Squidoo Lens Promotion Tactics

Thank you all for being patient. I know you have probably been on the corner of your seat, checking every other hour on the hour to see if I had posted again yet. ;)

Just like I promised before my life got absurdly crazy with finals, today's topic will cover promotion tactics of your Squidoo lens. First we will review the promotional tips suggested by Squidoo, and then we will discuss some other more unique methods.

Squidoo-Suggested Techniques
On the right hand column of your Squidoo Dashboard is a module entitled "6 Steps To More Traffic!" Here is a list of what it suggests:

1. Make a lens worth talking about.
   
2. Send it to 5 friends.
   
3. Add it to del.icio.us.
   
4. Blog it, or ask someone else to.
   
5. Favorite it on StumbleUpon.
   
6. Play with your tags.
   
7. Make something worth talking about. (It's worth saying twice).
   

This list provides the basic framework of things you should be doing on a regular basis to promote your content. If you have worked hard to make a lens worth sharing, all of these steps will be much easier!


My Best Promotion Techniques
I am going to list off for you here some general guidelines that I have used that have yielded some fairly good results. Some of these I have seen hinted at on other sites, but many I learned the hard way- by experience. That being said, I admit that I have not had the time to follow all of my own advice here, but I have seen extensive results when I have followed these guidelines. So why I'm giving these away for free? I don't know, I guess I'm just hoping that when you make the big bucks and can afford to live the good life off of your Squidoo lenses that you will remember this little blogster and the tips she gave and send me a check to help me cover tuition! But seriously, these are all tips I wish someone would have told me when I first started at Squdidoo, so I hope they help you achieve the highest lensrank your lens deserves!

1. Be the first one to bookmark it on social bookmarking sites- it makes it easier for others to do the same after you because they don't have to fill out the initial description forms.
   
2. Utilize the Social in Social Bookmarking: Instead of just opening an account on one of these sites only to bookmark your lenses, websites, and other web projects, be sure to set aside a little time on the socializing part of social bookmarking. Check out someone's profile and leave a note commenting on one of their links. This will be especially appreciated if it's a link to their lens, website, or web project! I should warn you, though, that this tactic can be overused and abused in a way that will render it essentially ineffective. Do this only occasionally- no more than two or three comments a day, and make sure that they are genuine in nature (i.e. don't just copy and paste the same short, vague message over and over). In time, you'll have more connections on these sites that will be watching what you Digg or Stumble or whatever. Use this appropriately and you might be able to finally gain yourself some momentum in the social bookmarking sphere.
   
3. Add lots of tags. This will allow your lens to be more easily found not only in Squidoo's search engine, but also by Google, Yahoo, etc. giving you better traffic results for your hard work.
   
4. Harness the power of groups. Signing your lens up for a group is like signing it up to get traffic. You are almost always guaranteed to get at least the groupmaster to your lens and they will usually leave a nice comment and a rating. Note: Ratings can greatly affect your lensrank!
   
5. Make your own group. I tried this about a month ago. I created a group called Pen Pals for writers who use Squidoo to promote their writing. For the longest time, I was the only member, then one lensmaster added a lens, then another. It's still a small group, but it's growing consistently and, as groupmaster, every single member recognizes my pen name and has a higher probability of visiting my sites. I also have the ability to "promote" each of their lenses and drop them a line of congratulations. This will create a goodwill attitude between me and the members I choose to promote, leading to more traffic, more ratings, more comments, etc., all of which increase lensrank!
   
6. Squidcast when you create the lens. If you already have fans, they will get the message that you have established a new lens and they might want to check it out. Introduce them to it and give them the chance to say hello properly with a visit and possibly a rating and comment.
   
7. Squidcast again whenever you update or change things around on your lens, or just to send out a special message about your topic. For example, the people subscribed to my Doris Day Lens received a reminder via squidcast on April 3rd about Doris' 84th birthday. This random piece of information may encourage people to re-visit your lens and pay tribute to your topic of interest.
   
8. Interact in the Squidoo community. Visit lenses, comment, become a fan, etc. As you send traffic to other lensmasters, they will return the favor and your lensrank will climb. Bonus: each time you comment, it adds a "linkback" to your profile which lists all of the lenses you have created. Everyone who visits that site often will see your comment and have a way to navigate to your lenses.
   
9. Interact in other online communities. When I joined Zazzle and set up my gallery, I included a link to my "online portfolio" (which is essentially my Squidoo lensography combined with a list of links to my Associated Content Articles). Every time I leave a comment or become a fan of another product designer at Zazzle, they have a link to my gallery, which encourages them to check me out at Squidoo. Incorporating your different spheres of online identity like this will make you a more "real" web presence and afford you more consistent traffic from people who like your voice or your unique view on the world and decide to keep up with you in several spheres. They will be able to see your view on various topics, and learn with you as you grow and develop as a lensmaster, writer, designer, artist, etc.
   
10. Publish more lenses. A little while back, things got kinda crazy for me and I was not actively maintaining current lenses or creating new ones. Updating my old ones boosted my lensrank a little, but publishing new ones boosted it significantly. So if you want to maintain a fairly high lensrank, publish quality lenses, deserving of repeat traffic, often. Several of my lesser ranked lenses had fallen into the 100,000 lensrank area. Publishing actively again increased all of my lenses rank so that my lowest one was less than 50,000! I would say that is a HUGE improvement, wouldn't you?!
    

If you want more tips, here's a shameless plug for my article on Effective Ways to Promote Your Squidoo Lens.