How I Use Posterous to Share Content and Save Time
January 18, 2012 · Print This Article
This is a guest post from Sharyn Sheldon. She brought up Posterous in conversation and since I’d never heard of it, I asked her to explain it here…
How I Use Posterous to Share Content and Save Time
By Sharyn Sheldon
I’m always looking for ways to save time and make my life a little easier. Who isn’t? All this business of managing social media, blogs, link building, sharing ideas, posting videos, and so on and so forth. It’s exhausting just thinking about it, let alone figuring out how to get it done.
A couple of years ago I was introduced to a neat little site called Posterous that helps tremendously with some of the everyday tasks that I know I should be doing more of. I’m actually surprised that more people haven’t heard about it, considering all the things you can do and the features it contains.
What Is It?
Posterous, which is now called Posterous Spaces, looks a lot like a free blogging platform at first glance. In fact, a lot of people use it now as their primary blog. The beauty in it though is the ability to share and autopost to multiple sites, all via email.
All you have to do is set up a Posterous “Space”, which can be public or private. You get a domain name that is name.posterous.com, or you can use your own domain name and transfer it over. The settings are fairly straightforward with no complicated plugins, just the basics. The purpose of having a Posterous space is to share, not sell.
Once you have your space ready to go, which only takes a few minutes, you can start posting and sharing right on the site or via your registered email.
Email intelligence
For posting via email, you just put the title of the post as your Subject, and the content of the post as the body of your email. If you want to include images, video or audio, you just attach them to the email or insert the link in the body of the text. Posterous recognizes it and embeds the image, video or audio in the correct format right into your post. The actual media shows up, not simply a link. It’s kind of like uploading a media file to WordPress, but it’s all done automatically for you. Cool, right?
Share and share alike
The email feature isn’t the really amazing part though. What I adore is the autopost feature. You can set up specific accounts to “autopost” to when you send that email to Posterous. I can tell Posterous to post the same content to all of my accounts, or just to one or two depending on how I address the email.
The accounts will have links back to the post on Posterous while blogs will show the full post. For Facebook, it will even generate an image if I have one as part of that post.
Don’t abuse the system
A couple last words of caution. Don’t get overzealous and start using Posterous to spam 20 different accounts with the same information over and over. Also, I never use it to post content to my main blog and I don’t do all my sharing via Posterous. For Facebook and Twitter in particular, you should be right there interacting with followers, being sociable.
I’m sure I’ve only tapped into a portion of what you can do with Posterous. For instance, I know you can also share things to your Posterous space via Google Reader, which is great for doing content curation. But one can only absorb so much technology after all.
~~~~~~~
Sharyn Sheldon is the owner of Business Content PLR, which provides professionally written articles on a variety of business topics – all designed to be easy to rewrite and make unique. An instructional designer in her pre-internet days, Sharyn’s focus is on learning to grow your business while making your life easier and more fun at the same time.
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Twitter: sharynsheldon
on January 18th, 2012 9:29 pm
Hi Peggy,
Thanks for posting my article! I’m really interested to know if anyone else has been using Posterous and how they make the most of it.
Looking forward to everyone’s comments.
All the best,
Sharyn
Sharyn recently posted ..Article Marketing PLR Article Pack 1
To be honest, I have never used this platform, so that’s why I can’t express my opinion about it. But still it was very interesting to find this new information
BuySellWordpress recently posted ..WordPress Themes
Twitter: sharynsheldon
on January 19th, 2012 8:48 am
It is interesting, isn’t it? I only found out about Posterous because I went through Ed Dale’s Challenge a couple years ago. He’s a big proponent.
- Sharyn
Sharyn Sheldon recently posted ..Article Marketing PLR Article Pack 1
Twitter: adriennesmith40
on January 19th, 2012 11:39 am
Hi Sharyn,
When I saw the title of Peggy’s post I had to drop by and see what it was all about. I’ve never heard of Posterous and I guess I’m still a little confused as to how it benefits us. I mean if you have an autoresponder then notifying people on your list does the same thing right? Or is this similar to automatic tweeting or posting to social media sites.
Sorry if I still seem a little confused but no harm in asking right!
Thanks for this information though and will look forward to your reply.
~Adrienne
Adrienne recently posted ..Why Content Is Not The Only King On The Internet
Twitter: stevescott1
on January 19th, 2012 12:21 pm
Sharyn,
I use another program “Amplify” to do the same exact thing. It seems the model is very close.
But regardless of which service used it just makes sense to be able to get a lot done, as quickly and plainlessly as possible using these services.
Your hint to not “abuse” the service is important though. It is easy to get these free servcies shut down if you are too loose and spammy with your links.
Steve@Affiliate Marketing Tips recently posted ..Take 100% Responsibility for Your Actions [Internet Success Series #1]
Twitter: sharynsheldon
on January 19th, 2012 1:54 pm
Hi Adrienne,
Sorry I wasn’t clearer. Posterous has nothing to do with your email list. It’s more like autoposting on steroids. You get the ability to publish something via your email to multiple sites at once AND have all your media automatically embedded for you. It’s not just social media, but blogs as well. Ed Dale does a complete walk through of it in The Challenge videos, which are all free. Go to http://www.challenge.co/training/mod3/day4/ for the intro videos. You might have to register, but it’s worth it for all the training there. Let me know how you get on.
Steve,
I’ll have to take a look at Amplify. Does it let you post to a blog and embed the media too? I’m always on the lookout for something that will make my life easier!
- Sharyn
Sharyn Sheldon recently posted ..Article Marketing PLR Article Pack 1
I have yet to try Posterous. By the looks of your great post, I think I might have to. Thanks for sharing!
Doug Gene recently posted ..Rock Creek Coupon Code and Review
Posterous is quite useful for posting your content and socializing for my clients site. It is easy to manage and customize it.
Twitter: sharynsheldon
on January 20th, 2012 8:36 pm
Hi Doug -
Thanks for the kind words. Would love to hear how you like it if you give it a try.
Hi Becca –
Do you have a favorite way of using Posterous? Eg, just posting to twitter, facebook, tumblr. Or some other tips?
Would love to hear the way you use it!
Thanks.
Sharyn
Sharyn Sheldon recently posted ..Online Reputation Management PLR Article Pack 1
Twitter: pegbaron
on January 21st, 2012 11:18 pm
Hey Sharyn,
Thanks so much for doing this guest post and sharing your expertise on Posterous!
Much appreciated.
Peggy
Twitter: sharynsheldon
on January 21st, 2012 11:44 pm
Any time, Peggy!
- Sharyn
Sharyn recently posted ..Business Planning Process PLR Articles Mega Pack