Squidoo is a great way to get the word out and just plain fun

A year or so ago, I tinkered with using squidoo to highlight my Dollar Philanthropy blog.

Squidoo page:  http://www.squidoo.com/dollarphilanthropy

I liked it because I could put links to the nonprofits I liked best and also pull my blog feed into the Lens. That made it easy to keep the content fresh-- as long as I keep my blog current. (lately I've been bad at it).

Recently, I revisited and made another lens for Awesome Animal Nonprofits.  I was delighted to see that Squidoo has really added a bunch of bells and whistles that make it a really cool tool.  I then created another account just to put up stuff that I found personally interesting --- that really had nothing to do with running a small business, nonprofit or healthcare (I know... boy those are strange bedfellows).

I started with a Lens on the town I live in http://www.squidoo.com/Smyrna-Georgia and for some reason I'm making about one a week on other topics. That got me to thinking that it would be a great marketing tool for a number of industries. It would be a great way to highlight seasonal retail items that a shop carrys.  It would be a great way to highlight an artist's community.  It really has so many uses. 

For SEO purposes, it is an easy way to increase the number of links to your site.  Additionally, the comment and polling tools gives businesses a way to interact with their customers without having to start an integrate a blog in their website. 

So... drop on by Squidoo and see if it is a good tool for your business.

Comments

[Scott Rooks]

I read your blog back in Dec and designed a lens on squidoo.

I wanted to followup with you ask how your lens are doing and if you have created any more? Has it increased your traffic and have you been able to form groups? Have you earned any royalties?

I have not had a lot of success with it but thought I would ask you and see if maybe I missed something with squidoo.

[Carol K]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the question. Here are a couple of my observations re: Squidoo based on not only what I've done for me, but for what I've done for clients.

1. December traffic has been down on most of my lenses.
2. It takes a little while for the search engines to register your lens.
3. I have had some increased traffic when I submit my lenses to Squidoo Groups.
4. I do find that I do get increased traffic when I have multiple lenses on similar topics. Use a link module to link to your other lenses.
5. Pinpointing some keywords to use over and over again does help searchability and lenses where I have repeated keywords multiple times do get more hits.
6. As for royalties, I find that my lenses where I donate the money often get more royalties. Not sure how or why, but it is something I've noticed.

Thanks again for your comment. Let me know how things proceed.

[Good Clinical Practice]

I think Digg is better but it probably depends on the niche you are working in.