Category: Viral Marketing, Social Media
Summary & Overview
Squidoo is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. Squidoo is in the top 500 most visited sites in the world, and in the top 300 most viewed in the United States. Squidoo grew 91% in 2008, and had 900,000 hand built lenses as of February 1st, 2009.
Squidoo is a user-generated website which uses the concept of a lens as its primary feature. In his eBook “Everyone's an Expert,” Godin describes a lens as ”[filtering] light and [showing] us what we need to see.” Lenses are much like a blog posts, except on a single subject. The site allows content creators to earn revenue from referral links to sites like Amazon.com and eBay. The users who create lenses, called “lensmasters,” can be anyone with an interest in a specific subject; they do not necessarily have to be externally-recognized experts. In Squidoo's early stages, Godin noted that Martha Stewart and Jane Goodall's lenses did not receive large amounts of traffic, whereas lenses on MySpace and the online game line rider were among the site's most successful. Squidoo contains lenses on 22 different topics, including Health & Medicine, Food & Cooking, and Business.
Squidoo is notable in that it allows users to create multimedia pages without learning html. These pages often achieve built-in popularity due to their association with thousands of other Squidoo pages.
The site also employs a unique payment scheme: 5% of its revenue goes to charity, 50% goes to the lensmasters, and 45% goes to Squidoo. The lens and Squidoo rely on advertising and affiliate links to create revenue. Nearly half of lensmasters donate their royalties to any of 65 featured charities, ranging from NPR and the American Heart Association to smaller organizations like Chimp Haven and Planet Gumbo. In October 2008, Squidoo donated $80,000 to charity.
Alexa Traffic Rank
#335
The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past three months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.
Setup Time
Less than 1 Hour.
Ongoing Maintenance
Minimal, although you should continue to add fresh content to your lens as appropriate.
Cost
Free.
Speed of Results
Moderate.
Basic Use
Squidoo is a “Content-Sharing Site” that gives you a one page website, or “lens,” where you can share content about any topic you wish. Search engines like Google are constantly pulling content from Squidoo lenses to show in search engine results.
For example, if you had a Squidoo lens all about you, when someone goes to Google and types in your name, your Squidoo lens can show in the search engines results.
Squidoo is great, because it's simple to setup, edit, and can be an excellent source of quality traffic.
Basic Action Steps
- Create a Squidoo Account
- Create a New Squidoo Lens Around One Keyword
- Update Your Bio
- “Polish” Your Lens: Add Content
- “Polish” Your Lens: Add Pictures & Videos
- Add Links to Your Lens
- Publish Your Lens
Basic Tips & Tricks
• You can link as many lenses as you wish to your main “About Me” lens
• Each lens should be on a specific topic
• “How To” lenses are fantastic and a great way to position yourself as a leader
• Use the “Polaroid” module to add larger photos to your module that look professional and have a caption.
Intermediate Strategies
Intermediate Action Steps
Keeping in mind that your goal for your Squidoo lens is to share relevant content that is then picked up by the search engines, you will want to ensure that your lens is search engine friendly.
Intermediate Tips & Tricks
• Get back links to your Squidoo lens, blog or website by leaving thoughtful comments, plus your link, on other Squidoo lenses. Let the Lens Master know what you learned on their lens, how it assisted you, and any other relevant points you would like to add. Be sure your comments are intelligent and relevant and treat someone else’s lens as if it were your own.
• No Squidoo spam!
• You can promote your Squidoo lens by linking it to your website, blogs, Facebook, and any of your other social media/content sharing sites.
Advanced Marketer
Advanced Action Steps
Create another Squidoo lens on a specific business topic based on a second keyword, or keyword phrase.
Continue to add Squidoo lenses as appropriate.
Related Marketing Strategies
• Twitter
• Blogging
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Video Marketing
• Personal Branding & Positioning
For questions about Squidoo, please send an email to resources@michaelwyrosdick.com with “Squidoo” in your subject line.
