If you have explored Social 360 you may have noticed the Social Stream link at the top of the page. The page you will see is a visual representation of all my social activities from the various social networks I participate and am active on as well as hashtags I have selected.
What Is RebelMouse?
RebelMouse describes what they do the following way:
RebelMouse is based on the idea that people are proud of what they share on social networks, but are starting to feel embarrassed about their websites. RebelMouse creates your social front page, building a dynamic site around what you share.
In essence RebelMouse works as a very slick looking visual content aggregator that allows you to share your social activities, original content and RebelMouse posts with others.
How Can You Use RebelMouse?
You can use RebelMouse in a variety of different ways including:
- Curator – As a curator you can share and post content related to your topic(s) and through promotion you can build a loyal following. With the new navigation tabs that have been recently added it makes it easy to create verticals for each topic you wish to curate. You could create a hockey RebelMouse and then have navigation tabs related to different leagues or to different teams.
- Blog – Several people have turned to RebelMouse as there blogging platform of choice and with the ability to curate content as well as add original content it is definitely possible to use RebelMouse this way.
- Social page – This is my preferred method of using RebelMouse. You can install the WordPress plugin and this imports your RebelMouse page into your blog allowing your visitors to get a visual representation of all your social activities.
Adding Content To RebelMouse
Streaming content into your RebelMouse account is an extremely simple process and can be done in a couple of different ways:
- Connect and authorize your different social accounts to RebelMouse and then whenever you post to your different social networks your content will be automatically added to your RebelMouse stream. RebelMouse currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr and Flickr. You also have the option to use #hashtags and Twitter users as well as RSS feeds.
- You can also install the RebelMouse Post browser extension button and this will allow you to post content you find from around the web directly to your RebelMouse page just by clicking on the installed button.
- While logged in visit your RebelMouse page and click on the Post button that appears in the top of your page below the navigation tabs. A new window will open up allowing you to post pictures, videos and even full blog posts. You can tag your posts and then share them to your Twitter and Facebook accounts as well.
Notable RebelMouse Users
- Gary Vaynerchuk – The always energetic and highly vocal Gary Vaynerchuk was an early adopter of RebelMouse quickly converting his website over to using RebelMouse.
- Ben Parr – Ben Parr a writer for Mashable, CNET and a technology investor has is another early adopter who converted his blog to a RebelMouse powered website.
- Robert Scoble – The Scobleizer is every where one could possibly be when it comes to social networks and so finding him on RebelMouse is no surprise.
Final Thoughts
While some people have readily jumped over to using RebelMouse to solely power their websites I am a little more cautious. I like the RebelMouse platform as a curation tool for my social activities. I like the fact I can direct individuals to my RebelMouse page and they can quickly see all my social activities instead of directing them to each individual social network just to view all of my social activities.
On the other hand I do question using RebelMouse as a primary blogging platform for a couple of reasons such as:
- Internal Search – When users visit my RebelMouse powered site, how do they search for content contained within the page?
- External Search – Can Google find my RebelMouse content and rank my original content so that when performing a Google search my content can be found?
- Export – If I choose to leave RebelMouse is it possible to export out any content I have created and that is only available on RebelMouse?
Overall I really think that RebelMouse is a fantastic tool you can use to curate your social activities to share with others but I personally wouldn’t switch from a WordPress or similar blogging platform to RebelMouse exclusively.
Do you use RebelMouse? What are your thoughts on this platform?
If you would like more information of help with RebelMouse you can visit their How Tos and FAQs pages.
