Linking Your Squidoo Lenses

squidoo - linking lenses

squidoo - linking lenses

 

The key benefit of linking your Squidoo lenses is to demonstrate your expertise in a particular topic or niche.  Another benefit is that readers are more inclined to follow links to related lenses than to something that does not relate to their search term.  Both of these benefits can provide substantial assistance to your small business marketing.

There are a number of ways to link your Squidoo lenses and I want to concentrate on two particular Squidoo modules that make lens linking very easy – the ‘Featured Lenses’ Module and the “My Lenses” Module.

[Image Credit: John-Morgan]

Featuring your lenses and creating a lens chain

The Featured Lenses Module enables you to highlight up to five (5) lenses that are related to the topic of your lens.  You  can feature your own lenses or those of other Lensmasters.  With this module you specify the URL (web address) of the lenses that you want to feature and identify the number of lenses (up to 5) that you want to display.  These options are illustrated below (‘Featured Lenses’ Module shown in edit mode):

squidoo - featured lenses module 

One way to make good use of the Featured Lenses Module is to create six (6) lenses on a topic and then on each lens add a Featured Lens Module that highlights the other five (5) related lenses.  This effectively creates a Squidoo lens chain and is a powerful option for small business marketing.   I have used this approach on my Squidoo lenses about  Online Learning as illustrated below:

squidoo - featured lenses

Another linking option you can use with the Featured Lens Module is to link to lenses created by others.  You have to make sure, though, that these lenses cover a topic related to your own.  This approach can add value to your own lens because it gives readers ready access to further information on the topic of their search .  It is also in line with the collaborative marketing ethos of Squidoo and may result in some form of reciprocal link or “liking”.

Using the My Lenses Module for linking your lenses

The ‘My Lenses’ Module differs in operation from the Featured Lenses Module in that you do not specify the URL of the lenses that you want to link to, but rather choose from a number of criteria that Squidoo then uses to list your lenses.  This means, in effect, that you have less control over the specific lenses to be displayed in the module.   A further difference is that you can display up to 25 of your own lenses.   So if you have lots of lenses related to a topic, you might choose to use the My Lenses Module

As explained, this module works from criteria that you specify.  You have two choices, (1) choose by Squidoo topic area from the drop-down menu (e.g. education) or (2) choose from the tags (keywords) you have used in creating your lenses.   The My Lenses Module is illustrated (in edit mode) below:

 

squidoo - my lenses module

Having chosen the basis for selection (topic or tag) of your lenses, you can then specify on what basis they will be displayed.  The choices listed at the bottom of the module (in edit mode) are:

  1. Lens rank
  2. Recently created
  3. Recently updated
  4. Alphabetically by Lens Title

One advantage of both the Featured Lenses Module and the My Lenses Module is that Squidoo completes the details of the chosen lenses for you.  So these two modules automatically display the Squidoo lens image, lens title (hyperlinked) and a brief description of the lens (as displayed above in the  image – ‘Featured Lenses related to online learning’).

The two Squidoo lenses modules that enable easy linking of your lenses are a real boost for your small business marketing because they both add considerable value to your lenses in the eyes of readers and the search engines.

Squidoo is a Search Engine!: Implications for Small Business Marketing

squidoo - search engine

squidoo - search engine

Squidoo is a search engine in its own right with other 2.5 Million lenses focused on key topic areas.   Even experienced lensmasters tend to forget this aspect of Squidoo.

As Squidoo grows so does its data base of information.  So if you are searching for information on specific topics, you will increasingly find quality, focused information by searching Squidoo.

In fact, one of the reasons that Squidoo exists is to improve search engine results.  Often you find that websites that gravitate to the top of the search engines are those that have cleverly manipulated the search engines’ algoriths, including automatic generation of backlinks.  You have probably found that you are often disappointed by the information that is first displayed by a search engine.

