffPo, old publishing houses) and give each and every author the control over their own distribution.

Why not? The Creatives already own the publishing, and payment processing. The only thing left is the distribution.

Watch the video for a more in depth explanation.

 Link to video

4. The Next Big Problem

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1436, he solved the biggest problem facing humanity since the first blog post in El Castillo, Spain, some 40,000 years earlier.

The problem Gutenberg solved? Access to knowledge was only available to the privileged. Mainly the clergy and the rich. Gutenberg changed all that. He made knowledge (books) easily duplicated and portable.

However, as Gutenberg solved one problem, he revealed another. Between 1436 and 1999, publishing your knowledge was available only to those who could afford to buy a newspaper, magazine, TV, or radio. In other words. the privileged.

And then, in 1999, this 563 year old problem was solved by a blogging platform that enabled anyone to publish their knowledge. Blogger.com. Other platforms followed soon.

And just like Gutenberg, who solved one problem only to reveal another, so did Blogger.com solve one problem, only to reveal another.

Now that everyone can publish their knowledge, Attention has become available only to the privileged. And Attention = money.

The time is right for the next big problem to be solved. The time is right for Attention to become available to everyone.

Democratizing Attention is the next big problem, and Triberr is solving it. But, here's the thing. Whether Triberr succeeds or not, is not important.

Whats important is that this problem gets solved. And if Triberr paves the way for those that do, then it has done its job.

5. Timing is King

Content is king my ass.

Look at those sites. All of them have 2 things in common. Their content blows monkey balls, and they are all top 100 sites. What gives?

All of the sites in the above image were born in the early to mid 2000s. That's it. Thats the secret of their success. Not content. Not utility. Not branding. Not clever marketing.

It was timing and timing alone that made them successful.

And if more convincing is what you need, then enjoy this video.

 Link to video

6. Traffic is a Cost Center

You own a bakery? Great. Tell you what. I'll send 1000 people to your store tomorrow.

Oh no…they won't buy anything. They'll just dirty up the store, create a mob, probably break a thing or two, but hey! You'll be able to say you had 1000 people in your store. BLAH!

I think the whole "my traffic is bigger than yours" is pure nonsense.

Traffic is a cost center. It's only useful because it brings Attention to you and your content. But if that's the case, then why is everyone talking about traffic?

I think people who wear suits and sit in boredrooms would feel silly talking about seeking Attention. So traffic become a proxy for what they really want. Which is Attention.

Point is, traffic is useless. Attention is the name of the game.

I love to use Oprah as an example of this.

She syndicated her content across 100s of TV stations world wide. Those TV stations got traffic, but Oprah got Attention.

Oprah, the content creator, only cares about Attention. She could care less about traffic.

Be like Oprah.

7. Ads are Murder

In hundreds of years, as technology evolved, the monetization strategy for content DID NOT CHANGE!

It blows my mind.

• Google is making money the same way newspapers and magazines made money 100s of years ago. Ads.
• Facebook is making money the same way newspapers and magazines made money 100s of years ago. Ads.
• Twitter is making money the same way newspapers and magazines made money 100s of years ago. Ads.

Has everyone gone insane?

How can technology evolve so much, and yet our thinking about monetizing content remains the same?

8. Attention is the New Currency

Ever wonder what Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton types make? They make Attention.

Attention is their product, and they make a living making Attention. You can see how this translates directly into the online world.

Big sites are able to make a living with ads because we pay Attention to these big sites. I'm talking about Facebook, Google, Twitter, HuffPo, and the like. All of these are nothing more than Attention sucking, ad feeding machines.

The greatest trick the Devil even pulled is to lull us into a false sense of choice.

These big sites have found a way to gently suck us into their world so they can do what TV, Radio, Newspapers and magazines have been doing for 100s of years. Feed us ads. #lame

We can fight them in 2 ways:

1. By installing ad blockers in our browsers (or blocking all ads across all browsers), and,
2. By being more discerning what we pay Attention to.

I practice what I preach.

I had coffee with a friend 3 days ago. You might know him, he is the amazing Kenn Bell of The Dog Files, the maker of Hero Dogs of 9/11. Anyway…

He was getting really frustrated with me because he kept referencing all these news items about which I knew absolutely nothing. I don't watch the news.

