Is your content out of your control?

In this world of social media competition, I worry that some people are not in charge of their content. As far as I am concerned, social media is (are?) not supposed to be competitive, but about having conversations and getting to know people? At least, that is how it is for me. Those who are obsessed with scores may do things differently. Well, each to their own.

The one thing that would really upset me in terms of my on-line business networking would be to have material put out in my name that I did not agree with, or would make me or my business look rather stupid.

Quite a lot of people seem to auto-tweet posts from websites they do not own, including national and local news, or from businesses websites or forums (OK, fora). Presumably this is intended to increase their ratings or scores on the new indices riding on the back of Twitter and Facebook. That is fine (well, I wouldn’t do it) until some ghastly story of debauchery is posted on the source site, or some piece about fake Viagra in a total non-business context.

The other day someone in my line of business auto-tweeted a spam message for a tax forum from some guy who wanted to sell American Football jerseys. Of course the moderator would have zapped the post but the Tweet had gone out.

I thought at one time it would help to join one of those guest blogging exchange sites. I have to say that none of the stuff I have been offered to post on this blog has passed muster. It was a mistake in thinking this was a good idea, but I have neither accepted guest posts from the site nor posted any on anyone else’s through the exchange site. I need to approve and endorse anything posted on my blog.

The other day I saw this excellent piece about Triberr by Neicole Crepeau on Danny Brown’s blog. Now of course I can see the advantage of having lots of other people promote our blog posts via Twitter as long as they like them. Neicole says that she has her favorite bloggers she may re-tweet, but not every one of their posts. I agree. I wouldn’t want to endorse every post even by a top blogger, because I may not agree with it or the writer may have had an off-day.

However, maybe Triberr does have a place if the members collectively can moderate what is posted around. I would rather see that option. Do we have time to moderate our queue of potential tweets of other people’s blog posts? Will we annoy our friends with the extra tweets? Can a machine or a bit of software do the moderation satisfactorily? Do you use Triberr and how has it gone for you?

Otherwise, what should we do? Should we lower our standards and almost prostitute ourselves for the sake of self-promotion with random auto-feeds? Would it help enhance our reputations when we are expected to recommend unsuitable stuff? I don’t think so? Do you?

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2 Responses to Is your content out of your control?

  1. HI Jon
    I agree that sometimes you are not in control of your twitter stream. I had problems with the twitterfeed app going crazy and posting old posts sometimes as many as 16 at a time!
    I tweet everything from my blogs such as Birds on the Blog, Blokes, Africa etc and they all have their own Twitter accounts to promote content through. I take a chance and promote everyone who writes a post for me, it’s the very least I can do in terms of promotion.

    I recently decided to experiment with Triberr. Through a Twitter intro I met the 9pm Warriors and I decided if I was going to become involved in a group then these were the people. It’s heavily moderated as to who and their content comes in and the group leader speaks to everyone prior to membership.

    I am setting up my own Tribe of people whose content I like and who agree to my conditions – one of those being that not every post is sent through only the stronger posts ie the stuff I would RT anyway.

    I think I have more control over what is sent through Triberr than I do over my own multi author blogs 😉

    The Guest post exchange is worthy it to get more subscribers / readers to your blog. It’s a slow burner naturally but with guest posting you grow stronger faster. I have taken two posts as guest posts both did miserable. One was on Transport and the other for a gap on Birds (it was about bank holidays). Not everyone is as committed as I am when it comes to getting traffic to their guest posts!

    I spend a lot of time experimenting, tweaking and testing and I have another month of Triberr before I can share the results 🙂
    Sarah Arrow sarah@birdsontheblog.co.uk recently posted..I’m a Ruby girlMy Profile

  2. Jon Stow says:

    Thanks very much for your interesting comments, Sarah. Triberr is certainly worth considering as long as we can moderate our queue and especially if we are in a Tribe where there are fairly strict rules and quality control. It’s useful to know how other people do things.

    One UK accountant appears to auto-tweet every news story from The Times, which is all the more annoying because the paper is now behind a pay wall. Another accountant in the US tweets every new story on her local town paper including arrests of people who have had too much to drink. It’s all very boring though no doubt it helps her Klout.

    I am all for guest posting where we choose and approve the posts, but the blog exchange site I have looked at has not offered me anything suitable or particularly good, so I would be in favour of sticking to people I know.That’s probably where Triberr would come in.

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