Squidoo was designed to provide webpages that are windows (lenses) to relevant information on a topic.  The concept of the lens is that it is not an end in itself but points to other relevant resources.  The lens is intended as a mutimedia index to rich information resources about a topic.

Squidoo is intent on maintaining the quality of lenses and has many mechanisms in place to reward quality and remove spam-type web pages.  This is one of the reasons Squidoo has banned certain topic areas that tend to be predominantly spam attractors.

Implications of the Squidoo search engine for small business marketing

The primary implication is that in addition to web traffic via other search engines, your Squidoo lenses can attract traffic from within Squidoo itself, from other Squidoo lensmasters.   This not only serves to build exposure to your small business but increases the value of your website with other search engines such as Google.

Squidoo insists on original content and has even created an Originality Pact.  One of Squidoo’s endearing features is the constant encouragement to develop your personal creativity and to stand out from the crowd, to show that you have something unique to offer (your Unique Selling Proposition – USP?).  As the Squidoo editors explain:

Squidoo is an opportunity for you to share your point of view, your take on a specific topic. That’s why lenses are called lenses — they snap your point of view in to focus.

There are many Squidoo lensmasters who demonstrate by their creativity and commitment that they are able to produce quality lenses providing real value to readers – they pride themselves in the quality that they produce.  Squidoo recognises these Lensmasters as Giant Squids, people who have achieved excellence in at least 50 lenses.   The Giant Squid status tends to attract more interest and more traffic to your website and I have found that it gives you a real standing with Google and the broader Internet marketing community. 

In the Originality Pact, the Squidoo editors encourage you to stretch yourself, create quality lenses and to brand yourself as a person of substance who consistently offers readers real value:

This is an agreement to create, craft, build, bake, innovate, write, opine, talk, storytell, review, recommend, and stand out from the crowd.  That’s the magic of Squidoo.

So a key implication for your small business marketing on Squidoo is that you brand yourself by the quality (or poverty) of your Squidoo lenses – your lenses will be found through the Squidoo search engine, so how do you want to be seen?

The Many Ways to Market Your Small Business on Squidoo

Merit Solutions Australia

Merit Solutions Australia

 Squidoo, as a multimedia platform, offers many ways to engage in small business marketing.  You are really only limited by your imagination so it is well worthwhile visiting Squidoo to see how other lensmasters market their small businesses.

You can build Squidoo lenses that focus on various aspects of your business and at the same time provide useful information to the visitors to your lens.  A starting point could be to build a lens that highlights your own profile and then move on to telling the story of your business, sharing information about your staff and then creating a lens that highlights your range of products or services.  You could then create a series of lenses that takes each product or service that you offer and provides more detailed information about them, including related articles and blog posts that educate the reader (potential buyer).  I’ll discuss some of these options in the following paragraphs.

Build your personal brand on Squidoo

The first way to build your personal brand on Squidoo is to make use of your Profile page to provide an insight into your brand with links across to your small business website and some background about your business.  If your lenses are primarily related to some aspect of your business (including its location), you can really take advantage of the fact that Squidoo lists your lenses on your profile page.   Many people make the mistake of having lenses on very diverse topics and this tends to dilute the effect of the lens listing on their profile page.   Since the link to your profile page  is provided on each lens (and other areas of Squidoo), it is important that this page provides clear personal branding if you are going to use Squidoo for small business marketing.

One of the other important ways to establish your personal brand is to build a Squidoo lens about yourself.   This provides a great opportunity to use the multimedia features of Squidoo to highlight your background (builds your credibility), your interests (shows you are a real person) and the nature of your business (links you as an interesting person to your own small business). 

Here’s an example of how I have developed my personal branding on a Squidoo lens:

Who is Ron Passfield?

Build a Squidoo lens to introduce your small business and your staff

Well this really opens up the field for you in terms of what you can present.  You can mention what your business offers in terms of products and services and explain the structure of your business.  You can also display your staff and decribe their interests and qualifications. 

