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,

7 Great Reasons to Use Squidoo for Small Business Marketing

Squidoo is a unique free hosting platform that gives a real boost to small business marketing.  Its uniqueness flows from its easy-to-use features, strong social network, inherent marketing design, search capacity and flexibility.   There is so much a small business owner can do on this social networking platform that it is difficult to encapsulate it all in one post.  So I have decided to use the “sevens’ blogging approach that I introduced in my previous blog post.

It is difficult nowadays to get anything of quality that is free.  Squidoo is a clear exception to this statement.  Its features are state-of-the-art as it is subject to continuous improvement and refinement.  The benefits for small business marketing are immense and can easily be undervalued if you have not experienced Squidoo.

In this introductory blog post, I want to outline seven (7) great reasons to use Squidoo for small business marketing and, in the process, cover the benefits and features of this marketing platform:

1. Squidoo offers free web hosting and easy-to-use webpage builder

Squidoo enables you to design web pages (called lenses) that it hosts on its own social network platform.  The lenses can be on any topic (apart from some explicit exclusions put in place to prevent spam and poor quality web pages). 

The easy-to-use webpage builder involves a series of modules which you can piece together to create a professional looking website.  Squidoo has a wide range of modules that you can pick from to suit your focus or purpose. 

The other key advantage of Squidoo is that you can make as many Squidoo lenses (websites) as you want.  I have developed over 100 Squidoo lenses on a wide range of topics.

2.  Squidoo provides a multimedia platform for small business marketing

Squidoo enables you to embed your YouTube videos (or those of other people) in your Squidoo lenses.   You can display images from Flickr or use a special module (‘photo gallery’) to create a slideshow of your own images.

You can also add podcasts which are streamed on your Squidoo lens via Yahoo Audio Player.  The way you mix and match the modules is limited only by your imagination.   The key is to design lenses to match your purpose in undertaking small business marketing.

3. Squidoo offers many ways to market your small business

Squidoo provides a very easy way to present multiple aspects of your small business thus helping you to leverage your small business marketing. Here are some possible types of Squidoo lenses you could develop:

  • tell the story of your business origins and development with illustrations in the form of photos, diagrams and/or videos
  • create Squidoo lenses about the area your business is located in – attractions in the area, signifcant history, natural features or community activities
  • feature some of your products or services
  • provide educational information relevant to your niche
  • highlight your staff, their interests and their qualifications/skills (the personal touch)

4. Squidoo is a search engine in its own right

Squidoo has more than 2.5 Million lenses and generates its own traffic through its internal search results.  Your Squidoo lenses can be featured in these results and accordingly be indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing.  

There are a range of minimum requirements to meet for your lenses to be featured, otherwise they are considered ‘Work-in-Progess’ lenses.   So the advantage of building Squidoo lenses for small business marketing is not only to gain external web traffic through other search engines but also internal traffic through Squidoo’s own search engine capability.

Squidoo has algoriths like Google to rank lenses for the purpose of displaying them in their search engine results and for creating lists that highlight exceptional lenses.

5. Squidoo is a very strong social network

Squidoo places a very high value on its social network and continuously explores new ways to engage community members.

Squidoo has developed a range of community roles designed to build community and encourage member interaction.  Squidoo has roles related to tutoring new members, running contests and quality control.  Community organisers work within Squidoo and in the broader Internet community to communicate the benefits, features and values of Squidoo.  One of Squidoo’s core values is creating the opportunity for its members to contribute to charity through the advertising revenue generated from their own lenses.

Squidoo also has a way of rewarding people who create quality lenses and manifest the values of the site.  One of the ways Squidoo does this is by identifying ‘Giant Squids’ who have created 50 or more excellent lenses.  For example, so far I have achieved the award of Giant Squid100 – created 100 excellent lenses as judged by Squidoo.   This award gives you greater visibility on Squidoo and in other search engine results.

6. Squidoo was designed by, and for, Internet marketers

One of the key creators and owners of Squidoo is Seth Godin who is considered the world’s leading business blogger.  He has also published in excess of 10 New York Bestsellers on Internet Marketing and related topics.

Squidoo embodies Seth’s Internet marketing principles and is continuously adapted and refined to meet new trends in online marketing, search engine algoriths and social media.

7. Squidoo has a special relationship with Google

Quality lenses appear high on Google’s search engine results.  Google values Squidoo’s emphasis on original content, frequent updating and quality control.

Seth Godin was, at one stage, a strategic adviser to Google in relation to its development options.  Google, however, still expects Squidoo to control spam and maintain quality which it does through a range of mechanisms.

Squidoo provides multiple avenues for small business marketing and enables small business owners to develop their brand, their personal profiles and to build their customer base while enhancing their personal creativity.