Blogger
Tribe (Public Tribe)
ABOUT SSSR:
The Steamy Sexy Sensual Romance Tribe is a circle of authors and reviewers of steamy, sexy, and sensual adult romance. Stories range from spicy to carnal in heat. Members are not expected to blog daily. We'd rather authors share important news on new releases, excerpts, reviews, and covers for readers. And we'd prefer reviewers take the time to get to the crux of a story they just read so we feel sufficiently informed. STEAMY SEXY SENSUAL ROMANCE is all about quality of the Tribe's blog posts.
THE BIG ISSUE: TO TWEET OR NOT TO TWEET?
We all work very hard to promo. Maybe we aren't all published with a big house--mind you, I've been a card-carrying member of RWA since 2003. Triberr sends out announcments of everyone's blog posts to all of our followers. These Tweets are just announcements. Nothing is posted onto anyone's blog. As a member of this tribe, you will be expected to Tweet the announcements in the stream for all members. If it is discovered you are not, you will be removed from the tribe (via the DELETE option availabe to me, the owner). I will not allow backstabbing between published authors where some members don't Tweet anything about other authors' books. Now, if the problem is branding--that our publishing background is below par with yours, there's plenty of room on Triberr to set up your own tribe for authors having an acceptable publishing pedigree or whatever. I, the owner of this tribe, am not going to sit and listen to my tribe members who joined in good faith of receiving the same perks we all assumed we'd receive in joining Triberr not get the payoff, especially when Tweeting your Triberr blog-post announcements (marketing for you). The Tribe will fall apart.
BRAND PROTECTION:
Note: I understand branding issues associated with Triberr--knew about them when I joined and purposely created this tribe of only members of spicy-carnal members because inspirational authors would suffer by association.
~~~SSSR RULES~~~
(1.) Do not post Tweet-length posts as blog articles. Those are something you should tweet yourself on Twitter. Triberr is about blogging. Twitter is about micro-blogging. Please be certain to respect your tribemates and write an article. This may include a weekly update with your review snippets, new release news, sales, interviews, etc. and all the links to such things. But a 140-character blog post and links/photos will get you removed from the tribe. Nobody is expected to approve/tweet those tweets for you.
(2.) Please do not post more than one blog post a day unless you are a reviewer. They will not be tweeted. Tribemates are only required to tweet one post a day for you. And reviewers who post more than one blog post a day should know that meme posts are usually not tweeted for you on the days you also post reviews. This is simply because many people have lots of tribemates and need to tweet for everyone. Please do not consider this snubbing.
(3.) Please be certain your blog-post title has something to identify you (for example for a book review) among the flotsam and jetsam of twitter messages. "My Day" isn't going to cut it either. You need to have "(Author's Name) Day" or "Another Tuesday for (Author's Name)" At least something to show the blog hop you're participating in or the meme has multiple participants/stops. THE HOT SUMMER NIGHTS BLOG HOP with 40 participating bloggers will be sending those messages out to everyone, but all the links look the same because nothing identifies each blogger as an individual...Skhye's Stop on the HOT SUMMER NIGHTS BLOG HOP. Or whatever works. Do this and the traffic at your blog increases! A blog-post title is the only thing anyone sees from you in Twitterland. So, it must identify you or it looks like I wrote it about me.
(4.) PROMOTIONAL posts make more work for your tribemates. If you goof up and your post is tagged, correct it in MY POSTS using the edit option or just know most people aren't going to stop and rewrite your blog-post title for you. That requires time and creative energy. Since we all have so little of that, I don't expect anyone to modify PROMOTIONAL tweets in the stream.
***These rules make time here pleasant. And yes, they cause anxiety in the beginning, but you'll see that once the tribe is 30 strong things run more smoothly when everyone respects tribemates and other people's Followers. My concern is boosting our blog traffic. So, happy promoting! ~Skhye
P.S.
I thought I would share my Triberr experience just so you see where I'm coming from with Tribe Rules...
1.) I had one day where I had about 80K hits/visits to my blog. OMG And it was around Valentines Day when I had a few blog posts up with "sex" or something in the title. Key words get you hits. Be very careful and clever when creating titles for your blog posts. It pays off!
2. I post excerpts on my blog and file them under the categories as excerpts. Be certain to put the genre type in the blog-post title if you can. ;P If not, your author name. You get more hits this way. When I'm blogging to draw people to my blog, I average 14K visits/week. Is it worth it to carefully label your blog posts? Yes. My first romance promo tribe found when they worked on identifying their titles in the great ocean of twitter blips, visits increased drastically to their blog. Now, I have an information slant on my blog that makes a difference, I'm sure. I wish it were more freebies and meet so-n-so author. But I can live with it the way it is. Blog slants are important. I prefer to have authors tell me why they wrote a book or how they developed a story world or mythology, etc. Everyone else posts the same excerpt, blurb, etc. for them. I want something new and juicy that teaches writers how to deal with world-building problems or simple research. Or something that reveals why an author chose to have something the way it is in a story. You know, things for readers!!! In the end, one excerpt is a post. You can post many excerpts to fill in those days when you can't find anything else to blog about...
