Free Promotion For Your Squidoo Lenses

Got a niche?  Squidoo now has a program where lensmasters with true passions for their niche are chosen to serve as "Contributors."  The job of these Contributors is to promote lenses, as well as recruit new lensmasters, within their specialty area.  The task is open-ended to allow each individual to use his or her favorite promotional techniques to further the cause of his or her niche topic.

Want to make a new lens on your favorite topic and get some free promotion?  Want to join Squidoo and get involved in a community of like-minded individuals, lensmasters who love the same things you love?

Many of our Contributors are using Facebook for promotion.  If you want to see what some of them are doing, click to find a niche that you love and check out that Contributor's Facebook page.  Give them a shoutout.  Share with your friends.  Don't overlook the opportunity to get some free promotion for your niche lenses.

Feel that you could be a Contributor, too?  We'll be adding more positions soon so continue to build your own personal niche and, when the opportunity arises, perhaps you'll be chosen as head cheerleader for your favorite topic on Squidoo.  

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?

What's Blogging Among Squidoo Friends?

Collaborative or co-op blogs, those with multiple contributors, are becoming quite popular in the Squidoo community and for good reason. We're all busy, so having multiple authors to help keep a blog updated on a regular basis is a good thing.

Top-Rated Gifts for Christmas is one such collaborative blog, a new undertaking designed for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Each post features a well-reviewed item that would make a wonderful gift, and each links back to a lens featuring that same item. Our hope as lensmasters and bloggers is that the links on the blog will garner traffic to our lenses and, of course, lead to holiday sales.

Are you part of a collaborative blog? Let us know by leaving a comment with your blog link and any tips or advice about what you do to make your group's blog succeed. If you're not part of a group blog, why not gather a few of your trusted lensmaster friends and get one started? When you do, we'd love if you'd report back and let us know.

A collaborative blog just might be a good addition to your business plan. After all, a community that blogs together makes money together. Or at least we hope it works out that way!