Some small business owners create videos of interviews with their staff and then upload them to YouTube.  If you did this you could then display the videos via the YouTube Module on your small business Squidoo lens.

By way of illustration, I have provided a link below to one of my lenses that introduces my human resource consulting business.  You can see here how I have used a number of different modules to introduce my small business and staff:

  • the Photo Gallery Module to highlight individual human resource consultants engaged in our business (see image below which can highlight people on a rotating basis)
  • RSS Module to provide the feed from our small business blog
  • Text Modules to highlight particular services we provide (includes images where appropriate)
  • Blackbox Modules to act as labels to introduce new topics (you have a range of color choices, not just black).

I have also attempted to use the corporate colors throughout this Squidoo lens by using CSS styling (an advanced feature of Squidoo).  You can see my small business lens here:

Merit Solutions Australia

The following image illustrates the Photo Gallery Module:

human resource consultants 

Promote individual products or services on Squidoo lenses

There are a number of strategies you can use to build lenses that display your products or services.  One strategy I have used, for example, is to highlight a number of services related to a niche or category.  In my human resource management lens I have done this by listing the training courses we run in one module.  To achieve this, I have used the Link List Module as illustrated below:

merit solutions training courses

Another option for displaying products or services is to take a single offering and develop a Squidoo lens around this.  You could include news about the product (changes, new releases), a history of the evolution of the product and a list of related products that you offer.  You could also add summaries of articles on the topic of the product with links to the full article (published on your website or blog).  In this way ou can build up an information and education resource for potential buyers and encourage readers to explore your own website.  You can also avoid your Squidoo lens being treated as ‘overly commercial‘.

Tell the story of your small business on a Squidoo lens

Here’s an opportunity to be really engaging.  You could talk about how your business started and the fluctuations you have experienced. You could give readers an insight into how your products are made or how you deliver your services.  The personal touch goes a long way to capturing readers’ interest.

Make sure that your Squidoo lens contains original content so don’t just copy off your website or blog.   Think about how your ‘story’ could illustrate why you are different to your competition.  You could include testimonials and examples of people enjoying your products or services.  When you have finished, ask yourself, “Have I added anything of value here for my readers?”

Develop Squidoo lenses about the city where your small business is located

You could extend this approach to include the area you service and the local attractions. Chef Keem has developed this type of Squidoo lens for Goldwasser Real Estate who market Shady Hollow in Austin, Texas. You could do well to study the principles behind this Squidoo lens design:

Shady Hollow Squidoo lens - Goldwasser Real Estate

If you look closely at the Shady Hollow lens, you will see that Chef Keem has provided a history of Shady Hollow, created a photo gallery of Shady Hollow homes and identified some landmarks (Community Center & Schools).  In addition, he has embedded a YouTube video in the lens in which he interviews the owners of Goldwasser Real Estate as a form of introduction to the Shady Hollow neighbourhood.

So you can make the most of the multimedia platform provided  by Squidoo for small business marketing,  if you take the time to be original and creative in the presentation of the different aspects of your business,

Stream Podcasts (MP3’s) with the Yahoo Media Player on Squidoo

listening to a podcast

listening to a podcast

One of the multimedia features of Squidoo is the option to include podcasts as part of your small business marketing on this social network platform.  Squidoo provides a setting for a Yahoo Media Player that enables you to incorporate and stream MP3’s (your own or other’s) on your Squidoo lenses.  I have found that this is one of the most underutilised features of Squidoo.

In an earlier post, I highlighted the benefits of podcasting and stressed the need to incorporate this aspect in your small business marketing.  I think that the lack of use of the Yahoo Media Player relates to the fact that the settings are not obvious and are easy to overlook.

How to Enable the Yahoo Media Player on Squidoo

To enable the Yahoo Media Player on your Squidoo lens, you need to make adjustments to ‘Other Settings’ when in the edit mode.  The ‘Other Settings’ link is currently in the right-hand column of your Squidoo lens.  There is an option  for you to tick ‘Play mp3 files with the Yahoo Media Player’ (as illustrated in the image below).  When you tick this option, you automatically enable the Yahoo Media Player, so that any link that is an MP3 file will generate the ‘play’ symbol on your lens. 

