Less than two years old, the blogging platform Posterous (pronounced PO-sterous) has quickly become a major part of the social media world. It’s completely reinvented the way that people upload and share blog posts, videos, photos and more. Because of its simplicity, Posterous makes blog updating completely effortless. Here’s a rundown on Posterous and why you should be using it.

To understand what Posterous is pretend that you have a line and on one end is traditional blogging, think WordPress and Moveable Type, and on the other end is micro-blogging, like Twitter. In between these two formats is Posterous, which can best be described as mini-blogging. And, when Posterous says that it’s ‘the dead simple place to post everything’ they aren’t kidding around.

Using your own email account users can submit MP3s, photos, videos, files, blogs and just about anything else that you can think of. Whatever you write or attach to your email is automatically posted to your Posterous account with the push of a ‘send’ button. We’ve put together 10 useful tips and highlights to help you get the most out of Posterous and to get you up and running with Posterous in no time.

1.  A Social Media Posting Roundup

By using your personal email account, you can submit posts via Posterous to an array of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, Xanga and more. You can even do a test run just to see what a post would look like before you join the community. Through a very simple email address system, users can pick and choose where they’d like share their content.

• post@posterous.com creates a public post and automatically shares to the social medias services you’ve set up.
• private@posterous.com creates a non-public post.
• post.posterous@posterous.com makes a public post that is not automatically tweeted.

Here’s where you can get creative with your posting. By combining different social media recipients, you can direct your posts to specific platforms. For instance:

• twitter@posterous.com spreads your post only via Twitter.
• twitter+facebook@posterous.com spreads your post via Twitter and Facebook.
• wordpress@posterous.com delivers to your traditional blog.

You can even post to different Posterous blogs that you’ve created. For example, xanga@janesmith.posterous.com will  send a post to Xanga and Jane’s Posterous site at http://janesmith.posterous.com. Pretty cool.

2. Kicking Code To The Curb

Another convenient Posterous feature is the elimination of copy and pasting embed code for photos and videos that you want to share in your posts. This makes integrating clips from YouTube and pictures from Flickr a breeze. Posterous automatically takes the URL of the item that you’ve selected and converts and embeds for you. All you have to do is email a link and Posterous takes care of the rest. Nice.

3.  Select And Share It

The bookmarklet option can be installed on your browser with a simple drag and drop. Once it’s there you’ll be able to instantly post anything that you find on the web. Highlight text, share a show from Hulu or a song from SoundCloud – the Posterous bookmarklet takes a quick click and your internet find is instantly included.

4.  Come One, Come All

Do you have multiple blog contributors? Well, Posterous can help with that too. Your various bloggers don’t need to create individual accounts. Yep, you heard it right. They use the primary Posterous site that you created and email posts straight from their own email accounts by sending to post@sitename.posterous.com. Each contributor will be notified when a new post is made or when a comment is left.

5.  It’s All About Me, Me, Me

Users can choose from a handful of standard layouts and templates to customize their sites. But, if you’re searching for something more personalized, you can use the CSS/HTML options available to dress things up to your liking.

A standard domain name is assigned with each Posterous account (sitename.posterous.com), however you can make a vanity URL that points the address in your name server to Posterous’ web servers.

Further customization ties into inline picture posting. When users post photos Posterous automatically converts them to gallery view (where readers click from picture to picture), but if that’s not your style you can include ‘((no gallery))’ in the subject line and voila! – photos can be viewed one after the next.

6.  Tag, You’re It

Tagging is used to organize information and make it easier to for others to identify what they’re looking for during general searches. Think of tagging like anindex in the back of a book. When you post from your email account you can specify what tags you want associated with your post. In the subject line include ‘((tags: coffee, latte, Colorado))’ and you’re done.

7.  It’s So Nice To Meet You

It’s tough for many businesses to adapt to social media. There’s so much out there and deciding what’s best for their company can be difficult. Posterous lets businesses connect their current website to a new social media service. It’s a wonderful way to introduce social media to your business and your audience.

8.  Testing 1, 2, 3

With a traditional blog, you’re limited in terms of what type of content can be shared and with what audience. For instance, if you blog about butterflies and their migration habits and that’s what your blog base has come to know and rely on, it might be tricky to test out blog posts about wing colors or fluttering patterns. With Posterous, you can test out different angles and sub-topics that wouldn’t necessarily float (pathetic pun with the butterfly example) with your readers.

9.  Seeing Is Believing

An added bonus with Posterous is how quickly Google indexes their blogs. That added exposure might be just enough bump that a business needs to climb the search ranking ladder.

10.  Let Yourself Be Heard

Engage with different audiences by expanding different social content. Try using a different tone and style to reach new people and express your views.

On a side note, if you have a built-in signature in your email that you don’t want included when you email your posts just type ‘#end’ after your content in the body of the email. Posterous will not post beyond that hashtag. Definitely give Posterous a try and let us know what you think and how you’re using it. We’d love to hear from you.

By the way, this entire post was published to the company blog and Posterous blog site using our email account.

Tags: Blogging, blogs, how to, internet, Marketing, posterous, review, small business, Social Media, tips

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Blogging, Reviews, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.