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06.08.10 Has Posterous Become A New Content Management Contender?  By Danny BrownI've loved the idea of Posterous from the start.As a quick-start blogging platform, Posterous offers a pretty robust platform to build your blogging expertise from.One of the biggest things that puts many folks off from starting a blog is often the time commitment needed. Yet with the ability to post via email, Posterous allowed anyone to experiment. I've introduced a few clients to blogging via Posterous, and it's given them the confidence to swap to "full-on" blogging via WordPress and self-hosting. And I have a Posterous account that I use for short-form blog posts. Ideas, basically, that I might expand into longer thoughts here. So, yeah, I'm a fan of Posterous. Yet for all the good stuff that Posterous offers, it's always been a lightweight version of blogging (at least to these eyes). No search engine optimization offerings, no real ownership, and none of the ability to expand your blog the same way you can with a dedicated one (pages, for example, and sidebars/toolbars). Until now. Posterous Grows Up with Pages A new feature just announced by Posterous sees the platform become a more bona-fide alternative to full-on blogging. With the addition of Pages, you can now have a pretty cool little online hub to build your brand, business or services from. Previous to this addition, all you had on your Posterous blog was your posts and any sidebar that came with the theme you chose (Posterous has about a dozen or so pre-built templates for you to choose from). While this is ideal for a simple blog, it doesn't really offer much in the way of additional information (About, Services, Contact, etc) that you see on more "traditional" blog platforms. Pages now allows this, and a little bit more. Now you can have a dedicated About Page with Posterous, where you can expand on who you are and what you do/offer. You can also offer a Contact Page, a Services Page - heck, anything you want to add, you can. And setting it up couldn't be simpler - just add the new page from your admin area, fill out the content and hit Publish. You can even drag-and-drop the navigation to rearrange where the page sits on your nav bar. The other cool feature that Pages allows you to do is redirect that page. Let's say you want to use Posterous as a simple outlet, and your main site is an e-commerce one elsewhere. You can set up a page called Store, for example, and use the redirect function to open up your full-on e-commerce store. On my Posterous account, I've used the new Pages redirect feature to direct folks to my Contact Page here, as well as my accounts at Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. This feature alone puts Posterous above many premium WordPress themes - although the Headway theme (affiliate link) I use on this blog has this ability - and suddenly turns the platform into a more fleshed-out option for bloggers. Does Posterous Replace Dedicated Blogging? Having said that, Posterous still doesn't beat a full-on self-hosted WordPress blog just yet. There's still no dedicated SEO options (although you can tag your post with keywords). Nor are there options for plug-ins that a WordPress blog offers, which can really turn a blog into a free-standing social hub. And obviously, as a free platform, you're still restricted by the terms and conditions of using Posterous. But then again, that's probably not the audience that Posterous is after. The platform offers a quick and easy introduction to blogging, and with the addition of Pages, allows even the most inexperienced of bloggers a great starting point. And that's all that matters at the end of the day, no? Comments About the Author: Danny Brown is the owner of Press Release PR, a boutique agency specializing in search engine optimized press releases and social media PR. He offers consultancy advice on social media and PR to both individuals and corporations He has guest authored at leading web and search marketing site Web Analytics World and is a blog partner of the WebProNews and iEntry business networks. He is also a regular contributor to the Dad-o-Matic project. To read more of Danny's articles or interact with him, please visit danny BROWN - social media PR. |
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