Have you ever read an article on a website that you enjoyed so much, you wanted to share it with all your Twitter followers? So you click the ever-present Tweet button and a window pops up with the title and link to the post set up for you. But sometimes, there’s also a Twitter handle included. It’s usually something like, “via @SocialMediaHats.” That’s something that the site owners set up to encourage tweets to include a mention of the article’s author.
The problem is, those Twitter handle mentions are programmed site-wide. What happens when you have a publishing site with multiple authors? Typically, my own included, the ention is of the _site_ and not necessarily the article author.
For instance, Huffington Post, which accepts contributions from many different bloggers and authors, mentions their own Twitter handle, as opposed to the author’s, on all posts. Here’s a guest post from Jessica Ann, and you can see from the share that she isn’t credited:
This lack of proper author credit in social mentions is something that really bothers Dino Dogan and folks at Triberr. It’s particularly of interest to them because, on Triberr, all articles are shared with an author’s handle. Or at least, they’re supposed to be.
You see, on Triberr, members set up their blog feeds so that when they publish a new post to their website, their Tribemates are given the opportunity to share those articles (click here if you’re unfamiliar with Triberr and are interested in learning more). Just like my site’s Tweet button, my Triberr account is automatically associated with my Twitter handle, @Mike_Allton, so that any time one of my Tribemates shares one of my articles, I get a mention automatically.
Up until now, the only option for publishing sites who wanted to give their authors proper attribution was to create alternate RSS feeds for each author, and to allow that individual to create their own Triberr account. While great in theory, that method simply isn’t practical for sites that have lots of guest authors, rather than regular contributors. If an author only writes for you once or twice, setting up an RSS feed for them and getting them started on Triberr will results in virtually no shares via Triberr. They simply wouldn’t have time to build any kind of Tribe.
But now there’s a better way.
Triberr members can now log into their Triberr account and edit the Author for any post. This gives the actual author full social credit and mentions, while still maintaining your single RSS feed and making full use of your Tribes and Tribemates. Here’s how:
First, make sure that your guest author creates an account within Triberr. They will have to have an account, and a connected Twitter profile, in order to be selected as an article Author.
Next, once the article has been published to your site, log into your Triberr account and change the stream view to My Posts.
In the upper right corner of the post you wish to edit, look for the little arrow. Click on it and then click on Change Author.
Finally, begin typing the name of the correct author and select them when found.
Now, whenever one of your Tribemates shares that post, the actual author will receive full credit. You can see in this example how Jessica Ann was given proper credit when she posted a guest post to DIYBlogger:
This is a fantastic option on the part of Triberr, and will certainly help to give guest bloggers the credit they deserve. All future guest authors at The Social Media Hat will be asked to create accounts on Triberr as part of their initial setup so that we can take advantage of this feature.
In the future, I do expect social sharing widgets to advance in capability and be able to use dynamic code to pull an author’s name and/or social handle from the author’s Bio. In the meantime, this is a great way to give credit where credit is due.
Do you accept guest posts to your blog? If you do, will you look into incorporating this technique into your guest post process?
Image courtesy of workshifting, Flickr.