You must use a scm url format:
scm:<scm_provider><delimiter><provider_specific_part>
Svn example: scm:svn:https://svn.apache.org/repos/infra/websites/production/maventest/content/plugins/maven-scm-publish-plugin/
And configure is as it:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-publish-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0-beta-2</version>
<configuration>
<pubScmUrl>scmUrl</pubScmUrl>
</configuration>
</plugin>
NOTE: with the svn if the remote url doesn't exist it will be created.
To use git branch (by example: github gh-pages)
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-publish-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0-beta-2</version>
<configuration>
<scmBranch>gh-pages</scmBranch>
<pubScmUrl>scm:git:git@github.com:olamy/tomcat-foo-artifact.git</pubScmUrl>
</configuration>
</plugin>
By default, a complete checkout is done, you can configure the plugin to try update rather than a full checkout/clone
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-publish-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0-beta-2</version>
<configuration>
<tryUpdate>true</tryUpdate>
</configuration>
</plugin>
By defaut, the scm content is checkout/clone to ${project.build.directory}/scmpublish-checkout, so when running mvn clean all the content is deleted. You can configure a path to your machine to avoid full checkout. A recommended way is to use a property with a default as it your colleague will be able to override in their settings.
<properties>
...
<!-- override in your settings -->
<siteMainDirectory>${user.home}</siteMainDirectory>
<scmPubCheckoutDirectory>\${siteMainDirectory}/my-site-content-scm</scmPubCheckoutDirectory>
...
</properties>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-publish-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0-beta-2</version>
<configuration>
<checkoutDirectory>${scmPubCheckoutDirectory}</checkoutDirectory>
<tryUpdate>true</tryUpdate>
</configuration>
</plugin>
You can use svnjava rather than svn cli if you use a machine without svn cli.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-publish-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0-beta-2</version>
<configuration>
<providerImplementations>
<svn>javasvn</svn>
</providerImplementations>
</configuration>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.google.code.maven-scm-provider-svnjava</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-provider-svnjava</artifactId>
<version>2.0.5</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.tmatesoft.svnkit</groupId>
<artifactId>svnkit</artifactId>
<version>1.7.5-v1</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>