Blast Off With RocketSquids

Heard of RocketMoms on Squidoo?  Then you know how successful lensmasters can be when they learn together and support each other.

Now, meet RocketSquids, the latest innovation by Squidoo, especially designed for new-ish lensmasters, those with at least a couple of lenses but fewer than 25.

If you fall into that Squid-demographic and want to learn from some of the best lensmasters on Squidoo how to do what they do, then join us!

Here's more information from MomWithAHook, one of the RocketSquids mentors.

What's New On Squidoo?

Hard to believe we're headed into the fourth week of the new year.  My year's been busy and seems to be flying by.  How about yours?

I've been spending a lot of my time hanging around on Squidoo, visiting lots of lenses and checking in regularly with SquidooHQ.  I especially appreciate the weekly SquidooHQ Friday Round Up, a great place to check in every week to make sure I haven't missed something new.  If you don't visit daily, at least check in on Fridays to keep up with all the great news, tips, and information that's been provided during the week. 

Full disclosure and not meant to be a shameless plug, I've also been doing some writing for SquidooHQ, so you might run across some of my articles, too, while you're there playing catch up.

So, what's new with you on Squidoo?  I'd love to know, so hope you'll take a moment out of your busy year to leave a comment!

Wordless Wednesday: LOTD

Looking Ahead: Goal-Setting for the New Year

Oh, my, another year has come and (almost) gone.  It's time to evaluate the goals you set this time last year and try again to come up with a new set of goals for 2012.

Actually, there's more to it than that.  While goal setting is important, reviewing progress and adjusting plans at various points throughout the year is even more important.

To be honest, I'm not very good at long-term goal setting.  "Life" changes things sometimes in the blink of an eye (I know that all too well), so I don't like to set myself up for failure right from the start.  Obviously I, too, need to not only set yearly goals and make plans, I need to concentrate on short-term goals and set aside time to adjust as necessary on a regular basis.

There are many goal-setting tools available and I'm sure I have at least two or three "how to set goals" e-books on my hard drive that I've purchased or downloaded for free with the greatest of intentions.  But I'll admit that I am easily overwhelmed when it comes to tackling the job of reading the books and putting plans behind the goals and action behind the plans.  So, this year what I intend to do (good intentions as usual, but I think this will work for me) is to simply write monthly goals in the front of a stenographer's notebook (the size suits me), record plans for the month, and then write a daily to-do list each night or early morning.  I've been doing the daily lists for the past few weeks and that method is working well for me.

Have you started planning and setting goals for 2012?  How do you do it?  I'd love if you'd share your methods and favorite resources here.  Perhaps the way you plan will ring true with someone who reads your comment, someone like me who struggles in this area.  So please, leave a comment below.  Your suggestions could really help someone have a truly productive new year!

A Delicious Lens Intro

Just had to share the intro on this yummy lens by new lensmaster theSEOmama. 

Go read it then tell me your mouth isn't watering and your stomach isn't frantically transmitting "Bake these NOW!" messages to your brain.  Or is it the other way around?  

Oh, who cares.  Just go read this delicious lens intro and mark it as a great example of how not to lose readers in the first 30 seconds of their visit to your lens.  Then, while the oven is preheating, compose a fabulous intro for your next new lens.

How Not to be Overly Commercial on Your Lenses: My Recommended Read of the Day

When you make lenses promoting a product or your business, you really need a balance of not too little, not too much, but just the right amount of commercial or promotional material.

Tom Maybrier explains this in more detail today in his SquidooHQ lensmaking tip, Creating Great Content for your Business or Product.  It's an excellent post that answers a lot of questions that you might have about how commercial is too commercial when you're making product review or business lenses.

Newbies on Squidoo often make the mistake of including too many bolded business links in their lenses and not enough original content.  Even veterans can fall into that bad practice. My recommended read of the day is a great explanation of how to avoid this and what to do instead to make your commercial lens turn out balanced just right.

After you've read it, I hope you'll leave Tom a comment then come back here and let me know what you learned.

Cyber Monday Shopping Recommendations

Just saw this post from Kimberly on SquidooHQ in which she mentions Cyber Monday.   That triggered an idea.

To help people who happen to land on my profile page find some good holiday shopping lenses, I edited my profile to feature links to a few of my popular product reviews.  These are lenses that don't necessarily show up on page one of the list of all my lenses.  They're pages that feature popular gift items that people might be looking for on  Cyber Monday and, really, from now until Christmas.

While in general I recommend a good, brief, personal bio - and that's all - on the profile page, this might be a time to make an exception.  We'll see how it works out.

What do you think?  Good idea?  Bad?  Let me know in a comment below.

Serve Your Readers Fresh Squidoo Lenses

The ad section of the Sunday paper this week is a whopper!  You probably still have Halloween candy left, but no doubt about it, it's Christmas shopping season.

So, how are your Christmas-related lenses?  Are they fresh? 

More and more, Google is looking for fresh content to feature in search results.  Truly, it doesn't take much time to update a product review lens or a Christmas menu lens or any other holiday lens, and it will be well worth the effort you take to do so when you're rewarded with both better lensrank and more traffic from the search engines.

I've brushed off this oldie, How Do I Keep My Lens Fresh?, to give you some suggestions for freshening up those holiday lenses.  Have other ideas to offer for how to update a holiday lens?  Feel free to talk about them in a comment below. 