AND:
I only blog 3-4 times a week on good weeks. Very little otherwise. I don't recommend anyone blog daily. We have to have time to write. I believe a strong summary post of your activities from the past week (locations, reviews, releases, etc.) is the way to keep your subscribers from dropping your blog and a way to update those who have the need to know. This is because you only send out the one info post each week instead of lots of tweets to your subscribers' email boxes. I've managed to keep 230+ subscribers at my blog without giving them the farm to stay.
3. So... I believe that quality of posts is more important than shooting out Tweet-length announcements: Remember, nobody benefits from your post labeled My Review. Seriously, it sounds like I'm tweeting about "my review". So, toss in your name or the book's title!!! And post a chunk of the review, not the link to it. You want to include a link to the original post. And you want a cover, buy link, and by gawd an excerpt!!! You want people to run and impulse purchase that bad boy. ;P The same with anything else like an interview. Don't leave a link. Rather, tell us about the interview--not what's actually posted in it. But wet the reader's appetite. Post other information with the interview, etc. This is why it's better to have a weekly summary with all the links to what's gone on with your writing news. People can click back and forth and check it all out at once. Think news letter. So, write a true blog article.
***You are discouraged from posting more than one blog post a day because people aren't required to tweet more than one for you a day. We should be writing fiction. Right? When I write a blog post, lordy, I wind up spending 6 hrs on it! Or more!!! Even posting guest posts takes hours. So we're back to quality not quantity.
***Yeah, Skhye doth talketh too much. But I have reasons for the rules and they help everything work smoothly.
P.S. On a side note, Hashtags are your best friends on Triberr & Twitter. I didn't mention them in the rules, but you'll drag in the visitors if you label your blog posts with descriptive titles and use #hashtags to get your title (triberr tweet) in front of the people you want to read those blog posts.
Hashtags:
#romance #menage #erotica #reviewer #Greek #myth
Hashtags are the equivalent of metatags on Twitter. Just add them at the end of a tweet until you run out of room.
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TRIBERR 101
Be certain to open your stream. You have to click through the 4 INTRO pages to reach the streambed (LMAO). Then you will find the flow of tweets to APPROVE. OR...that step has been changed. If you do not have access to the TRIBAL STREAM, you must login here and click through the how-tos in the INTRO window.
Once at the TRIBAL STREAM (only the tweets here in our tribe or from all the tribes you're a member of), you click APPROVE on the messages (tweets from each tribe member). These "tweets" look like your posts at Twitter. They are only the title of the BLOG POST and a url (hyperlink) back to that post on your blog. People on Twitter who understand the way the tweet is composed know when your name is on the end of this tweet that you are the author. But everyone else on Twitter thinks the tweet is from the person here on Triberr tweeting your blog-post announcement. You can adjust this through EDIT in the Tribe Stream. You click EDIT in blue or gray under the message and are given a text box to add RT (retweet) at the front end...
Blog Post Titles are all Twitterites SEE:
Yes, that's the truth. So you have to identify yourself or the subject matter of your blog post in your title to get blog traffic. Or you will have 600 visits a week or month. This happened to members of my first tribe while I got 7K-14K visits every 7 days. Examples of bad blog-post titles (meaning vague because they look like my tweets and not yours):
My Day
In the Mailbox (a meme post)
6-Sentence Sunday #(date)
Examples of STRONG blog-post titles:
Skhye's or Skhye Moncrief's Crazy Monday
Skhye's Favorite Man Meat
Skhye's Follow Wednesday
What Skhye's Adding to her TBR Pile
Skhye's TBR Pile Fell Over
Skhye's Leaning Tower of TBR Books
The TBR Pile Keeps Growing
6-Sentence-Sunday (Book Title)
Skhye Moncrief's 6-Sentence Sunday (Book Title)
October Writing Links
.....You get my drift! ;P
Hashtags:
These little metatags get your posts in front of people searching for things on Twitter. It's a # symbol in front of a metatag. Add these to tweets and you'll find you wind up in authors' or reviewers' weekly or monthly paperli (e-newspapers). I used to get credit for people's tweets this way. It's another way to wind up in front of readers you aren't connected to!
Remember:
1. Open your Tribal Stream so you can APPROVE TWEETS.
2. Use strong terms in your blog-post title that tells Twitterites you wrote the blog post.
3. Use hashtags to get more out of your marketing efforts on Twitter.
WHY AREN'T MY POSTS SHOWING UP IN THE STREAM?:
Make certain you have your rss feed url correct here at Triberr. I had to go to my blog, click the SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG button, and hold my cursor over the text box where you type in your email addy. You'll see the rss feed url on the bottom left corner (pop up as you hold your cursor over the text box). The only way I could grab it was to slowly type it out on a blank email in another window or write it by hand on paper. This sounds like a pain, but you are guaranteed the correct rss feed url info. ;P
If you can't see your post in the stream, it probably isn't. Go to MY POSTS, and look to see if it's there. You can also go to your name on the upper right, click SETTINGS, and then on the next page click BLOG SETTINGS to see if it's been imported yet. There you will see if your blog rss feed url is noted as VALID. This is also where you can manually import your blog post. The time your blog was checked last is also noted on this page!
