Entries Tagged 'Squidoo for CHD' ↓

You can use today for either creating 3 more lenses on your chosen keywords, or doing more promotion for the lenses you have.

Here are some more things to do today:

Go to the popular lenses that are ranked high for your keyword or phrase. Check to see if they have a guestbook.

Then leave a comment about that lens - with a quick blurb about yours, and a link back. But don’t ruin the spirit of the community by spamming everyone’s guestbook at random. Please.

Set up your bookmark on Digg and Del.icio.us. Place the button on your lens so Squidoo visitors can bookmark it.

Email your list.

Link to the lens from articles in directories or blogs.

Run a link swapping campaign with other lens masters in your niche.

Now, depending upon how fast you are at doing this, and how much time you have available to work on your Squidoo strategy, the entire program I have outlined could take you 5 days - or 10, or even longer.

What matters more is that you get it done.

And keep doing what works, dropping the tactics that don’t give you good enough results for the time and effort you invest into it.

Squidoo is here to stay. Building your Squidoo network, and making Squidoo an integral part of your marketing and traffic generating strategy is a smart decision.

And Squidoo has a charitable focus too. Part of all revenues generated by lensmasters is donated to various charities and non-profits. And the tools and structure is designed to help non-profits get more visibility and involve their volunteers and supporters in the effort of growing awareness.

You have helped by participating in the ‘Squidoo for CHD’ challenge. Thank you for your support for ‘A Day for Hearts - Congenital Heart Defects Awareness Day‘.

The “CHD Social Media Challenge” is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the ‘challenge’. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.

New here? Please pick up your three FREE gifts - click here. Hope you like them. And drop by often!

You’re becoming a Squidoo ‘expert’… and so I expect that you’ll be handling stuff better, doing your tasks quickly and therefore have time to do even MORE!

If you fall behind, don’t worry. Take it easy. Get the unfinished tasks done - and push back the schedule by one more day. Don’t miss out on any, because each step layers on the previous one, and adds more value to your Squidoo network.

Today you will:

* Create the third lens in your network
* Promote your second lens
* Updating and promoting your first lens

Step 1: Create Lens #3

Not much for me to say about this. A lot for you to do. Go for it!

Step 2: Promoting Lens #2

This again is a repetition of the steps you did for your first lens yesterday.

Step 3: Updating and Promoting Lens #1

If your lens is ’stagnant’ for too long, it will slowly drop in rankings. On one of my early lenses, I lost some good ranking because I let things slide and didn’t post updates.

When I revived the lens with a small update, and linked it to a few more recent lenses, the ranking came up again to #3,540.

Another determinant of good ranking seems to be how large your lens is. Add new modules from time to time. Write a short article (250 to 300 words seems best). Throw in a few new links. Keep things growing.

But don’t make your lens too big. If there’s more stuff to share, build another lens - and link them together.

Squidoo aims to provide its users with a pleasant search experience, where they can find all the information on a topic right there on one lens. And so, not surprisingly, Squidoo rewards lensmasters with many OUTBOUND links with a higher ranking!

Go on and link to other authority sites on your topic - including your own.

Write articles. Keep them related to the topic of your lens. Use keywords that match your Squidoo lens tags. Link the keyword in your article back to the lens. Submit articles to the various directories.

Other activities you can do to get more visibility (these are optional):

Buy text links on high PR sites.

Run banners, classified ads, or even pay-per-click ad campaigns for your lens

Do link exchange campaigns with outside websites back to your Squidoo lens.

Don’t miss ‘Digg-ing’ your lens at Digg.com - it could get some traffic boosts.

Join StumbleUpon.com and ’stumble’ your lens

Pick a news story that’s hot - and related to the topic of your lens - and send out a press release or note about your lens.

Get interviewed on radio, or for a magazine. You could even be on T.V., if you do it right!

The “CHD Social Media Challenge” is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the ‘challenge’. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.

Today, you will do 3 things simultaneously. Yeah, hard work, I know!

You will:

* create another lens (it’ll be quicker now that you know how)
* promote your first lens
* start networking with the Squidoo community

Step 1: Create your second lens

This is just a repeat of yesterday’s process. Make sure you link back to the first lens, and do this for every other lens you create in the network.

Step 2: Promote your first lens

Here are some quick and easy steps you can take to set the ball rolling, and bring visitors to your Squidoo lens network:

* Do you participate in online discussions, either on forums or via email? Mention your lens during conversations. Include it in your signature file. Drop them into your forum posts.

* Do you have a mailing list of your own? Point them to your lens. I sent out a short note to my list, which is primarily interested in online marketing, with this SUBJECT line: “It’s NOT about marketing, but it’s FUN…”

Over 100 people visited my lens! Many ranked my lens. Within a day, my lens rank had soared to #691

* Do you send out many email messages? Include a short blurb about your lens, and throw in a link to it.

