23squidoo

I’m probably not the first to make this connection, but for once it was something that I actually concluded on my own, as opposed to a nifty idea I got from somebody else’s lens, so I think it’s worth blogging about here.

Building a good lens is a lot like crafting a magazine article where you have control over how the piece looks in print.

I bought a couple of magazines the other day, both of which were new to me, and as I looked them over I started noticing elements that are identical to some of the html tricks we use in Squidoo – using photos and colored text boxes with larger font highlights or quotes to break up the page was the first one that jumped out at me.  Then, once the idea took hold in my brain, I started noticing more similarities like breaking up large blocks of text, and ending on a high note that causes the reader to want to move down to the next element, and even including links to the web where people can buy products to help with the subject of the article, and learn more about the author.

The more I thought about this, the more I got to thinking of Squidoo as the world’s largest magazine, and lensography took on a whole new meaning for me … now I think of a lensography as being a table of contents for a personalized magazine. We tend to think of lensographies as ways to either collate our own work or to highlight the works of others, but what if we “played editor” and crafted our own “online magazine” on a topic and used lenses and outbound links as the table of contents?

The best part of this, for me, is that unlike a print magazine where once it goes to print that’s all she wrote, a Squidoo Magazine can be static OR dynamic!

Whether you believe or disbelieve, you will probably laugh at something on this page!

Bigfoot – Sasquatch – Humor – Video Showcase

Giant Squid OpenMike on Blog Talk Radio

This will be an ongoing monthly “fireside chat” among Squidoo lensmasters, although anyone interested in Squidoo and lensmaking is invited to give a listen – FREE!

First Monday of every month, 4:00 Eastern time (3:00 pm Central, 1:00 pm Pacific).  Check the website for more details.  You can listen to blogtalkradio online, and if it’s working properly, there’s usually a chatroom you can also participate in.  Invite your friends and family – the more, the merrier!

Giant Squid OpenMike on Blog Talk Radio

The June 30th deadline has come and gone – now many hopefuls for Giant Squid and Giant Squid 100 Club are waiting with (dare I say this?) baited breath (oh, gosh, I did!).  Plus, we have another set of Fresh Squid Contest winners, too. 

Cheers!

I’ve been so caught up in trying to make it to Giant100 by the end of June deadline, I haven’t socialized as much on Twitter and in the Squidoo community as I would like to.  However, a couple of things have caught my eye and I would like to share them with you.

Following a link on Twitter (sorry, I don’t remember now who Tweeted it, or I’d pass that credit on, too) I found this blog post by Susan52 about Kim Giancaterino and her recently published 250th lens: I Squidoo, Do You?: A Special Shining Star on Squidoo

Susan’s blog post referenced Kim’s 250th lens, entitled: A Day of 100 Squid Angel Blessings so I naturally had to satisfy my curiosity.

What I realized very quickly as I scanned the page, is that I had in front of me a virtual treasure chest of Squid-education if I would only take the time to recognize, read, and reap the rewards. Think about this for a moment – 100 lenses listed in one place, all of which were deemed “bless worthy” by an experienced Squid Angel. How much can I learn if I take the time to visit each lens and read it twice, once for content, and then for construction? I’m willing to bet it’s going to make a better lensmaster out of me.

In other news, I got my daily digest from Squidlog last night, and was startled to see MY name in the digest. Nothing like seeing your own name to fire up the curiosity big time, so I clicked through and found that Mimi (aka Growear) had written about me. You could have knocked me over with a feather right then. Probably still could today – I’m still stunned (in a good way). I’d love it if you’d click here and read it: CCGAL | SquidLog Mimi is one of the first RocketMoms to graduate, by the way. This is a cool tribute lens to her work as a RocketMom: GrowWear: RocketMoms Graduate Congratulations Mimi!

On another personal note, I just published lens #94 in my quest to reach Giant100.  I actually think I might make it if I can keep up the pace without lowering my standards.  If I haven’t lost count, that makes 30 lenses since the May Challenge began and I joined Joan’s Jolly Judicious Jetsetters.  This is the first time since I started that I’ve felt I might reach the finish line.  Feels really GOOD.

