Lensmastery by Linda

I definitely qualify as a busy blogger and recently had an inspiration, to use a Squidoo lens to list all my blog posts for the year. I created LindaJM’s Blog Log – 2009 and accidentally published it tonight. I was going to wait until I’d included ALL my 2009 blog postings, but then hit the ‘publish’ link… so now it is available for anyone to look at even though I’m still working on adding links to blog articles.

I won’t bore you by telling you about all my blogs – I have too many – but you might get the picture from looking at my list. I still have a lot of blog postings to add to it. I’ll have to make a separate lens for 2010.

You’re welcome to use my idea. I think it is cool that even though I’ve got many blogs, all the article links are together on one page now, and people don’t have to surf to each of the blogs to find out what I’ve been working on this past year.

Did you know you can offer a subscription option for your lens visitors to receive your SquidCasts in email? Recently I wrote a lens to explain this: Offer Email Subscriptions to Your SquidCasts.

In my lens I give step-by-step directions for setting up these emails using a SquidCast feed from SquidUtils, and FeedBurner, a service that provides RSS feed services for bloggers, including email services.

This may sound complicated, but using my step-by-step guide, it is very easy!

You don’t need to worry that this is spamming because the emails are sent with the permission of the person requesting them. Lens visitors will click on your link and be sent an email notification. In that email they will click again giving permission for FeedBurner to send your SquidCast emails. Every email also contains a link for the person to unsubscribe.

On my lenses I mention that my SquidCast emails will update them on ALL my lenses, not just the one they’re looking at.

If you have any questions, please let me know. I’ve experimented with this and found that it works great!

By the way, I put this information together because someone was asking for an email subscription method over at SquidU, a great place to find lens ideas!

Today I’ve been having fun adding my lenses to my MySpace. I just discovered that our MySpace links in the “Bookmark and Share” section of each lens now put Squidoo links directly onto the front page of our MySpace – and you get a choice of what section to put them in. I think last time I tried that link (the one on our lenses) it went to a MySpace blog posting.

Honestly, I’m not a big fan of MySpace for a number of reasons. Most important is that the links there are cloaked. Though people may see them on our profiles and click on them, the cloaked links don’t do a thing to add to our search engine rankings.

In case you’re wondering what a cloaked link is, this refers to a link that directs the click to a secondary URL set up by the site owner, in this case, the owner of MySpace. That secondary link at MySpace directs the click finally to the correct destination which would be my lens.

You can see the cloaking in action. Go to my MySpace and run your cursor over the links in the left-side column – the ones that look like they’ll go to Squidoo lenses. Then look at your status line. You’ll see the cloaking link there, not the Squidoo lens link.

My main reason for having a MySpace page is to keep in touch with my five children. They’re all on MySpace. Even my mother is on MySpace! And as you can see, I’ve got other friends there too. If you’d like to do a friend request, be my guest. I like Squidoo people no matter where.

Lately I’ve been wondering how to get my lenses to rank higher. Sound familiar? I’ll bet 90% of you are also wondering the same thing! I was focused on this question enough that I took time to go through the entire top 100 list and analyze it. I didn’t look at every lens there (yet) but I recorded the name of the successful lensmaster and the general topic of the lens.

Here’s what I can tell you: There are four political lenses, and no religious lenses (unless you want to count Christmas.) There are twenty-one holiday lenses and that is bound to be a popular topic during the next few months. There are twelve entertainment lenses and none of those are about books. There are nine fashion lenses – two of those are about hair. There are nine lenses about Squidoo and four about animals.

Now that we know the hot topics of the day, we might want to know more about why one lens about animals makes the top 100 list and 99% of the others never will.

This week I made two lenses that may help answer that question. The first one focuses on what works: Website Content Writing Tips for Squidoo, Your Website or Blog. This has three lists: how to choose the right topic, how people read websites, and how to build your credibility, plus a host of other tips and links to more information.

The second lens I made this week is My Least Popular Lenses and Lessons I Learned From Making Them. I got this idea from Spirituality’s blog here at SquidTop. In this list I looked at each lens that’s not getting site visitors, and thought about why. At the bottom of that lens you’ll find a list of conclusions I came to about why these lenses are failing.

While I agree that we should make lenses that reflect our interests, it is also good to make them wisely keeping our readers in mind.

I now have more than ten blogs on a variety of topics. I also have over 35 Squidoo lenses on similar topics. For example, I have a writing blog at Perspectives on Writing. To that blog I can link my literary arts lenses because the topics are similar.

I have blogs on other topics – for example, Bigfoot Sightings (the blog) complements my Bigfoot Sightings lens. They are linked to each other, and they both get lots of traffic.

I have a new movie review blog: Mystic Movie Reviews. This will help drive traffic to the SquidFlix lenses I’m planning. Likewise, I can promote my movie review blog by linking to it on my SquidFlix lenses.

The goal is to keep the same subjects together. Placing links on appropriate sites with similar topics increases the SEO value of your links.

I’m not recommending that anyone go out and get ten blogs. In fact, that’s crazy-making, believe me. If you can have one or two blogs and manage to keep them up to date, you’ll be doing fine. You will find tips on blogging like an expert at my lens, Expert Blogging.

Two of my favorite bloggers whose niche is to help us learn to blog better are Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. Both these guys are phenomenal and worth knowing. Their blogs are worth reading. I’ve also participated in Chris Garrett’s forum, Authority Blogger. Great stuff there. The two men got together and wrote a fantastic book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

You can learn to blog like a pro. You can use blogs to promote your lenses and you can place your blog RSS feed on your lenses. It’s a win-win situation for those of us ready to do both.

[Update 12.29.08 - When you place blog links on your lenses, use the link module and enter them one at a time. This gives a perfect backlink for SEO purposes. Don't use the RSS module as it provides no backlinking benefit.]

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.”

Here are five things I’ve learned about successful Squidoo lensmasters thus far:

Successful Squidoo Lensmasters Help Each Other – Squidoo lensmasters, the successful ones, are some of the most helpful and encouraging people I’ve ever been pleased to meet. They’re joyfully having a positive Squidoo experience and are aware that there’s plenty of room for others to be successful, so they help lift others up by sharing information on what led to their success.

Successful Squidoo Lensmasters Provide Helpful Information – Rather than using a lens as a simple sales page, something that turns people off, successful lensmasters provide real information that people will appreciate and return to when needed. Rather than focusing on sales, they focus on content.

Successful Squidoo Lensmasters Connect With Readers – They get to know the people who read their lenses. They ask for feedback in terms of guestbook entries, polls, and duels. They become friends with as many of their fellow Squidoo writers as possible, and help them promote their lenses.

Successful Squidoo Lensmasters Use Lots of Images – It is still true that a picture is worth 1000 words, and successful Squidoo lensmasters know that. They adorn their lenses with all types of graphics to catch the eyes and delight the souls.

Successful Squidoo Lensmasters Don’t Worry About Competition – I’ve heard it time and again on advice lenses of successful lensmasters. They don’t bother looking to see if a topic has already been done. Every lensmaster will have a unique take on a topic anyhow, and those who tend their lenses like flowers in a garden will be more likely to gain in lensrank. There’s no doubt that competition will always exist; we don’t need to consider ourselves limited by it.