I hope you were able to see the huge benefit in setting up a posterous network. Today I thought I’d get into a little more of the nitty gritty, how I do it stuff, which will hopefully answer some of the questions you’ve asked.
1. Think of a general way to encompass all your lenses.
I do mostly product lenses, so they could all be thought of as gifts, Amazon offers great deals on products so they could be thought of as great deals. I do reviews of the product in each of my lenses so they could all be thought of as reviews.
Think of something ~ one overall topic that encompasses all your lenses. This is going to be your network theme.
2. Set up your posterous account ~ using your network theme to determine the name of your site and your username.
3. Go in and set up all the sites you want Posterous to post to. Use your network theme for these sites as well ~ for your site name and username.
ex. My posterous account username for my lenses is Best Gifts Ever. This is the general theme of all the other sites that it posts to as well. In fact, I’ve used the same username across the board (for the most part).
4. Fill in your profile.
When you’re setting up all the blogs/sites you can have posterous post to make sure you’re filling in your profile information. You can use a pen name if you want, but make sure you fill something in when you can add a website. You can pick a lens, or a blog or whatever it is you need to help get a boost in the search engine rankings ~ the links from these profiles are already showing up in yahoo site explorer for the sites I’ve used… so it’s an important step.
Add an image ~ make it look good. You don’t have to use an image of you. For the best gifts theme I used an image of a gift wrapped box ~ it sticks with the theme and gives me some anonymity since I am using a pen name I don’t want this network linked by my regular social media picture.
5. Start posting.
If your network theme is gifts then start making posts about giving gifts. I recently did a lens on the composter I have ~ so I wrote a quick post (in gmail) about a great gift for gardeners. I included a couple sentences, a link to the lens, the video that I did for the lens (although I mostly use other people’s videos in my posts. I just happened to have done one for this topic), and a link back to my Christmas blog with anchor text related to gifts for christmas that I’m trying to rank for.
It takes a couple minutes ~ really. A couple minutes. Don’t overthink this. A couple sentences, a video or an image and a link or two ~ make sure to use your targeted keyword phrase as the anchor text of your link. This is very easy to do when using gmail ~ just highlight your keywords and use the little chain icon to create the link.
6. Add some other stuff too.
If you come across something interesting ~ a great deal, a great gift idea ~ even if you haven’t done a lens on it go ahead and shoot out an email to posterous. It only takes a second and the more you give to this network the better it will be. The better it will work for you.
What if I have different niches?
If you can identify an overall theme for your lenses you only need one posterous network (ie. gifts, reviews, deals). If you have lenses (or a website) that are totally different than the product lenses ~ and are about a whole other topic you might want to set up a second posterous network.
This is only necessary if you really find yourself living in two worlds. I have 2 networks. One is a gift theme and one is a kid theme ~ this is where I connect with other parents around some of my other sites and interests. Some of my lenses will go through the kids network ~ but most of them won’t.
When you set up a second network you can add an additional email address to choose in your gmail account. (Go to your gmail “settings” and then to “accounts and import”. It will allow you to add another “send mail as” address. When you go to send a post to posterous just choose (from a drop down menu in the email writing area) the email you want to send it as ~ which will correspond with the email address you used for the specific posterous network you want to send your post to.
Here’s a quick video that shows how I create posts to send to my posterous network.
I hope I’ve answered your questions about using a posterous network for your lenses. If you questions I didn’t answer or need clarity ~ just ask in the comments section.
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Do the lenses still rank well despite the fact that the same article has been sent through posterous to several different blogs?
In other words, is it perfectly fine to have the exact same article appearing on several different blogs, and you don’t face any negative consequences in the serps for this?
Thanks
Peggy@Be a Tutor´s last blog ..Tutor- and Education-Related Information
It’s fine. That’s the whole purpose of posterous is to share information with your different social networks.
Thanks so much for the information and video. I’m going to work on setting up my posterous network this afternoon!
Deb@Women’s Fitness´s last blog ..Rest Days- Do We Really A Break From Exercise
When you suggest that you send a post to Posterous about another deal you’ve found, even if you haven’t built a lens, do you use, for example, anchor text with your Amazon Affilite ID in it?
I appreciate the post, but I don’t seem to be catching on to a lot of it.
