posterous

I actually don't remember when and how I stumbled the first time over posterous. And I must confess, it took quite some time until it started 'to grow on me' like the Brits say and started to use it as a way to promote new interesting sites. I was, nevertheless, from the first moment, impressed by the clean, no-fuss or frill design of the site, but this is hardly enough to keep me on board, so to speak. When it comes to free blogging platforms there are quite a lot out there, so why should I prefer posterous to the well known and well loved free wordpress blogs? The more I digged into the possibilities of posterous, the more I discovered the hidden gem it can be, carefully used, by the right hands, for an internet marketer. But what on earth is the whole fuss about? And how can it be useful for you? Lets start a stroll through posterous, shall we?

Posterous is a free blogging platform that allows you to have up to three blogs with the format blogname.posterous.com or with your own domain. You can blog by email, including attachments, which are converted automatically to the right format. You email posterous a text, it becomes a blog post,  you attach a video, image or song and posterous will post it automatically in the right format for your readers to enjoy. Even commentating to blogs can be done by email. And yes, you also can post via the web interface. Eh, oh, uh, I hear you saying, that is not actually different from other blogging platforms like tumblr or a self hosted wordpress blog, right? Right and wrong! The difference is that posterous just does what it says it does, on a very clean, no-frill interface, not more and not less. Forget about different skins or themes, there is only one. Forget about sidebars that display ads and widgets, they don't exist here. Think of it as 'twitter with more than 140 characters' and you get the idea. This keeps spammers away, increases the google authority and helps everybody involved to get a fast indexed blog and good serp rankings.

Imagine you are stuck in the Australian outback, only a mobile phone with you, nothing else, no internet, no laptop, nada. And you came across the story of a lifetime, lets say you got a photo of a living and running Dodo... If you have a posterous account set up and as long as you are able to send emails via your mobile/ cell phone , you can now blog about it AND you can autoblog it to facebook, twitter and a bunch of other blog and social media sites. One email equals many posts. Yikes! I hear the internet marketers screaming out in pain, what about double content??? Yep, dad da problem, posterous is not primarily geared towards internet marketers, it is geared towards people that want to get the message out --- fast! So, if you are concerned about double content and the google slap, don't use the auto feature, or at least use it sparingly.

Posterous can be converted to a group blog or email list by simply adding more contributors. Adding them is as easy as adding their email addresses to a list. And here is where the fun starts... The more, internet savy, contributors you have, the more will your posterous gain in content and authority. Not to speak about that every of these contributors normally will help to promote the common posterous group blog. Do I see now some internet marketer ears popping up to attention?

Posterous is free to use and doesn't display ads to your readers. Means a clean, uncluttered look. Will it stay like this forever? Most likely not, but posterous founders reassure us “Later, we'll be adding premium features we know you'll love, but there will always be a useful free version you can use.”

BUT if you have read until here, here come the surprise, posterous is do-follow! Remeber the glorious days when twitter was do-follow? Posterous might well be the next big thing! Now, if you HAVE followed me until now, than I hear the little pieces click into place: free group blog+do follow links = viral marketing! Only one word of caution, don't overdo it! I asked the makers of posterous and they are fine with the idea, until it develops into spam. Means, use it as a valued tool -fine! Abuse it and your account might get deleted... Your choice and risk!

Imagine the following scenario: A small group of key word savy internet marketers comes together to use posterous as a group blog. Each contributor blogs about his/ her sites, hubs, lenses or blogs with short, original, keyword optimized articles whilst promoting the group blog to the best of their knowledge. Viral? You bet it it! Interested? Leave a comment on my little seo project and I come back to you!