This is not going to be your typical Tsu is almighty and you need to sign up now post.
I have come to bury Tsu, not praise it! Okay, maybe a little of both.
This new social media has potential, but also some problems. Is it the answer to the small bloggers woes of increasing reach? Is it going to make you rich? Should you join in? Should you skip it? I can only answer for myself.
What is Tsu?
In case you haven't been invited to join the hot new Social Media club, I will explain briefly. Tsu.co (no "m" on the end) is a new social media platform similar to Google+, Facebook and Twitter. It is a place to share "content" and interact with others.
Tsu has added a multi-level marketing twist though. They claim they will pay you for content you share and for the content shared by the people that sign up under you. I say claim, because right now all of those pennies are still virtual. Until I see an actual check I can only go by claims.
You need to be invited to join because when you sign up you are put into a "family tree" under the person that invited you. When you share something, you get a percentage of Tsu's ad revenue and so does the person that you signed up under and so does the person they signed up under.
Interested? Consider yourself invited: https://www.tsu.co/ThatRecipe
Should you join?
Why are you on Social Media? For fun? to increase your blogs reach? to make money?
I'll take the last one first. If you want to work it like a part time job soliciting friends and followers and shares and comments and likes, I suppose you could make some decent money. But Tsu currently has limits on many things that might make that difficult. I think you can only invite 8 people to join and have 36 posts a day. And there is a limit to how many of the posts can be shared posts.
If your goal for social media is just for fun, sign up! It is fun. For me though, all of my friends and family are on Facebook. Hmmmm! Wait a minute, that could be a good thing. If none of them sign up for Tsu then I can whine about my in-laws and no one will now - ha ha!
If you are a blogger and are looking to drive traffic to your blog, Tsu could be incorporated into your social media strategy, but you would be a fool to abandon the others. Go get your blog name, experiment with it and decide if the effort is worth it either by direct payment from Tsu or traffic driven to your site. As limited as my FB following is, I still get traffic to my blog which means it generates income for me, albeit not directly.
I have shared the same things on all social media accounts for two weeks. Pinterest, of course, is the big winner hands down. Facebook is second and Google+ is third. Twitter is still virtually negligible and zero from Tsu. My social media goal is to increase blog traffic, at this point Tsu has done nothing for that.
Relax, Tsunation. I know it is new and I need to give it time. You can tell the world it is the greatest thing since the invention of Cookie Butter, I am not convinced it is yet. (And in case you were wondering I am not a huge fan of Cookie Butter, it is just okay to my palate.)
Friend or follow?
You can either follow someone, or friend them. When you post your friends will always see everything, but followers can't see anything marked friends only.
Tsu says to save "friend" for people you really know in person. Bloggers I respect point out that you can only currently follow 1000 people, but have 5000 friends so they conclude more eyeballs = more revenue.
Far from perfect
It is a new platform so it is glitchy I have had trouble logging on more than once.
It doesn't have the bells and whistles that other more established social media platforms do nor does it have the user base yet.
I can't link to my FB business page only my personal page. But I can't do that on Pinterest either and Google+ gives me fits when I want to comment as my page not my personal account.
It does have a lot of hype and some abuse. After two weeks I am already sick of (and unfollowing/ unfriending people) because they:
*Constantly beg for follows, shares and comments. Do you have those people in your life that sell essential oils or jamberry or pampered chef or any other MLM "opportunity" that talk about nothing else? Yeah, me too. Here's a secret: IT'S ANNOYING!
*Tag #tsu #tsunation #tsunami on EVERY post. And generally post nothing but suck ups to Tsu in hopes people will share and their revenue will increase.
*Bash Facebook, repeatedly. 1) You spend 8 hours a day on Facebook?! You need a life! 2) Don't act like Facebook broke a promise to you. They never said they would pay you for using their site. 3) Can you like something without bashing something else? 4) I'd have commented but this is click bait, you are posting this to increase your earnings. Sorry but not helping you do that.
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| Take your tsu earnings from yesterday and multiply them by the time you've spent on Facebook. What's you "Facebook Invoice"? Let me know in the comments.... |
*Overhype, overpromise and spread misinformation.There was a better one I saw yeserday that promised Tsu would pay you $1 for sharing it. I assume it was removed by Tsu or the user.
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| this is click bait folks, stop doing it, stop sharing it! |
My conclusions
I grabbed my user name and am having some fun exploring a new platform. Other bloggers probably want to do the same thing.
I have found a few new bloggers to follow that I hadn't followed on other social media and connected with some whose posts don't make it to my newsfeed on FB, or I am not on Twitter at the same time as they post and their tweets are lost among my many others.
I have made 13 cents! I don't come close to my sharing limits a day because I have a thing called a life, which I need to get back to in a few minutes.
Hopefully Tsu can live up to half of its hype and not go belly up in the process. Only time will tell, and it's only been around for a month or two.
If you are already on Tsu, please share your shortlink in the comments so anyone else interested can follow. And yes, even though I say not to promise this, I am following everyone that follows me right now (https://www.tsu.co/ThatRecipe). If you start getting annoying I will dump you, though. 🙂
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