Watch Out! Cainiac Loose on Squidoo!

It's no secret to people who know me that I'm a bit of a political junkie with a definite lean to the right. Politics is a topic I really enjoy debating on my Squidoo lenses.  One of those politically-oriented lenses even made Lens of the Day back during the 2008 election cycle.

Lately my political lenses have focused on one candidate, one I don't just write about but one I truly support. Last night, my husband and I were honored to get to hear him speak in person! My pictures didn't turn out worth a hoot, but thankfully I was able to grab this video from one of our local news station websites:



Did you see me in the crowd? Nah, I didn't either. But I know I was there. No apologies.  Just call me a Cainiac.

If you want to learn more about my current favorite candidate and why I've jumped on the Cain Train, you'll find information in my Herman Cain lenses, here.

Is there a political candidate that you support?  Have you made a lens about him or her, or about your pet political issue?   Feel free to drop a lens link in a comment below.

Another Month Bites The Dust

Can't believe that tomorrow is October already. I'm really not sure what happened to September except that it flew by faster than a colorful autumn leaf in a windstorm.

I hope your Halloween lenses are doing well. Have you noticed any difference in visits since the advent of the new Squidoo Happy Halloween magazine? If you have, I'd love to know.

The stores, of course, are full of Halloween things, but I expect to see some red and green crowding out the orange well before the month is over.  Have you started gearing up your lens list with new or updated goodies for Christmas/gift shoppers? Planning anything special to market to holiday shoppers this year?

I'd love if we could collect some marketing ideas here in the comments section. If you have a brilliant or even a basic idea for marketing holiday lenses on Squidoo, would you share it with us in a comment below? I'd appreciate it and I believe others would, too.  I'll be sharing a few of my own ideas in the coming days and weeks.

Thanks, and an early "Ho, ho, ho!" to you, too!

Housework Really Is Fun When It's the Lens of the Day

Housework really is fun, especially when my lens about it is selected Lens of the Day!

What a nice surprise this morning to wake up to lots and lots of comments to approve, a sure sign that something special is going on on Squidoo.  Today, my lens Housework - How to Make it Fast and Keep it Fun, is Lens of the Day.

I've had a couple other LOTD's, but the excitement never lessens and, in fact, today I'm feeling especially blessed by the honor.  What wonderful comments the lens has received already!

Thank you, Squidoo, and thanks lensmasters for visiting my Lens of the Day.  Here's wishing happy housekeeping for all of us!

Why I Appreciate Cows

It continues to amaze me how many people find my How to Make a Cow Costume page this time of year.  You see, this coming Friday is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A and people really want free food!  To get it, all they have to do is dress up like a cow.  To do that, they need instructions.

Not sure why I'm surprised about the traffic.  After all, the point of the page is to show people how to make or where to buy a cow costume.  And the spike in traffic every end of June/early July is certainly tied to Chick-Fil-A's annual event.  In other words, the lens is working as planned! 

Of course there's a spike in October, too, as people plan Halloween costumes.  But actually this is a fairly popular lens that gets traffic year-round.  I guess people have other, year-round reasons to dress up like a cow.  And I certainly appreciate that!

Do you have a lens that gets traffic spikes that surprise you?  Leave a link in your comment!

How to Generate a Spike in Your Squidoo Lens Traffic

Kimberly wrote at SquidooHQ today about Lens Ideas for July.  Good suggestions there to get you thinking outside the box a bit, but more importantly to get you thinking about niche topics/holidays that not everyone is writing about. 

There WILL be people searching for those topics when the day comes.  Know how I know?  Did you ever look at logos that Google displays on their main page?  Frequently they will display special logos drawn to commemorate a holiday or event.  A recent favorite was on June 9th, Les Paul's 96th birthday.  Take a look at the Les Paul logo - and strum the strings!

Now, take a look at this graph that shows the Google search trend for Les Paul:

See that huge spike?  That was June 9, 2011, the day Google displayed their special logo and millions of curious people googled "Les Paul" to find out more about him.

While I won't promise you a Les Paul spike in Squidoo traffic, I will promise you that people will be searching to learn about unique holidays and topics they hear about as they happen.  No reason in the world it shouldn't be your lens that they find when they do their search!

So, what niche holiday or topic are you going to write about in the coming month?  Have you had a lens spike in the past?  Tell us about it in a comment below.

Happy Flag Day, USA!

June 14th is Flag Day in the U.S.  Are you flying the American flag today?

Ever wonder why the American Flag is red, white, and blue?  Ah, I've got a lens for that!

How about you.  Do you make patriotic lenses?  If you do and you've always wanted a patriotic lens theme, be sure to vote for the 25th Squidoo lens theme!

After you do, feel free to post a link to your favorite patriotic lens right here in a comment.

How Do We Look On a Smart Phone?

I do try to keep up with science and technology, but I don't have a smart phone - yet.  For that reason, I can't check to see how this blog looks displayed in its mobile version.

There is a mobile version available now (I love you, Blogger) and I just updated the blog's settings so that if you view this blog on your phone, you'll see that version. 

Anyone want to check it out for me?  Go to www.isquidoodoyou.com on your phone and see what you see.  Then let me know how it looks, would you?  Thanks!

(One more reason that someday I will be able to justify having a smart phone!)