* Do you publish blogs or websites? Do a short post about your lens, and link from it to Squidoo.

* Do you publish a newsletter or magazine? You might mention your Squidoo lens in it too - with a link to your lens homepage.

The more people you tell, the more people will see your lens. And if it’s good, worth talking about, news will spread fast - and you’ll be flooded with visitors.

* Ask visitors to rate your lens. You may do it in your introductory module, or somewhere within your lens. When you are sending out email invitations to your lens, or blogging about it on your own site, make sure to include a short note asking them to RATE your lens, if they liked it.

* Depending upon how many people email your lens to friends, using the EMAIL link near the top of the page, your lens gets a higher rank. You can invite your visitors to email your lens .

That’ll do for today. Tomorrow, you’ll do some more promotional activities that’ll get visitors arriving at your lens - and bringing their friends along!

Step 3: Start networking with the Squidoo community

Join the SquidU community by registering here: http://www.SquidU.com

This is a diverse group of passionate, devoted and even evangelistic Squidoo fans. They are helpful, responsive, and knowledgeable. And like most passionate people, they are quick to jump to conclusions and argue/attack vehemently what they perceive as ‘abuse’ or ‘misuse’ of the service.

I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with members. If it happens, brush it off. These folks are good at heart. They just let passion rule at times - and that’s not so bad, is it?!

Another way to network is to browse around Squidoo. Run a search on ‘tags’ you’ve used on your lens. When you find a high ranked lens related to your topic, rate the lens - and then contact the owner to invite him/her to drop by yours and rate it too. You both benefit.

The “CHD Social Media Challenge” is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the ‘challenge’. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.

Today, you will build your first Squidoo lens.

The steps involved are:

* Creating your content
* Planning your links
* Picking up the CHD awareness content
* Setting up your lens
* Populating your lens with content

Step 1: Creating your content

Write at least one high quality article on your topic for each keyword - or have it written for you by a ghostwriter.

Do not be obsessed with achieving a certain keyword density. Instead, focus on making your writing as attractive, useful and captivating as possible for readers. But make sure your main keyword is mentioned a few times!

Each article should be around 500 to 600 words (if longer, break it up into 2 parts, because the WRITE module only accepts 2,500 characters at maximum).

Include a mouthwatering offer that a reader will find hard to resist. This could be a free gift, a valuable service, an exclusive membership or anything else that will get your ideal prospect excited about clicking the link and signing up to your list or visiting your website/blog.

At the end of each piece of content is a good time to ask readers to

* bookmark your lens to their list of FAVORITES
* rate your lens by clicking on the STARS at the top of the page
* TELL A FRIEND about your lens
* join your mailing list to receive updates

Step 2: Planning your links

Include links to the next lens in your network, especially if you are writing a multi-part content feature and it makes sense for the reader to continue to the next part.

Link to other parts of your ‘Squidoo network’ - the set of Squidoo lenses you’ll be building over the course of this challenge, and beyond.

Link to your main website, blog, sales page, opt-in newsletter page and other relevant/useful links.

Don’t forget to include links to the Congenital Heart Defects Awareness website, to support “A Day for Hearts” - the link is: http://www.CHDinfo.com/chdaware/

In a separate text file, save the text you will use in the ‘Text Links’ module. This will save you time as you quickly copy-paste these links into the network lenses as you populate them with content. You’ll also avoid making typos and mistakes while creating links on your lens.

Step 3: Picking up your CHD awareness content

I have created some pre-written content to go into one of the WRITE modules on your Squidoo lens. You can pick it up - click here

Ready-to-go CHD awareness building content - Pick it up here

Simply copy all the code in the form on that page, and paste it into the box on one of your TEXT-WRITE modules (more about this in the next section).

Step 4: Setting up your Squidoo lens

Now you are ready to begin building your lens.

Click on the BUILD A LENS button and fill up the boxes (you’ll already be familiar with this process if you studied the Squidoo basics as part of yesterday’s assignment)

You’ll want to keep the following modules in your lens:

- Introduction
- Text/Write
- RSS feeds
- Text/Write
- Guestbook
- Text links (non plexo)

Squidoo makes it easy to insert/add more modules, and you can re-arrange them simply by placing your mouse-cursor over the module, clicking and dragging it to where you want, and dropping it in place!

Step 5: Populating your lens with content

INTRODUCTION:

Write a brief introduction for each lens. It must include your primary keyword for that lens (formatted in BOLD) in the first paragraph.

It should also make a convincing appeal to invite visitors to go deeper and explore your lens. You must also insert a short invitation to readers to bookmark your lens, and rate it by clicking on the stars near the top of the page. Do this once again after your content too.

WRITE/TEXT:

In the first Write/Text module, copy and paste your article created in Step #1.

RSS FEEDS:

Here, you can automatically pull in ‘feeds’ from your blog, if you have one. It helps draw few visitors to your blog to read it.