Along the way I’ve set up a Twitter account specifically for Squidoo:  SquidCCGAL  I’m only following Lensmasters with this account; if you’re a lensmaster and follow me, I’ll follow you back within a couple of days – I’m doing everything by hand with this account so I don’t get into any more Twitter Trouble.

That’s it for today – until next time, take care and may God Bless You with Abundance  and Joy.

eBay.  Who doesn’t know about eBay? Seems I’ve been seeing a lot of pitches for eBay membership sites, and eBay books, often eBooks and video sets, that promise to teach you how to make a fortune on eBay.  Well, I think they, for the most part, are making their money selling “How To Make Money on eBay” eBooks rather than selling real stuff.  I do, however know a couple of people in my real life (and I say real life meaning I knew them in person before they got started on eBay, and they aren’t just online people I’ve never met) who are making enough on eBay to continue to spend time at it over the years.

• 1) Saving $3 on every 5 auctions can add up over time.
• 2) The links from the auctions could drive traffic to the lens
• 3) links to the lens could drive traffic to my auctions
• 4) regular updates as the auctions come and go could increase lensrank
• 5) It’s pretty easy, overall
• 6) If somebody clicks through the lens to buy, there’s a potential eBay commission for the lens.

You can take a look at my original auctions lens here:  Auctions By Eurythmia

I’ve been doing some experiments using Super List Explode and List Wonder Extreme to draw traffic to some of my under-performing lenses. While I haven’t shot to the top of the lens ranks, I have seen an increase in traffic to the target lenses using these two programs, where it has been a total failure with Million EZ Hits Program and nothing to report yet with Traffic Sword.

So when I saw that MaryAnne, the owner/operator of SLE and LWE, announced a new project today – April 2, 2009 – that leverages the power of 4 other lists, I didn’t hesitate – I just joined licketysplit, at the free member level. I was number #23 when I joined, and less than 2 hrs later, the membership is already up to 153. This has the potential of having over 85K people in it by the end of the week.

To be a free member you have to log in to the site and open 10 e-mails to get the points. That’s a no-brainer, what is that, 10 minutes max? OK, the SLE program can suck up your time because there’s a lot you can do in there – visit member pages, write blurbs they call blogs, email other members in house and chat in the chat room while you surf for your daily points. LWE has a game where you pick one of 3 ads to open for points, but no chat. This latest offering leverages the power of the other 2, plus another that’s outside of her group, so I think this one may be the most powerful of all. Anyway, it’s free and I’ve enjoyed it almost as much as Squidoo.

Check it out.

So you’ve got your lens all pretty and fresh, your tags are in place, and it’s being featured but there just aren’t as many visits as you’d like.  Sound familiar?  Well, don’t feel like the lone stranger because every lensmaster and webmaster on the internet faces that same frustrating fact:  It’s a lot easier to build pages than it is to get people to come and read them.

So what do we do?

Well, I’m not about to tell you that I know everything about getting eyeballs to my lenses, but I will tell you that Social Networking helps. 

I use Twitter a great deal.  It’s a fast & easy way to interact with others who share my interests.  If you haven’t checked out Twitter,  here’s what it looks like:

I use PowerTwitter which is a plug in for the FireFox Browser, so this screen shot contains more than you get with the regular web interface.  The @Mentions button on the right, and the Post Photo & Shorten Link buttons are PowerTwitter enhancements.  Also the little RT to the right of each tweet is an enhancement.

Did you know that EVERYBODY gets a TwitWall Free? For when 140 characters just isn’t enough – you can write your tweet or upload your file or link, and the wall will keep it there for you until you delete it.  It’s also useful for keeping things you want to be able to retweet easily – there’s a retweet button at the bottom of each entry, so if  you post something useful, interesting or funny, others can retweet it.  Here’s MY TweetWall – I use it mostly for music and photos:  Janelle’s TwitWall

You can set up your Squidoo account to work with Twitter, but be forewarned that it’s really boring for people to see lots of “I’ve updated my Squidoo Lens” followed by a link.  I have found that saying something intriguing or funny with the link brings more traffic than the generic “I’ve Updated” blurb.  If Squidoo is your primary point of contact on the web, you can list your profile page, or perhaps your lensography in your Twitter profile.  That way when people click on your image, they have the chance to go find out more about you to decide if they are interested.  Often people will hop a few of your lenses to see what you are most passionate about.

