On Today’s SEO 101 Internet radio show on WebmasterRadio.FM my co-host John Carcutt and I discussed how SEO relates to social media optimization (SMO). Near the end of the show I brought up Posterous and how much I like it (see “Posterous is an Intelligent Social Media Posting Tool“). Amidst the conversation I noted an e-mail discussion I had with some Posterous representatives. In the discussion I asked questions that I felt were very important in determining whether to use Posterous as a core blogging platform for a business.

A questions and answers StepForth post for Posterous.comQuestion 1) Is it possible to use a subdomain for my Posterous account? I know a domain is possible but not so sure about a sub-domain. I thought blog.mydomain.com would be great.

Answer: “blog.mydomain.com works great”

My Take: A short but very sweet answer. I am not always a proponent of using a sub-domain for a blog but the fact that Posterous offers that capability makes it all the more alluring.

Question 2) When will it be possible to use my own URL shortener? I would really rather not use yours so that I can keep all of my tracking in one place.

Answer: “We will add multiple url shortener support soon. Totally understand that. It’s probably a month or two away (lots of features ahead in the pipe)”

My Take: Excellent! I suggest that anyone considering a URL shortener (which is used to shrink long URLs for easy emailing/txting) use Bit.Ly because it is a great application and the company has some big aspirations that I think will pay off for its users.

Question 3) What if, god forbid, your site is no longer around in a year or three and I have a ton of data and reputation heaped onto my Posterous account. Is there, or will there be a way to export everything in case I need to go elsewhere? This seems a valuable option for anyone about to rely on your system for a business presence.

Answer: “We’ve got API’s for all export that you could need, and if anything ever happens, we’ll extend it and make it as easy as possible to get your data out. Heck, we’ll autopost the whole site someplace else. 😉  — That being said, we have no plans to die. ;-)”

My Take: I couldn’t have asked for a better answer than that one.

Question 4) I saw a post on how to add tags to an email but how do I specify the category a specific posting should be set for in my WordPress when you post there?

Answer: “Any tags you send to Posterous turn into categories on WordPress. They need to exist as categories on the WordPress end first.”

My Take: Okay, I just have to get used to using the proper syntax they require in the subject of any Posterous-destined email: (tag: apple, gadgets). Not bad I guess, but it is a bit of a pain to try and remember the categories I have on my site before posting; shoot, I have to use my memory again!

Conclusion

Posterous is really turning out to be a great application. Once the upcoming customization and theming options are added Posterous is going to be one very popular site.

If you want to learn more about social media optimization check out today’s SEO 101 show which is available at our SEO 101 home page or via the player.