Did you know you can syndicate your SquidCasts by RSS and email?

December 22, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 6 Comments
Filed under: John Dilbeck, Lenses, RSS Syndication, Squidoo Lenses, email marketing 

As I’ve written previously on this blog, you can treat your Squidoo lenses as a sort of mini-blog by sending a SquidCast whenever you create a new lens or make significant updates to an existing lens.

The SquidCast is a very limited posting (500 characters maximum) about the lens. This is added to the RSS feed for that lens.

For example, the following URL is the RSS feed for my John Dilbeck lensography lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lens/John-Dilbeck

Each lens has a similar RSS feed.

In order to make use of this, you must remember to send a SquidCast whenever appropriate. Fortunately, we are reminded to do this whenever we publish a lens.

You can treat this RSS feed as you would any other. It can be added to feed readers, syndicated using RSS modules on other lenses or your blog, and it can be syndicated via email, if you want.

I got to thinking about this because I read a post by Linda Martin on her blog: Offer Email Subscriptions to Your SquidCasts

She has created a new lens, Offer Email Subscriptions to Your SquidCasts, that explains the process of offering updates via email for your SquidCasts for all your lenses.

Essentially, her method uses the RSS feed for all a lensmaster’s Squidcasts, provided by thefluffanutta’s SquidUtils.com, and syndicates it using the free services of FeedBurner.com.

Each lensmaster can get an RSS feed through SquidUtils.com that includes the SquidCasts you’ve made for all your lenses, combined. The URL for my feed is:

http://squidutils.com/squidcasts/from/johndilbeck.rss

Feedburner.com provides tools for publicizing your RSS feeds, including syndication via email. It is a free service, and you can syndicate as many RSS or Atom feeds as you want.

Using the method Linda describes on her lens, anyone who subscribes to the email updates will be notified whenever a lensmaster updates any of his or her lenses. This may be a very good way to keep your fans updated if your lenses are about similar topics.

However, if you have a lot of very different types of lenses, it may not be the best approach, necessarily.

Linda provides a caution on her lenses reminding the subscriber that they’ll receive updates on all her lenses, not just the one they’re subscribing from.

On the other hand, you may want to restrict updates to just the lens that’s being read.

You can do this by syndicating just that lens’ RSS feed via Feedburner, instead of the combined SquidCasts feed provided by SquidUtils.

That way, your readers will not be surprised by updates totally unrelated to the lens from which they subscribed.

So, which is better?

Do you want an easy way for your readers to subscribe to your SquidCasts for all your lenses combined?

…or…

Do you want an easy way for your readers to subscribe to just the SquidCasts about the lens they are currently reading?

I think syndicating the SquidCasts for all your lenses may be more useful, unless you have a lens that will be updated frequently. There’s not much point to subscribing to updates to a lens if it is only updated every few months or so, is there?

Fortunately, you can do either – or both – depending upon what you think is best for your readers and the particular lens they are visiting.

Thanks for the reminder, Linda, and for providing clear instructions on providing our fans with another easy way to be informed when we make changes to our lenses.

If you set this up, don’t forget to offer it to your fans on your lensmasters’ page, too.

So, what do you think about this? Is it something you would want to offer to the readers of your Squidoo lenses and to your fans?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Is Squidoo a part of your marketing mix?

December 17, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 34 Comments
Filed under: CafePress, Communities, Lenses, Marketing, Poll, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing 

I am a huge fan of Squidoo and use it as a major part of my marketing mix.

I recommend Squidoo for a number of reasons. The lenses are easy to build and you can always go back and modify them whenever you want. It’s free to use. They even pay you to use their free service – how’s that for a deal!

Why do they call it a lens?

Squidoo calls it a lens, actually one page on their site, because you can focus the page on a particular topic. Not every lensmaster does this, but the more successful ones tightly focus a lens on just one subject. If you want to cover multiple subjects, you can always create new lenses, and Squidoo offers several ways to help you cross-promote your related lenses.

Are you a Squidoo lensmaster?

I am happy to be a squidoo lensmaster and I currently have about 70 lenses. I had more, but had to delete almost 50 of them when one of the companies I was promoting changed direction. It’s time to start creating new lenses about the topics in which I’m interested.

Here’s my profile page: John Dilbeck, Squidoo Lensmaster.

If you examine this page, you’ll see that in addition to listing all my lenses, I can customize the page to link to other sites, including this blog, my Cafepress store, my Lulu store (which needs lots of work next year), my profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and more.

If you’re reading this, I invite you to follow me on Twitter and become my friend on Facebook.

I think you can see at a glance that your Squidoo lensmaster page is a good way to link to other sites that are important to you.

If you get serious about Squidoo, you may want to create your own lensography to list your lenses in whatever way you want to present them. Here’s my main lensography (you can have more than one): Who is John Dilbeck?

Now, remember that you don’t have to build a lensography about yourself, although it is recommended to keep track of all your lenses and to present them however you want. You can build multiple lensographies.

Let’s say that you are promoting a particular product or service and you want to have multiple lenses, each of which discusses a major feature or benefit. You can create a lens about the main topic and then link to each of the sub-lenses. Even though each page is totally separate on Squidoo, you can present them organized logically and all together. That gives you a lot of flexibility.

Do you have a blog?

If so, you need to create a lens about it.

Why? Because you can tell people about your blog, syndicate your RSS feed, and get the benefit of Squidoo’s high rankings in the search engines.

For instance, I have a lens for this 21st Century Affiliate Marketing blog.

Do you have a CafePress shop?

How would you like to promote not only your store and the products within it, but also be able to promote other products sold on Cafepress – and earn some money doing it?

