In our 25 Nearly
Free Ways to Market your Online Business, we discussed using Squidoo to increase traffic to your site.
You may be asking yourself, “What exactly is Squidoo?”
For internet
entrepreneurs and bloggers, Squidoo.com is an excellent tool that you can
utilize to promote your website, your business and yourself. Created by
marketing genius Seth Godin, Squidoo is a
social media website that allows its members to create informational pages or
“lenses” on topics that they are interested in or knowledgeable about. It’s free
to use and members can create one (or as many as they want) on any topic of
their choosing.
Squidoo also
allows its members to receive royalties on the lenses they create or donate
them to charity. Currently, there are lenses covering everything from “Travel”
to “Politics” and many more topics in between. The process of creating a lens
is very simple and there are plenty of add-ons or modules that can be used to
enhance a lens such as discussion questions, polls, favorite link lists, YouTube
videos, quotes, lists of products from Amazon that relate to your topic,
Wikipedia articles and countdown clocks, to name a few.
How Can Squidoo Help You to Market Your Online Business?
If you have an
online business, you can use your Squidoo
lens to showcase your core competency that relates to your business. For
example if you’re a fitness equipment site, create a lens on how to lose
weight without joining a gym. We created a lens on resources for entrepreneurs.
What kind of lens can you create that will showcase your expertise? If readers
find your lens valuable enough, it in return will drive traffic to your site.
How Can I Market My Squidoo Lens?
The more popular your Squidoo lens is among members and readers, the more your
website will benefit from increased
awareness and traffic. The following is a list of 10 tips to drive more viewers
to your Squidoo lenses:
1.
Visit Squidoo lenses that are similar
to your own in content and provide your comments. Lens authors and readers that are
intrigued by your comments will go to your profile and view your lenses and the
websites that you link to.
2.
When you create a new lens, or update
a lens significantly, send an update email to your friends/mailing list and
your fans (people who tagged your page as a favorite). This will create a steady flow of
traffic to your lens.
3.
Take advantage of the social media
aspect of Squidoo. Join
groups that interest you or that contain lenses similar to yours in topic to
gain more visibility and network with other experts in your industry or area of
expertise.
4.
Add links in your lens to other
lenses that are popular or similar to your own. Send an email to other lens authors
asking their permission to link to them. Most of the time these authors will
link you back to you.
5.
Update your lens often to increase
your rank. When
members search for your topic on Squidoo, your lens will be in the top results
displayed if you have a higher lens rank. Even a slight change to your lens,
such as editing one paragraph or republishing your lens, is counted as an
update.
6.
Use social bookmarking tools on your
lens. Visit www.addthis.com for a free button that you can add
onto your lens that will allow readers to bookmark your lens through sites such
as Digg and Technorati.
7.
If you have multiple lenses, link
your lenses to each other. This is especially effective if
the topics are very similar (your lenses are automatically linked via your
lensmaster profile page, but you can make the connections more explicit in the
lenses themselves). Also, you can link to your lenses from other pages you
might have, like ezine pages or blogs.
8.
Actively rate lenses that you think
are superior. Add a
text module near the top of your lens and make a request to readers to rate
your lens as well – the higher your lens is rated, the higher your lens rank.
9.
Create a new lens whenever you post a
new blog entry. Use
your new blog entries to create new lenses. As a Squidoo member, it is in your
benefit to create a large number of lenses. You may turn into a Giant Squid
(subject to review by Seth Godin and Megan –editors of Squidoo), you’ll get much
more visibility, increased page ranks and more credibility on the content of
your lenses.
10.
Start an argument or debate on your
lens. This is a
great way to ensure that readers will return to your lens. Simply add on the
debate module that Squidoo provides and be sure to include a debate-worthy
topic of discussion.
We hope these tips are helpful for those entrepreneurs looking to use
your Squidoo pages to market your website or business.
For more social media ideas or straetgies, check out “Meatball Sundae” and “Tribes” by Seth Godin.
Timely advice. For those of use looking for all the ways to drive traffic and create mind-share, this post & Squidoo seem viable opportunities to know and do more.
Excellent coverage, kudos.
Posted by: Christopher Drinkut | February 24, 2009 at 11:49 AM
A great blog with many tips and information for the future volunteer that will travel abroad. Cheap tickets, how to travel, when to go, the pro and cons of volunteering, and much more. http://blog.abroaderview.org
Posted by: Volunteer2009 | January 19, 2009 at 11:28 PM
Success doesn't happen overnight. Anyone who says they make a lot of money off of one squidoo lens is simply lying.
Posted by: colorful squid | October 31, 2008 at 01:29 AM