7 Reasons I’m Loving Rebelmouse

(Update: Eight years later, Rebelmouse is still going strong. But the specific features in this post are no longer the latest. The sites used as examples are no longer live.)

I’m loving Rebelmouse* and if you’re running a business, and acknowledging the importance of social media, you will too. Its main benefit is pulling all of your favorite content into one simple and automatically updated, always, page. Your favorite content might be your favorite  or most relevant business content, for example, or simply your own.

But the best way to explain is with examples, so here are some real examples. These are not necessarily the best examples. They are just the ones I’ve done myself, for me or companies I work with, and integrated into my own online presence or those of these other companies.

  1. Sharing collected and curated content . Take a look at this image. That’s me there. It’s what I like, what I highlight, an automatic collection that updates every time I tweet, post to Facebook, or LinkedIn10 reasons you need Rebelmouse, or Google+, or post on one of the blogs I write for (including this one).Let me emphasize: it’s automatic. It’s collecting what I collect. For all of these various business pages, the content comes automatically. I set them up once, set them to record streams from the various social media platforms, and they are always up to date. So the ease of use is sensational.
  2. Rebelmouse embedded in WordPress siteCurated and collected items for the home page of a business site. It’s an automatic, always-updated home page. Using one of my businesses as an example again, take a look at the front page of my social media business plan site from 2013. It looks almost like the pure rebelmouse version above, but with an important difference: it’s the front page of a complete website, with a main menu navigation to my pages on speaking, consulting, and so on.What this means in simple business terms is: easy, automatic, and always updating. When we tweet, our page updates. When we post, our page updates.
  3. Rebelmouse setting RSS feedsCollecting all my blog posts on multiple blogs. I blog in about half a dozen places, usually 5-10 posts per week, more than 3,000 since I started in 2007. You can see where on the sidebar on this blog. But more to the point, I have an automatic collection of all my blog posts, from eight different me-specific RSS feeds. To put this in perspective, from 2008 to 2010 we had somebody at Palo Alto Software doing data entry into a database to keep track of my posts, for business reasons. Now we’ve got the RSS feeds set into the Rebelmouse page … the illustration here shows you a condensed (which explains tear marks) view of my settings for that page, which include RSS feeds to catch just my posts on the various major blogs. (And yes, you can’t read the details there, but I hope you get the idea).
  4. A customized front page for a blog. For our social media business plans site, smbplans.com, the front page of out blog is a Rebelmouse page, embedded in Wordpress, set to display all of our recent blog posts at once, each as a tile … a lot like the illustration for point 2 above, except in that case, our user clicked the “blog” link and the tiles showing are exclusively our blog posts.
  5. A collected group affinity social media site. I have a Rebelmouse page set to collect my personal social media along with the streams of each of our five grown-up children. For those of you who follow those things, we have a Klout score or 306 between six people. Our family site is mostly Twitter now. We might add Facebook later.
  6. Collecting related items for business planning. I’m working with friends on several new business plans. We set up a Rebelmouse page, shared it between ourselves, and from then on as we browse the web we have an easy instant click to put a new web page into our collection. We use it for background, competition, ideas, etc. I won’t she examples because these are for business plans: not strictly confidential, but hidden like needles in haystacks. And I want to leave them that way.
  7. Collecting ideas for future blog posts. I had a special site for what I’m thinking of writing about in the near future. It’s not too different from my main public page, and it is public, but it’s focused on what I want to write.

*Disclosure: Bias. I’m involved with Rebelmouse. My daughter Andrea Breanna is founder and CEO

Comments

  • Billgreen54 says:

    Rebel Mouse is no longer free. The founder of Rebel Mouse lied. In the past, I watched an interview with him. He stated that Rebel Mouse will always have a free version. He simply lied.

    • Tim Berry says:

      The founder of Rebelmouse is more disappointed that you or me with this. When he promised forever free, four years ago, he meant it. But this is the real world, and he is subject to market powers, not a wealthy billionaire, and markets and technology changed. It happened. “He simply lied” is awfully harsh when applied to cases like these.

  • step_13_aa says:

    You still didn’t say why you loved it.

  • Chirag Vartak says:

    I am not able to see the latest post on my rebel mouse page can you please help me.

  • Ronnie338 says:

    I am a newbie to rebelmouse site. I’ve seen Very familiarized persons are using this website. So that I’d like to use it. But before that i just wanna need some tips for using this website. This article really guide me. A useful one . Thanks for it.

  • Joan Bos says:

    Yes, I can see my own things at Rebelmouse. At first, however, I could also follow other people’s posts (people that I followed on the Twitter I connected). Now I can see my own posts only, nobody elese. But I know my own posts, I can see them on twitter and instagram, where I posted them myself. What’s the use of seeing only my own posts?!!

    • Tim Berry says:

      Joan, re your “now I can see my own posts only:” When I go to my Rebemouse settings I choose the “content” option and there I set my Rebelmouse page (which resolves to timberry.biz BTW) to have whatever content I choose. In my case it loads tweets and Facebook updates from half a dozen different people. I can also set it to load specific hashtags, RSS feeds, and so forth. So I am definitely not seeing my own posts only, as you describe it – but I would if I set my content that way. This is what you choose, not what Rebelmouse chooses.

      Also, re: “What’s the use of seeing only my own posts?” most of us Rebelmouse users (they have millions) use it to create a page that consolidates our favorite collection of posts onto a single page that constantly refreshes automatically with new updates. So the goal isn’t that you see your collection (whether it’s all your own posts or not) but rather that you share your collection with the rest of the world. It’s about letting others see, not what you see!

      Here are two specific examples:

      1.) I have a rebelmouse page at blog.timberry.com that shares all of my recent blog posts on more than half a dozen different blogs that I post to. That’s there for others to read, not for me to read. I don’t need it; I wrote them all. However, I want to make them all accessible in one place so others can see what I’m doing.

      2.) I have a rebelmouse page at timberry.biz that shares my social media stream, aside from blog posts, plus my favorites from some other people. I consider it a collection of interesting things, intended for others to read. I’m curating on that site, not just creating.

      By the way, Rebelmouse has an excellent support team available to you by emailing help@rebelmouse.com. If you don’t see how to set your content collection, maybe you can ask them.

      Thanks, Tim

  • cableboy says:

    question a bit off topic but why when I try and add a post its says oops access denied

  • friv2game says:

    Thank you for this great information, you write very well which i like very much.

  • Otto says:

    Six of your reasons include some form of the word ‘collect’ with the other being customize. Would love to hear how using Rebelmouse moved the needle in engagement in some meaninful metric. Anything to share there?

    • Tim Berry says:

      Otto, yes, definitely. Compare the engagement you get when you have a single view of an issue or a person’s updates on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, blogs, and Google+ versus the engagement you get on that same issue, or that same person, when you have to go one-by-one through Twitter (search there, engage there), Facebook (ditto), LinkedIn (ditto), and so forth. It’s something like the interaction you get when all your friends are gathered in the same place vs. what happens when you have them dispersed.

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