Best Squidoo Tips
The Best Way to Help Out Fellow Squids
Feb 27th
The Answer Deck is, by far, the best place to send Squids with enquiring minds. And with all the good information, tips, and advice you’ll find there it pays for even experienced Squids to spend some time there on a regular basis.
If you’re a Giant Squid and have special knowledge about Squidoo, (how to create the fanciest lensography, or how to sell books like a mad woman, or how to get incoming links using articles), you can create a lens to share there. So before you start building your next Squidoo Tips lens, visit the Answer Deck and use the button there to create your own branded Answer Deck lens.
And the next time you receive a question from a new Squid looking for help and good advice be sure to point them to the Answer Deck.
Whether or not you visit to learn, or share, the Answer Deck really is the best place to help your fellow Squids.
Learn more here: Big Answer Deck FAQ
Awesome Work Being Done
Feb 23rd
There is some truly awesome work being done at the Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin Facebook group. Bonnie and I are both really impressed with the quality of these quick lenses. In little over a week the Get Cracking participants have already created more than 135 new lenses and the creativity with the challenge topics is amazing.
Yesterday’s topic was to create a lens about a favorite car and lenses were built about everything from a Nash Rambler to a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a nice Mitsubishi 3000gt, a Citroen 2CV Charleston, and a Corvette thrown in to boot!
One of the most imaginative ideas to come from our car challenge was a lens created about women mechanics that contains the story of one female lensmaster’s experience working on her husband’s car.
Visit the Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin Facebook Group to see all of the wonderful lenses being created there or become a fan and join us and the over 200 members already participating in the Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin daily lens building challenge.
Challenge yourself for a day, a week, a month, or any amount of time in between. It’s up to you!
I’ve created a lens to hold all of our past Get Cracking daily lens challenges that includes examples of some of the lenses that were built for each challenge. Use it the next time you need an idea for building a new lens or leave us a comment there with your own favorite lens writing prompt. We might just use your idea in the future!
It’s a Hit
Feb 16th
I’m pleased to announce that day one of “Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin” was an amazing success!
We had a terrific amount of participation and a bunch of super creative lenses built for our “first” challenge.
Some of the new lenses built included the first reel to reel tape recorders, Things for your First Apartment, casting a first spell and even a first time jump from an aeroplane!
One of the creative lens ideas that stood out for me was a lens created by LeanneChesser for her first grandchild. She started the lens to use as a journal to record information about her daughter’s pregnancy and her new grandson before he’s born.
Take a look! My First Grandchild
Great idea on Leanne’s part and a great way to show off the fact that just because we are making quick lenses at the Get Cracking Facebook group, doesn’t mean you can’t go back and add more information and build on to these lenses later on!
Let’s Get Cracking!
Feb 9th
Looking for ideas, tips, and motivation to help you reach your personal Squidoo goals?
Interested in learning how to promote your lenses?
Want to be part of a group of like-minded lensmasters who work together to succeed?
Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin is a brand new group that will meet on Facebook daily beginning on 2/15/2010. To learn more click the following link to begin a free .pdf download of the Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin eBook.
Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin .pdf download
Or Visit the Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin lens.
Get Cracking with Bonnie and Robin
Do You Really Want to be a Giant Squid?
Jan 10th
With the March Challenge set to begin tomorrow (January 11, 2010) at Squidu I thought it might be a good time to go over the differences between what it means to be a regular lensmaster and a Giant Squid lensmaster.
Lensmasters
All people who make pages at Squidoo are lensmasters and lensmasters come to Squidoo.com for many different reasons. Some lensmasters are looking to promote other sites, or to raise money for charity, or even just to earn money for themselves. Squidoo makes it easy for everyone to create free pages that can do all of those things so basically “anyone” can be a lensmaster.
Giant Squid Lensmasters
Giant Squid lensmasters do more than just create 50 well-written lenses. Giant Squid lensmasters use their imaginations to build truly personalized pages. They don’t follow formulas; they create them. They don’t copy, or purchase articles; they write them. Giant Squid lensmasters are inspirational. They become a part of the Squidoo community by giving of themselves either through their writing, their teaching, their helping, their sharing, their commenting and rating or their spirit.
We know that not everyone will be able to, or have the time, or even want to take the extra steps to become a Giant Squid lensmaster and honestly, that’s okay. Squidoo will still be here for anyone who wants to use it.
But if you really want the badge, the honor, and the rewards of being a Giant Squid lensmaster, you’re going to have to earn it. It’s as simple as that!
You can join us (starting tomorrow) at the So You Want to Be a Giant Squid section of the Squidu forum for more information, help, and encouragement for your own Giant Squid journey.
In the meantime, please share your thoughts about what it means to be a Giant Squid lensmaster in the comments section here.
Too Many Buttons and Badges
Oct 15th
The following comment is not going to make me very popular but I’m going to post it anyway.
Please hear me out before you start tossing those rotten tomatoes.