I pay no Attention to the news because I know how the news works.

• If it bleeds it leads.
• There's always an angle.
• The "investigative" reporter will bust up a crooked mom and pop operation, but they will leave big corps alone. Why? Mom and pop shops don't buy ads on TV.

Their job is to suck up our Attention, and my Attention is better spent elsewhere.

I will NOT pay them my Attention.

Attention is currency. And I am grateful you chose to spend yours here.

9. Influence is the New Money

The fragmentation of mass media into billions of small channels has destroyed the ad industry, and paved the way for humans to do what humans naturally do. Talk to each other.

Today, a Blogger with little bit a technical know-how, and a lot of credibility which can only come from direct, high-touch interaction with an audience, can influence actions of those who trust him to lead them.

You can be that Blogger.

Watch the video for a quick explanation of different types of influencers and to see which one will dominate the marketplace over the next few years.

 Link to video

10. Tribe is the Way

Does influence marketing work? Does a bear shit in the woods?

Brands have been hiring celebrities as their spokesperson for a long time. Celebrity endorsements are a huge business. The problem?

There are several issues in hiring a celebrity to represent your brand:

1. Not all celebrities have a powerful online presence
2. Brand to celebrity mismatch (lack of relevance, or natural affinity)
3. Access to celebrity
4. Celebrities are cost-prohibitive for most companies

I could go on.

Bloggers, on the other hand, ARE the celebrities online. On a smaller scale, sure, but celebrities none the less.

Just watch Dan Cristo explain it.

Since bloggers have an intense, but smaller sphere of influence, this creates another set of problems for brands.

For example, hiring one blogger, or even 5, is simply not enough to move the needle for a company like Nike.

However, being able to hire 100s of bloggers under the same endorsement deal, and have those Bloggers move the needle collaboratively, as a tribe, is very interesting to a company like Nike.

At last, Bloggers will have a way of making a living that's not affiliate marketing, or other nonsense that leaves me feeling like a need a shower.

This is the vision for the blogging future I see in my mind, and it's closer than you might think.

It took less than an hour for the dogs of karma to bite back.

NBCNews wrote an article about the TurboTax's #EPICFAIL of automating tweets while some of their services were down.

The article was far from favorable, and yet, there it was, a giant ad inserted by the NBC's automated ad system recommending TurboTax.

Sometimes karma works slowly, and sometimes it snaps right back and bites you right on the face. How does that humble pie taste, NBC?

Let me play you a song to make it feel better, curtesy of TurboTax.

Link to video.

I learned this from the always insightful Tom Webster about two years ago when he did a keynote at BlogWorld.

Spam comments are a pain in the ass, they are made of evil, evil stuffs, and they suck monkey balls. But, if you bring them out in the open, they can be quite funny.

Tom read bunch of spammy spam spam comments during his keynote, and since we could all relate to this scourge, we all had a hearty laugh about it.

So today, I decided to post one of these spammy spam spam comments on my Facebook wall and wouldn't you know it. Since many can relate to it, it started a bit of a storm of comments of the un-spammy variety.

No need to read through them all, I'm just including the image as an illustration. 

So, what can we learn from this?

I dunno…maybe that shared experiences bring people together and can be quite hilarious?

Maybe there's a way to turn bad things into good things?

Maybe we can find inspiration for a blog post in almost anything?

Maybe a good way to drive interest into your blog post is to start a conversation about it on Facebook first, then post a link to it so that everyone who already committed to the topic, has vested interest -in some small way- to come to your blog and check it out?

Maybe there is something even more profound about this that escapes me, but you might be able to figure out.

In any case, if you would like to leave a spammy comment of your own, the floor is yours.

What kind of splash your blog post is going to make, depends largely on two factors. The velocity of the pebble, and the size of the first ripple.

Let me 'splain.

The Pebble

The "velocity of the pebble" refers to the quality of the post.

How hard and fast can your post hit its intended target, will dictate the ripple it makes in the blogosphere.

Sometimes "quality" has a lot to do with speed and timing. News is built around this concept.

However, sometimes the quality is not in the timelines of the post, but in its appeal.

Appeal can be divided into two types. General, and specific.

