I’ve learned my lesson. I created a lens about Benjamin Franklin’s amazing books, but nobody visited. Let’s face it - Benjamin Franklin is yesterday’s news, and not everyone is into rehashing history.
The title I gave my lens, Books and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, sounded like we’d be spending an hour in a dusty old library trying to decipher handwriting barely legible by today’s standards. What could old Ben tell us that we’d want to know about, anyhow? Sure he had some cool aphorisms, but he wasn’t like King Solomon by any standards. Or was he?
I took a good long look at the reasons why my lens wasn’t attracting any attention. I was disappointed because I read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography last year and was astounded and delighted with the personality, attitudes and accomplishments of the man I found there. I wanted to tell more people what a cool guy he was. I wanted people to read his autobiography and find out for themselves what this man who helped found our country was really like.
So I thought about what in the book had delighted me most… and realized it was that he’d embraced a vegetarian diet at an early age. So the new title of my lens is Benjamin Franklin Was A Vegetarian. Now the lens is getting hits… maybe because people don’t believe it could be true. I dispel that notion by quoting him regarding his vegetarianism.
Now I’m looking at a few of my other lenses that are bombing. I’ve got two I’m concerned about right now. I changed the one called Tents to Ten Ways To Use A Tent, but it still isn’t getting hits - even though I came up with some really cool ideas for using tents. I even impressed my significant other, Bob, and that takes talent.
The other lens that is doing even worse (current rating: 75,590!!!) is Expert Blogging. I’m wondering what I can do to jazz up that title so people will click on it. Maybe the topic of expert blogging is just so overdone on the internet these days that it will never have the chance to be seen in the search engines. And possibly Squidoo lensmasters pass it by because they aren’t bloggers per se - for the most part they are lensmasters only.
Perhaps Benjamin Franklin gave us the principle on which we should rely when choosing our lens names: “If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.”
July 18th, 2008 at 5:35 am
Thank you, Linda. as usual you gave me something to think about. I really did not realize I could change title of my lenses. Will look at that in my low ranking ones today. Thank you!
July 18th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I have manipulated the titles of my lenses a couple of times. I think I was trying, at first, too much to have catchy titles and did not realize that you need to have those important tag words in there (especially your primary tag) and that the closer the tag word is to the beginning of the title, the better.
Good luck with changing your titles!
Brenda
July 19th, 2008 at 12:32 am
You’re right - “Benjamin Franklin Was A Vegetarian” does sound more punchy!
July 19th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Is 75,590 your lowest lens? That’s incredible! I’ve got plenty of lenses with no traffic
but I hesitate to change the title because my title says exactly what the lens is about. They are more informational lenses so it seems appropriate… but I get no traffic.
July 19th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Actually, it has slipped since I wrote that - now it is at 83,635. And yes, that’s my lowest. I have several lenses just above it in the list with low scores. They get a little bit of traffic but apparently it comes from outside of Squidoo because the lenses have never been rated.