Bea´s last blog ..Lladro dancer updated Thu Aug 19 2010 12-55 pm CDT
This is a complex technique. Take it slow, one step at a time. You can add your link or you can leave it out. It doesn’t matter. There’s no “right or wrong” way to do this. It’s nice to add content that isn’t “sales” based, but just great stuff for your audience.
You could also add links to articles or information about your topics. If you’ve got a deal network you could send through links to an article about how to save money.
Some of my posts are getting almost 100 visits at posterous within a few minutes. This isn’t because it’s “me” and I already have a network ~ because it’s a pen name and no one knows me, and it’s a brand new network ~ not linked in with any of “my” stuff ~ this is just the virtue of how posterous works. It’s just a pretty simple way (once it’s all set up) to get links and eyes on your products and pages.
So, Step 1 would be to create the other free blogs (I only have my blogger blog so far).
Then Step 2 is to send posts that are on the Blogger Blog to Posterous
Then Step 3 is to send the lenses? As articles.
Gee, I’m not getting this, am I?
Any chance you could do a step-by-step either here or in the Forum?
Bea´s last blog ..Lladro dancer updated Thu Aug 19 2010 12-55 pm CDT
No ~ the process is outlined here in this post. You set up your acct at posterous. Go to each site you want posterous to post to. Set up an account and hook it up with posterous.
Then you send email “posts” to posterous talking about your lenses and linking to your lenses.
Posterous does the rest of the work.
Start a thread in the forum and we’ll do it together if you want to do this.
Okay, I’ll work on that in the forum as soon as I return from a couple of errands.
Thanks so much.
Bea´s last blog ..Lladro dancer updated Thu Aug 19 2010 12-55 pm CDT
I think I’ll be joining ya’ll later at the KISS forums too about this. I’ve got Posterous on the brain and am determined to get this et up and working for me.
Jackie, how do you post Amazon images to posterous?
Lisa @ Melissa & Doug Victorian Doll House´s last blog ..Melissa & Doug Victorian Doll House updated Mon Aug 30 2010 3-53 pm CDT
It’s actually super easy ~ all you have to do is go to amazon ~ grab the image and click “copy image” and then paste it into your email. You don’t even have to save it to your computer.
You can then highlight the image and click the chain icon and add a link to it ~ so the image is clickable.
Jackie, in your video you showed your post on Posterous after you sent the email. Did you also set up multiple platforms for the same post to post to or are you just having it post only on the Posterous site?
The dude in the other video’s (on your previous post) had his posts go on 4-5 platforms besides Posterous.
Hope that makes sense.
Lynn @How To Save A Bad Relationship´s last blog ..How To Avoid Common Pitfalls When Trying To Get Your Ex Back
Never mind Jackie. Your Posterous profile shows what platforms that it is auto posting to. I should have looked first before asking. I think that I understand this a little better
I will have to give this more thought. I’m not signed up with any of the sites that this would post to.
The reason being is that I do not like, enjoy, etc. social networking sites. However, I do enjoy the social aspects of blog commenting and forum commenting.
Lynn @How To Save A Bad Relationship´s last blog ..How To Avoid Common Pitfalls When Trying To Get Your Ex Back
The purpose of this is not necessarily to be social.
it is to build links to your lenses so they will rank better in the search engines and get you more traffic.
These will be in context links ~ with your targeted keywords as the anchor text on seriously high page rank sites. Those are all great things.
I get what you are saying. I have not ruled it out. I’m just someone that does not participate in Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and all those types of sites.
Once I can get my head wrapped around this and really digest this post…..I may see clearer. I’m kind of on meltdown right now.
Also, is it possible to have a drop in backlink #’s. I had 103 backlinks for one of my sites and today it dropped to 80.
You also don’t have to use all the sites.
Skip FB, Twitter ~ and just use the blogging platforms.
Not sure what the deal is with the number of backlinks.
Thank you Jackie! The suggestions for naming networks with an umbrella name are very helpful …
I hadn’t given much thought to using a different persona but I see now that it’s a good idea!
I’ll be coming back to check your videos out again I’m sure
Fran
Fran@Powerful Life Guide since 2006´s last blog ..Fun With Google – The Book