Do's and Don'ts of web2 outposting:

An intriguing title and it is important to first define terms. Out posting is the practice of operating satellite web presences, I think of this as a hub and spoke model with spokes operating as the outposts. With the proliferation of social networks and other web2 sites, it becomes extremely easy to operate dozens of these and they are quite commonly used by bloggers, marketers et. al. to ‘deliver their message’ to multiple audiences. A good way to think of an outpost is as a channel. The hub could be an aggregator service such as ping.fm. This facilitates a broadcast ‘model’ – i.e. from ping.fm you can push in a single update the same message to multiple web2 outposts.

Sounds great so far! A simple way to hook up tonnes of web2 presences and push updates to multiple audiences. You could also say it sounds a bit untargeted and even ‘spammy’, so what are the potential drawbacks?

1.    Google penalises duplicate content. Yip - outposts can quickly become 15 or 20 streams of the same updates (the same can be said of lifestreams). If you are optimising your SEO on Twitter for example, but pushing the same updates to plurk, kwippy, tumblr rejaw (and so on) you can quickly establish a wide footprint across those sites, but at a penalty to your SEO on Twitter. Why so? Well, because you can’t optimise outposts and hubs on the same content.
2.    Outposts are really tempting to set up. I’ve done this a lot of times, and I recognise in many cases that it was forlorn. Why so? Well, untargeted updates are pretty useless, far too mechanical and when you are not absorbed in genuinely active conversation on your outpost, you (rightly) get ignored
3.    They aren’t ‘sticky’. Create 10 outposts and bombard them with microblogging updates and pretty quickly you can establish a sizable footprint in the Google index. This is what I call the effect of RSS echo. Sounds ok? Well, no – because these don’t stick and they have quality issues. Halt the process suddenly; watch the results week on week for about a month. The conclusion, your digital footprint will diminish like someone having taken the ‘plug out of the bath’. Quick and dirty solutions don’t produce high-value sustainable results, so take care about wasting time on this
4.    I would say the same about ‘over-lifestreaming’, and too much outposting leads to really diluted index results. Signal to noise ratio should be dictating that your high quality presence is reported high up in Google results. Flood this with noise from outposts and well – you know the rest!
5.    The ‘echo amplification effect’– use friendfeed or another lifestreaming tool and your outpost updates can ripple and echo actually amplifying the problem. In my opinion this is going to push pages into the supplemental index on the basis of duplicate content. It also creates weak results in your overall Google footprint. This is bad when the fresh updates wipe out the really high-value brand enhancing results you would like to see in the ‘top ten’ for your keyword targets. Noise is bad – outposts tempt noise creation!

A benefit of outposting is the ability to hook up a new presence, try it out, generally see if anyone there hooks up with you – and with very limited investment. That is positive if you are really lucky. In my opinion it is much more likely that the untargeted nature of updates and your lack of presence (and tailored presence) will be ‘doomed’. You also need to manage replies and profiles across outposts and this can be a time thief. Think, think and think again about how much time you are expending and if this is actually producing the goods. As I have mentioned, effort can be counterproductive.

There are ways to run outposts successfully; here are some of my do’s and don’ts:

1.    Don’t use more than 3 speculative outposts at any one time. Speculative I describe as ‘suck it and see’, i.e. a new site you are trying out to see what interest you can hook up
2.    Don’t broadcast exactly the same updates to multiple outposts. This just creates duplicate content and can hurt your overall SEO strategy on a primary presence
3.    Don’t bombard outposts with untargeted updates. This is a waste of time. The chances of you establishing a sizable, interested audience with this technique is extremely low
4.    Do use aggregators to push broadcast messages to outposts for specific updates. This is a great technique in certain circumstances. I would aim for 5 to 10% of updates being in this classification
5.    Don’t expect an outpost to deliver unless you are actively involved in that community and site. In my experience this just doesn’t work. Work on the rule that ‘less is more’. You may need to ‘junk’ some of the width of your outposting strategy, but the benefit is more depth and optimisation on sites that are really making a difference
6.    Do use outposts for reaching new audiences. Hooking up with the same people on 20 sites however and pushing the same updates to the same 20. Well, that’s a waste of time that produces poor return on investment. You can do a lot more with your time for better payoff, so resist the temptation at all cost. Make sure to focus on quality of search results and not just volume
7.    An outpost should be developed into a core presence or ‘ditched’. If you are ‘ditching’ you should try and ‘migrate’ content and contacts. I would give an outpost 3 to 6 months as an evaluation period. It depends on how active you intend to be but I would consider 6 months to be quite ‘generous’

If you’re a Social Media junkie – and I admit to being one, you need a little restraint. Joining everything is great fun in terms of evaluating new offerings. It does not of course deliver new contacts, business (or whatever you are looking for) without serious work. Keep outposting as part of your ‘speculative’ strategy. Do not however expect it to turn results through mechanical repetition. Keep the volume manageable, get involved ‘in person’ (not at the end of an aggregator), watch out for duplicate content penalties and don’t get seduced by search result volume. Quality is the key factor and don’t end up just creating ‘quality diluting’ noise.