CafePress has an affiliate program on Commission Junction, and it pays a nice commission when you sell other people’s products. However, just by building a Squidoo lens, you can promote products without having to join at CJ.

But, you’ll make more money if you sell your own products from your lenses.

I have a CafePress shop at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com and sell products just about every day.

I created a lens, John Dilbeck’s Shirts, Mugs, and Hats, where I link to the store and some of my best-selling items. There’s also a section where you can add a link to your Cafepress store, and I show random products from searches farther down the lens. I earn money on every sale, and you can do the same thing. It just takes a little time and creativity.

I even created a lens mainly designed to help you promote your CafePress shop. Several dozen shop owners have taken advantage of this, but few have gone back after adding their shops and voted them up higher in the list. Always remember to reload the page after adding something to a Plexo list so you can vote for it.

Come and Promote Your CafePress Store.

By the way, did you know that you can open a CafePress shop for free? Once you’re serious about it, you may want to upgrade to a pro shop. I did, and it’s basically free for me since my first couple of sales every month pays the fee and the rest of my sales are all profit. Not a bad deal.

Learn how to get started at CafePress and Make Your Own T-Shirts.

Promote Your Favorite Products and Services at Squidoo

As you may already be aware, one of the services I enjoy promoting the most is Site Build It! I’m both a satisfied customer and a very happy affiliate.

I have several lenses where I promote Site Build It!.

One of my most popular lenses is Site Build It, a revolution in website design, hosting, and promotion and I invite you to visit the lens, if you’re interested.

I think one reason this lens is popular is because I help other fellow SBIers promote their sites and lenses there. If you are an SBIer and have a website powered by Site Build It!, you are welcome to submit your site to the appropriate module on that lens. If you have lenses about SBI, there is a place you can add it, too.

You’ll note that I even welcome affiliate lenses from competing 5 Pillar affiliates.

As I have time, and as more services are announced at SBI, I’ll be adding more lenses discussing the benefits of those services.

Hint: I can’t tell you any more right now, but Sitesell will be announcing an exciting new educational service in about three weeks. Stay tuned for more information. I was on a conference call about it, just this afternoon, and I think there will be people who will want to take advantage of this new service. That’s all I can say, right now.

Squidoo offers much more

There are many modules that can be added to lenses to help you promote what you’re doing and help people find what you’ve written.

They offer a Twitter module where you can show your latest tweets.

Lijit.com has a special module so people can search your content via their search engine. When you add it to a lens, you can specify which lenses to include in the search results.

By going directly to Lijit.com, you can get code to add their search to your blogs and sites, too. You can see it in action in the right column of this blog.

Want to sell products from Amazon? There are modules designed to make it easy to do just that.

It would take a lot of blog posts to cover all that Squidoo offers to help you accomplish what you want, so I’m going to stop here.

How do you become a lensmaster

It’s easy to start building lenses on Squidoo. Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it. Do it now, while you are thinking about it.

Remember, you can start simply and then expand your lens(es) whenever you want. I edited three of my lenses and republished them while I was writing this. It’s pretty easy once you learn how to do it.

Learn more from other Squidoo marketers

I would like to invite you to join us on the Squidoo Marketers community.

Come and learn from people who are using Squidoo in their marketing mix. Share what you know. Tell us about your lenses. Promote your CafePress shops.

It’s a friendly little community, and I’m looking forward to you joining us and participating there.

What’s your opinion?

So, what’s your opinion of using Squidoo as part of your marketing mix? I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts, opinions, and comments about your experiences with, or lack thereof, using Squidoo.

Act on your dream!

JD

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New lens for our Squidoo Marketing Community on Squidoo.com

March 16, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Business Networking, Communities, Lenses, Marketing, Squidoo Lenses 

I recently created a new lens for our Squidoo Marketing Community at Squidoo.com.

Its purpose is to syndicate a couple of RSS feeds from our new Squidoo Marketing social networking site. The new lens republishes the Latest Activities feed toward the top and the Forum feed toward the bottom.

Additionally, you are invited to vote in our poll and participate in the duel.

You’ll need to be a Squidoo lensmaster to participate, and you can become one for free. I recommend Squidoo and have numerous lenses there with more on the drawing board.

Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it.

Please feel free to link to the new lens at:

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-marketing-community

I look forward to seeing your feedback on the lens and please – if you want – rank the lens (5 stars is best) and offer your comments in the duel or the comments section at the bottom of the lens.

You’ll note that the people who are participating the most on our new social network are the ones who are getting mentioned the most on our new lens.

How easy is that?

All you have to do is participate on our social networking site. I’ll be republishing those feeds on other sites I own. That means that there will be more links to your profile page as you participate more and as I have the time to syndicate the news feeds on more sites.

Can you think of something I should add to the new lens to make it more useful? All suggestions are welcome.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Squidoo Lensmaster John Dilbeck at your service.

February 2, 2006 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Lenses, Musings, Powerful Intentions, Ryze, Websites 

I’ve added a new title to my list: Lensmaster.

You can see my lenses at John Dilbeck, Squidoo Lensmaster.

What’s a lens?

Basically, it’s a one-page site focused on a particular topic that
links out to other sites.

Since I was introduced to Squidoo by Pat Thompson, I’ve been busy building lots of lenses. Some will be permanent. Others are experiments that may be deleted at any time.

I invite you to view my lenses, and, if you are so inclined, build
some of your own.

Pat Thompson is building a lens that lists lenses built by Powerful Intentions Members.

Lisa Boyd is building a lens that lists lenses built by Ryze Members.

All the best,

JD

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