I know everyone is proud of all the buttons and badges that they’ve earned along their Squid journey but placing them ALL in your bio is not really a good idea and here’s why:
The general public doesn’t understand what all those bells and whistles are about and could very easily get distracted by them.
Instead of reading your great text, they might sit there wondering what the heck a Giant Squid Organizer, a Purple Star, or a Rocketmom is.
I understand that you worked hard to achieve all those honors and yes, you deserve to show them all off. I just think there’s a better way to do that.
Instead of confusing your potential reader with all of your trophies lined up in the side bar of your lenses, why not place your buttons and badges in a text box towards the end of your lens, including an explanation of what your badge means and why you got it.
You certainly don’t want your bio to be the only thing that catches your reader’s eye.
Tomato tossing may now begin! 
Should You Rate Every Lens You Read?
Oct 5th
The question about Squidoo Star Ratings comes up every so often and I thought now would be as good a time as any to address it here at the Showcase blog.
Squidoo star ratings are in place to help the cream rise to the top at Squidoo.com. When you rate a Squidoo lens, you are telling the entire community that this lens is worth your while. It contains good information that is presented well. It helps that lens get seen and it tells the lensmaster that they are doing a good job and getting noticed for it.
And yes, even the dreaded one star rating will help to increase a lens’ rank.
But who rates all of these lenses? If you check the stats on Giant Squid lensmaster’s bio pages, you’ll learn that the Giant Squid lensmasters are responsible for the greatest percentage of star ratings across the community.
Should You Rate Every Lens You Read?
My honest answer? No, you shouldn’t rate every single lens you read and here’s the reasons why. The lens might be brand new and still be in need of some tweaking or the lensmaster might still be learning how to use the Squidoo system and will fix the lens as their knowledge of lens creation and how to use the modules grows.
Another good reason NOT to rate a lens is if the lens is spammy or is in conflict with Squidoo’s Terms of Service. In such a case, it is best to use the “report abuse” button instead.
But when you find lenses that are outstanding, or good for the Squidoo community, or are full of great information, by all means rate that lens. And if you find a lens that has fantastic photos, wonderful on-topic links, or terrific youtube.com videos take a moment and give a star rating. Lenses that are creative and helpful and beautifully crafted are all also worthy of a sprinkling of stars.
Use those stars to say, “Great job!” and “Thank you for providing good information!” and “I enjoyed my stay.”or “I want the entire world to see this!”
Victoria_Neely’s lens Squidoo Star Ratings is a fun read about the subject.
So what do you think? Agree or disagree? And if you could, how many stars is this post worth?
Giant Squid Tips
Sep 26th
Calling All Lensmasters!
Follow Giant Squid Tips at Twitter.com.
https://twitter.com/GiantSquidTips
I’ll be dropping little suggestions, tips, and ideas, to help you keep your lenses fresh and up to date.
Kind of like the Fly Lady only more fun and no cleaning required!
A Learning Experience for Me
Sep 25th
Yes, unfortunately it’s true that the example pages made for Brands in Public are being taken down. And yes it’s true that the lensmasters who participated are being rewarded with a bonus for their time. But I’m not here to grieve the loss of a few hours of my time. I’m here to celebrate what I learned while making those wonderful example pages.
In a nutshell: People LOVE to participate. And yes Seth has been telling us this for years, “make something that people want to come back to” but it took Brands in Public to show me the best way to do that.
Here’s what I Learned
In addition to writing my original content I need to:
1. Add lots of places for the public to have their say. Add polls for them to answer. Add guest books with thought provoking questions where people can share their stories. Give the public a podium to shout from by adding a duel module or two where they can debate each other.
2. One or two Amazon.com spotlight modules is all you need if you choose really GREAT products to promote.
3. Find a couple of fantastic blogs on your subject and follow them with an rss feed module so people can see what others are saying about the topic.
4. Let the public SEE the Twitter responses being Tweeted in real time with a few Twitter Follow modules.
5. Add lots of great links on my subject to help people find even more information.
And YES, I already do some of these things on most of my lenses but what I learned in my short time making BIP pages is that I need to add ALL of these wonderful features to ALL of my lenses!
I’m off now to start making my lenses even better! Won’t you join me?
Do You Find Marketing Hard?
Sep 25th
I was reading a blog post today by our own “not-a-giant-but would-be-if-she-had-enough-lenses” Sonia_Simone that will be very helpful for lensmasters who are uncomfortable marketing and find selling things on their lenses hard.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Because I was so grossed out by the marketing advice I was finding, I realized I was going to have to totally reframe this thing for myself or I’d never actually do it.
(I’m extremely bad at doing anything I don’t want to do. That’s both a good and a bad thing, but anyway, it’s how I’m wired.)
So I read every book and blog I could find. Then I went back and re-read the ones I thought were any good.
I bought courses with money I didn’t have. I went to hear talks from experts, and then I read some more.
And I tried stuff.”
You can read the rest of this Remarkable Communication post, find out what Sonia Simone learned and sign up for the rest of the (no cost) lessons at the following:
Highly Recommended!