WRITE/TEXT:

In the second Write/Text module, copy and paste the CHD awareness content (from Step #3 above)

GUESTBOOK:

Invite visitors to post their comments, and include a powerful benefit to them for doing so. These guest posts will keep your lens updated and fresh - automatically. You may also use the Guestbook module as an opportunity to invite visitors to join your mailing list.

TEXT LINKS (NON-PLEXO):

This is the critical component that ties all your Squidoo lenses together. Make sure you add only the Plain Text Link module and NOT the Plexo module.

By clicking on the Add More Links button, you can add new link boxes to the module. Create 5 or 6 of them. Then, from the text file you prepared earlier containing all the links to other lenses in your mini-network, copy and paste one snippet per box and click SAVE.

You will get a nicely formatted set of links, each one pointing to one of the other lenses in your mini-network. Both visitors and search engine spiders can follow these links to ‘find’ your other lenses on the topic.

That’s all for today. Next, you’ll begin building your other lenses.

The “CHD Social Media Challenge” is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the ‘challenge’. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.

Welcome to the first day of the ‘Squidoo for CHD’ challenge.

Today, you will:

* Open your account with Squidoo
* Research keywords for your lens
* Plan your content sources
* Learn the basics of building a Squidoo lens

Ready to begin?

Great.

We’ll start with keyword research before opening a new Squidoo account. That way, you’ll be able to choose a user name and biographical description that fits your niche or brand better.

Step 1: Set your sights on your target - a.k.a. ‘Pick Your Keywords’

Getting good ranking on search engines, which translate into a lot of traffic, is a ‘words game’. You pick the keywords to go after - and get ranked for them.

You want to go after keywords that are NOT very highly competitive. More than 50% of all searches on Google are for keywords and phrases that people look for ONLY ONCE IN A DAY.

This is in contrast to the popular ‘top keyword’ lists which show up on searches several hundred or thousand times daily. And targeting this ‘long tail’ of keywords is a smart strategy, because competition at the fringes is so little.

Take advantage of the ‘long tail’ with your lens! Aim for keywords with less than 500,000 results on Google. You could try this with more competitive keywords too, but it may take a bit longer to see results.

Research until you’ve found 5 to 6 words/themes that are all related or interlinked to the topic of your Squidoo lens. Try and make sure that one is a 3-word (or longer) phrase, one is a 2-word phrase and the rest may be single words.

There are many tools you can use to carry out your niche research. Some helpful ones are:

Nichebot - http://www.nichebot.com
Google Adwords Keyword Tool - http://adwords.google.com
Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Here’s a good sample list from one of my Squidoo lens projects:

1-word keyword: infoproduct (105,000 results)
2-word keyword: sell infoproducts (44,000 results)
3-word keyword: create and sell infoproducts (215,000 results)

Step 2: Open Your Squidoo Account

Sign up for your own Squidoo account at: http://www.Squidoo.com

You will be asked to pick your username. It helps if that is also related to your theme or niche, and contains your most important keyword(s) or your brand or business name.

Don’t build your first lens just yet, we’ll get into that tomorrow. However, you can pick the title/name of your first lens by typing one of the 5 keywords you chose in Step #1.

You may find the exact title that you want is not available. Try variations. Or additions - e.g. if you don’t get ‘trafficsecrets’, go for ‘trafficsecretsreviews’ or ‘trafficsecretsanalyzed’ or ‘trafficsecretsopinions’

Make sure you do not infringe on any trademarks, or you will be forced to surrender your lens after working hard to popularize it.

Remember to add ‘TAGS’ that label your lens, and include your top keywords in these boxes.

Step 3: Plan your content sources

Your content sets your Squidoo lens apart from anyone else’s.

Plan it carefully and well. Think about this as a project where you are building an ‘authority site’ in your niche. Squidoo has staying power. Chances are the work you do today will pay rich dividends a few months or years from now - and keep doing so for many more.

Also, if you mess up and create a low value lens, you will miss out on the most popular form of marketing - viral pass-along. People will refer others to your lens ONLY IF you provide overwhelming value through your content.

Decide if you will be writing fresh content by yourself, or outsourcing it to professional writers, or using modified versions of content you own/buy rights to. Do not even consider copying content from other places on the Web and pasting it into your lens. Of course, you can study them and create modified versions tailored to your needs.

While planning your content sources, also keep in mind that Squidoo lenses can be refreshed periodically, updated and expanded. So make plans for content updates even before you start.

Step 4: Learn Squidoo basics

There are some excellent tutorials on Squidoo itself - you can find them at:

Squidoo FAQ: http://www.squidoo.com/pages/faq

SquidU: http://www.squidu.com/

Do Squidoo: http://www.squidoo.com/dosquidoo

That’s all for today. Tomorrow, you’ll begin building your first lens.

The “CHD Social Media Challenge” is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the ‘challenge’. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.