I love to go hyper-specific, so much so that I'll write a post for only one person.

And while anyone might find some value in these hyper-specific posts, they were engineered to appeal to only one specific person whom I'm targeting.

Here are some examples:

• 3 Pronged Strategy to Launch Cemmerce Into Stratosphere - written specifically for Dror Liwer, the Founder of Cemmerce
• Eff You Webex - pretty obviously written so Webex would read it. They did.
• Tumblr Functionality for WordPress Bloggers - while it may sound general, I wrote this post for a very specific singular person who will be revealed to you only if you tweet this.

Imagine if tomorrow you woke up, and found out that NYTimes has a front page article about YOU.

I don't know about you, but even tho I NEVER purchased a single copy of NYTimes, I would run out and buy it in a heartbeat.

Talk about a hard-hitting article.

Other posts may have a more general appeal and talk about topics that are very popular, especially online (like Steve Jobs and Apple), thus appealing to a wide range of people.

Lot's of people may view this kind of content, but they will unlikely be converted into faithful loyalists.

So, the quality of your post is found somewhere in its timing, and general or specific appeal.

…But Not Only Content

The content is only one component of a quality post. The other component is the Reader Experience.

Sometimes the design of the blog is so distracting it completely drowns out the content. Too many ads, pop-ups, font too small, etc.

And when that's the case, the content could be pumpkin pie, no one's gonna eat it.

The First Ripple

If no one jumps into action to share your post, chances are, your post is just going to sit there, and eventually whither and die.

While it's probably apocryphal, I once read that most bloggers quit after 90 days. Whether that's true or not is less important. What IS important is to ask ourselves WHY?

I think the reason most bloggers quit is because it is soul crushing to write quality shit and have no one see it.

So we all need to make sure that the first ripple our post makes is as big as possible.

Now, let's define "big".

Big = Quality, Relevance, and Engagement

Those who jump into action to share our post once it's written, should be producers of their own quality content. Here's why.

There are 3 types of people who can influence and inspire movement online:

• Celebrity types
• Accidental influencers (your friends on Facebook, for example)
• Purposeful audience builders (aka Bloggers)

We don't have access to celebrity types, so we'll ignore them. And we can't rely on accidental influencers either, so we'll ignore them as well.

The only people we can count on to help us make that first ripple as big as possible, are others who are walking the same path. Bloggers.

To Know the Person, Look at the Blog

We are known by our blog.

The bloggers who are sharing your content, they themselves should be creators of their own quality content. The equation is quite simple.

Those who write quality content are trusted to share quality content.

Those who write shitty content could be sharing the most amazing content ever written, they're simply not going to have enough credibility to drive significant action in your direction.

Read those two last statements again and again. Internalize them. Know them. Live them.

Relevance

Small is the new big.

I have over 14 thousand followers on Twitter. I hope you're impressed by that, for when I tell you that that number is meaningless, you'll be shocked.

Humans can meaningfully engage with few dozen, maybe few hundred people at any one time. Everything beyond that is a show.

And I really do mean that. The ONLY reason I have accumulated 14 thousand followers, is so that people who are impressed by such things are not disappointed.

And there are a lot of people out there who have accumulated their followers for the same reason. Like, a lot. As in, everyone.

My point is simple. The Blogger sharing your content should have a small but engaged audience.

Naked Stats

Who remembers Triberr's Naked Stats? I miss that feature…but man was it cool.

I was able to see how many visits each person who shares my content, actually brought back to my blog.

I remember my shock when one of my tribemates who had over 50 thousand followers on Twitter, brought 8 visits back to my blog.

And right next to him, another tribemate with 900 followers, shared the same post, around the same time, and brought 25 visits back to my blog.

50 000 followers = 8 visits.

900 followers = 25 visits.

Small is the new big.

The Perfect Fit

The profile of a perfect first-ripple maker, is a Blogger who writes quality content relevant to your audience and vice-versa.

S/he has a small but extremely engaged following because s/he is a highly engaging person.

I will tribe-up with people like that ALL DAY LONG.

In fact, if you would like to be in my tribe, tweet me.

Final Word

Is yours.

• Have you ever written a post just for one person?
• Is there a 4th type of influencer?
• Who wants us to bring back Triberr's Naked Stats?