Squidoo - Yahoo Media Player settings

I have demonstrated the use of the Yahoo Media Player in the introduction to a Squidoo lens on Improving Productivity to Overcome Procrastination and Information Overload:

 

squidoo - yahoo media player

If you want to include a description or call to action (as I have done above), you use a hyperlink with anchor text such as the following:

<a href=”http://www.yourpodcastaddress.mp3″><b>LISTEN TO HOW I HAVE USED A PRODUCTIVITY FOCUS TO BEAT PROCRASTINATION</b></a>

Another illustration of the Yahoo Media Player from the same Productivity Squidoo lens is the following screenshot which shows how I am marketing my Social Media Training Program by including an introductory podcast in a text module: 

Yahoo Media Player - squidooroo mp3

 The Yahoo Media Player on Squidoo enables you to incorporate podcasts (MP3’s) on your Squidoo lenses to enhance your small business marketing.

Video Marketing on Squidoo

squidoo - youtube video rainforest

 

squidoo - youtube video rainforest

Squidoo offers a number of ways to use video marketing for the marketing a small business.  Essentially, Squidoo provides two modules that enable you to stream videos within Squidoo lenses.

These modules enable you to identify a video from a video hosting site and embed it in your Squidoo lens.  You can use a video of your own from one of these sites or use someone else’s video to illustrate an idea on your lens.

The two main modules for video marketing on Squidoo are (1) the YouTube Module and (2) the Video Module.  There is also a video voting module but this serves another purpose.

The YouTube Module on Squidoo

The YouTube Module gives you a lot of flexibility in displaying and streaming YouTube Videos. You can display a single video or multiple videos (up to 10). The way you choose the YouTube videos is up to you. You can use an automated process where you specify a keyword (tag) and YouTube will display the specified number of videos associated with that keyword.  The advantage of this approach is that the displayed videos are automatically updated by YouTube.

Another choice is to use the “Let me pick option’ in combination with the “Help me find a video’ link (at the bottom of the module in edit mode).   In this option, you again specify a keyword (tag) but you can make a choice from the list of videos displayed by YouTube.  You have more control this way but you have to update the list manually.

Alternatively, you can choose to display the videos of a particular person (yourself or someone else) by specifying the desired YouTube ‘Username’. 

The YouTube Module in edit mode is displayed below (“Let me pick’ option):

 

Squidoo - YouTube Module

Your video will be shown as a full image for streaming as shown in the screenshot below (notice the hyperlinks at the bottom of the image):

squidoo - youtube video

Where you choose multiple YouTube videos to display, one video will be shown in full display and the others are shown as thumbnail images as below:

squidoo - YouTube videos thumbnail images

The Video Module on Squidoo

The Video Module enables you to stream a single video from anyone of a number of video hosting sites, including YouTube.  You need to give your module a title and sub-title and a description (optional, but useful to increase your chances of being found on the search engines).  Then you post the video link from the relevant video site and click ‘Save”.   If you don’t know the URL of the video, you can click on one of the buttons for the video sites listed in the menu across the top of the edit box.   The video hosting sites supported by Squidoo, in addition to YouTube, are:

  • Vimeo
  • Revver
  • Howcast
  • Anboom
  • Godtube
  • Metacafe
  • MySpace
  • Veoh
  • Yahoo Movies
  • 5min
  • Amazon

You can see the Video Module in edit mode displayed below:

video module on Squidoo

The resultant video (from Vimeo in this example) is displayed as a streaming video for playing directly within the Squidoo lens as shown in the screenshot below (taken from a video module in a lens):

squidoo - vimeo video

Squidoo makes it easy to use video marketing for the marketing of a small business and gives you a range of video hosting sites to draw on for your own videos or those of other contributors.