It’s also a lot of fun to get onto Twitter and engage in conversations with other lensmasters, and tweet each other’s lenses, or retweet them.  Social proof being what it is, urls that are retweeted tend to draw more clicks than the original tweets – and this is even more pronounced when a popular Social Media personality retweets your url.  This is another reason not to rely on the “I’ve updated” blurb – no popular Social Media personality is going to bore his or her audience with a mundane tweet like that.  Make the retweeting potential as easy as possible by being intriguing, funny, or controversial to grab attention and provide value to others, and your lens url could be seen by a LOT more eyeballs.

There are now over 2000 pieces of code that interact with the Twitter API – but you don’t need all 2000 of them.  In fact, it’s pretty easy to get into information overload once you get out there and start searching for Twitter applications.  My advice is don’t do it.  Focus on building your lenses, and pick a few tools that you like and use them.

Here are a few that I use.  This is what Twitter Search looks like.

You can use it to search on hashtag conversations (like #squidoo) to find tweets and tweeples, or you can use it to search on any keyword to see if people are talking about it.

Twitter Search

Twitter Karma log in screen looks like this:

This is a useful application if you’re trying to follow everybody who follows you or unfollow people who are not following you.  Log in with your Twitter name and password, then hit the WHACK button.  There are drop down menus to help you sort and categorize your Tweeps (people you are connected to via Twitter) and there’s a bulk button if you want to do a whole bunch really fast. 

Your Twitter Karma

This one is fun, although I think it only rates people who have logged in – I doubt it automatically searches Twitter and finds everybody, but I could be wrong.  This Twitter score is also rounded up and displayed on your Twit Wall.  It’s a form of “social proof” I suppose – unconsciously it creates a desire to get that magic 100 … leftover training from when we were in school, no doubt. Anyway, it’s fun so enjoy it.

Twitter Grader | Get Your Twitter Ranking

Well, those Twitterific Toys should get you going.  Have fun with them!  If you’re new to Twitter, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/CCGAL and send me an @ msg like this:  @CCGAL and I will shout howdy and follow you back when I see it.  Happy Lens Promoting!

This is near and dear to my heart, because it’s an example of creative thinking and finding one’s niche. 

This is so cool, I can’t imagine it not going viral.  Shoot, I don’t want to spoil the surprise by telling you too much about it, so just go take a look at this lens by Giant Squid vbright105 and be sure to click through to the website.  Both the lens and the website are spooky-cool FUN!

Haunt my house please

So if you read Guy’s Blog Post (link below) you’ll get some valuable info on how to grow your following on Twitter, but if you step back and analyze HOW he has pulled this post together you’ll learn even more.  Don’t take my word for it – go read, then step back and analyze what he’s done here.  I learned more from seeing how cleverly he crafted this than I learned from the GREAT info he delivered, but then, I’m always reading between the lines. (Hey, that would make a great blog title, LOL)

How to Change the World: Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter

I know this is about Twitter and not Squidoo, but in order to promote our Squidoo lenses effectively, we really need to understand the tools of social media, and Twitter is one of the 4 most powerful I’ve observed so far.  So learn from Guy, and use what you learn to expose more eyes to your pages.  Hint: when you get to the part about the SMOREs … and the @-ing them … @ them with a lens link.  You never know how many of the SMORE’s followers will be watching.  If you REALLY want to know how effective this is, use a trackable URL.  Don’t know what that is?  Here’s a link to a blog post that explains it WAY better than I can: 

Twit tips – how to track twitter clicks

OK, now I’m off to implement some of the cool things I’ve learned today.  One last thing – don’t spend the whole day in front of your computer.  I know we’re all in a hurry to get to our next point of call, but remember that this is a journey and it’s good to enjoy the cruise.  Bon Voyage!