Getting Social on Squidoo and What It Can Do For You

There are a lot of reasons to be social on Squidoo. By being social, I mean doing such things as visiting other people's lenses, joining fan clubs, leaving comments on lenses and on lensmaster pages, and participating on the SquidU forum. If you aren't doing those things, here's why you should.

Participation on Squidoo unlocks privileges. Leaving comments or voting in polls on lenses will help you earn points. The more points you earn, the higher your level will climb and the more privileges you will unlock. For instance, when you first open an account on Squidoo you do not have access to certain templates and even certain modules within Squidoo. As you earn points from making lenses, leaving comments,"liking" lenses, participating in polls on other people's lenses, etc., those templates, modules, and a number of other privileges become available.

Participation on the SquidU forum leads to more traffic for your lenses, which leads to higher lensrank and more visibility for your lenses. As you become active in conversations on the forum and people get to know you, they're going to want to check out your lenses. The more noticeable your presence, the more likely it becomes that people will find your lenses, join your fan club, leave comments, participate in your polls and leave comments in your guestbooks, and rate your lenses. That extra traffic and subsequent interaction with your lenses results in better lensrank.

As your lensrank improves as a result of more traffic from people ON Squidoo, search engines begin to notice the attention to your lenses. This ultimately results in greater respect for your lenses by the search engines, leading to higher visibility of your lenses in search results and, thus, more traffic from people OFF Squidoo. Getting traffic from the search engines, of course, is your ultimate goal.

Oh, and did I mention that social interaction is tracked on Squidoo and is part of lensrank calculation? That's a fact.

Can you see how spending even 10 minutes a day interacting with other lensmasters and their lenses is a good investment of your time? Your lenses benefit in so many ways. Besides, you'll meet some of the smartest and friendliest people in the world on Squidoo. It's true!

How about you. Are you social on Squidoo?

Do You Read Beyond the Guestbook?

The guestbook module is a fundamental part of most Squidoo lenses. Offering your visitors a place to leave their thoughts and even ask questions is important and that particular module is the simplest way to allow readers an opportunity to do those things.

Most lensmasters place their guestbook towards the bottom of the page, which is a sensible approach since usually the question asked in the module is along the lines of, "What did you think of my lens?" While that isn't necessarily a clever title, it's pretty clear (at least to other lensmasters) and gets results.

But what comes after the guestbook? When you make a lens, do you follow the guestbook with more content? A sales module of some sort? Or maybe your bio with a link to your other lenses? For the most part I add an "About Me" module and then a link back to the top of the page after the guestbook on my lenses. Some lensmasters add a lot more.

It used to be that after submitting a comment, the lens page would "jump" to below the guestbook which served as a reminder (at least to me) to keep scrolling. But the guestbook works differently now and that "jump" doesn't happen anymore, so now it's up to me to remember to scroll on down to see what's there. I'm sorry to say that sometimes I simply forget and, instead, do a quick Ctrl+home to get back to the top of the page to leave a thumbs up or bookmark the page. (Never mind that you can do those things now at the bottom of the lens; old habits die hard and I've been a lensmaster for a long time in squid years.) So, sometimes I simply forget to look below the guestbook and I'm sure that sometimes I miss some good content.

I'm trying to change my habits, but I'm curious what other people do - so I thought I'd ask. After you sign a lens's guestbook, do you scroll on down to look for more content? Do you rate the lens at the bottom or do you go back to the top of the page? When you make a lens, what do you include below the guestbook? If you have a minute, I'd love if you'd leave your answer in a comment below because inquiring minds want to know - do you read below the guestbook?


P.S. If you have no idea what I'm talking about in this post, it's easy to find out by visiting Squidoo, checking out a few lenses - and signing a few guestbooks!

Lensmasters Make Me Smile

I really love lensmasters on Squidoo. I love them for a lot of reasons, but today I love them for the very kind comments they leave on my lenses.

Maybe I'm just insecure, but it certainly does make me feel good when people say they enjoy my work. I'm talking about really sincere comments, and I've had a lot of those lately.

Thank you, each of you, for making me smile. I hope my comments on your lenses make you smile, too.

(picture courtesy BL1961 through creative commons)