If you’re like many people, you have a lot of videos, pictures, and documents that you would like to share with others. Finding a convenient, cost-effective way to do this is no small feat, especially if you are a business owner trying to share information with your employees. Building a traditional intranet or file library to store information takes technological skill, time, and money. But, there’s an easier, cost-effective way to solve your company’s intranet problem- Posterous.com.
Posterous is a secure, free site that was designed to make blogging easy, letting users post from the web, email, or mobile devices. Individual ‘spaces’ can be customized in a variety of ways to suit your design and application needs. Now you may think that it’s odd for me to suggest using a blogging site as an intranet, but Posterous’ unique features and flexibility make it a great repository for your company’s documents and media.
You’re in Control of Privacy
On Posterous, you choose the level of privacy that your site has. Your spaces can be public or private, and you are able to select the individual users/email addresses that are able to view a private space. This allows you to ensure that documents and media are only being viewed by those viewers who should be viewing it. You are also able to select what roles users have, which determines whether they are just able to view the site or if they are also allowed to submit items to the space. This gives you control over who is adding and removing information from your intranet.
You Can Create as Many Spaces as You Need
The original page that you create is designated as the ‘primary’ page. Once this is established, you can create as many secondary spaces as you want. While the secondary spaces are their own unique pages and can have their own settings, they are still tied into the primary page. This is a great feature for companies to take advantage of. You can create spaces for individual employees to deposit material, or, if you have a large company or one with a lot of branches, you can create a space for each branch or department. The primary page can then serve as the repository for documents affecting all employees and the company as a whole, and information affecting only a few departments and branches can be distributed to those pages alone. This gives you control over who sees content and gives users a customized experience.
Spaces Can Be Customized to Fit Your Needs
Once you’ve created the primary and secondary spaces that you need, you can customize each space to fit your needs. Each space has a main page, where all of the information submitted from a mobile device or through email automatically goes. However, you can also create subpages in a space, which can be accessed from a menu on the main page. These pages allow you to divide up your content however you wish. The only downside is that someone will have to monitor the content and move items submitted by phone or email from the main page to the correct subpage. This can be done quickly and it is a small price to pay for all of the other great features you can take advantage of.
Searching
Posterous has a search feature built into every space and automatically catalogs information as it is added. This makes it quick and easy for you or your employees to find the documents you need when you need them.
Convenience
Posterous is extremely convenient to use. Information can be added to spaces via the web, email, or mobile apps, so users can add content from anywhere. The site also provides email summaries to users, letting them know when documents or media have been added to a space. This means that people don’t have to constantly log into the space to see if anything has been updated and that important documents will not be overlooked. Users can also select how often they want to be notified (once a day, whenever something is added, etc), so they don’t feel overwhelmed if your company adds new content frequently.
There are some instances in which Posterous might not be appropriate – if your files require a high level of security protection/encryption or if you have an extraordinary amount of content that you need to distribute to others. But, if you have a manageable amount of content and are comfortable using a SSL protected website, then Posterous can be a great alternative to having a custom intranet built for your company. It is free, easy to set-up and use, and provides you with a variety of ways to divide and distribute your content.
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