A great to use Squidoo: learn as you go, and document.

Here's another reason I love Squidoo: it gives me a second motivation when I'm thinking about launching a project.

For instance, not too long ago I got very interested in giant puppets, and went to see a local show given by the Paperhand Puppet Intervention troupe, and thought it would be a fun thing to do with my young friend Jeimy (I'm a mentor through the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate Program: here's a lens about mentoring).

It seemed like a lot of work, though, and I might have sighed and not done it, but then I thought: "Oh, I could take photos of the process and make some lenses!" and so I did.

While I was on that kick, I thought about the song I sing with my musical partner Bob Vasile (we're the Pratie Heads British Isles fiddle tunes and songs duo). The song is about that blood-thirsty villanous puppet Punch and his antics; I made a lens about Punch and Judy so I could put our song on it and that got me started learning how to cast a plaster mold for paper-mache heads. I love paper mache. And that got me into a series of paper-mache heads for Halloween!

One more example... about twenty years ago when I was just starting to direct an a cappella vocal ensemble (the Solstice Assembly), we made a Skylark Productions recording called Three Log Night: Uncommon Music for the Holiday Season. I made a songbook to go with it. Twenty years later, I still get emails ordering the cd and songbook! So I decided to re-issue both, mainly because I could also make a lens about them: A Christmas Songbook.

Sometimes - you need a reason to get up and do something. The happy prospect of making a lens has often spurred me to get something done.

New blogger says hello, and: Why *I* love Squidoo (part one)

Hello friends (taps microphone to see if sound system is working) -

Thanks, Gene, for inviting me to join your Valley here... here's one of the reasons I love Squidoo:

I'm using Squidoo as a filing cabinet of my interests. And when I learn something new, I make a lens about it.

So, now, when I'm trying to remember how to use Yahoo pipes to format an rss feed - instead of digging around my messy desk for the notes I took when I first figured it out, I just look at the lens I compiled as I was learning!...

Same with using the "Wimpy Player" to put music on a lens. It takes about 17 clicks to do it, and I'd have forgotten how by now - except I wrote it up in a lens, so now I can look it up any time I forget ...

I was given a miniature horse in partial exchange for building a website for the best divorce mediator in Greensboro, NC - and people kept asking me about him (the horse, not the divorce mediator) and wondering if he's actually a Shetland Pony - so I looked the matter up online and wrote a lens about it!

I loved the wattle-and-daub houses I saw in Bulgaria and England and wondered about them, so I looked them up and found a bunch of good pictures - and wrote a lens about them. Now, everything I know about wattle and daub is in one place.

Do you use Squidoo this way?

I'm Chapel Hill fiddler, and you can see all my Squidoo lenses here.

Your Ten Most Recent Lenses

I'm issuing a challenge to all lensmasters. I would like to see lenses that list your ten most recent lenses.

The reason for this is simple. I often look through the lensmaster bio pages, trying to figure out what lenses are new. As of today, there's no way to tell. However... if you make a lens that lists only your newest lenses, and list that as one of your "Featured Lenses" on your bio page, then it will be easy for others to find them.

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I make a new lens, I want the world to know! Sometimes it takes days for those new lenses to get any attention at all. Well, having a list of ten new lenses would make it easier for people to find your fledgling creations.

Today I created Ten New Lenses by LindaJM, and wrote about it in SquidU, asking people to make a similar lens then leave their link on that thread. I also offered use of my graphic, included here. You can use it at will, or create another that is more to your liking.

Places to blog about squidoo

Blogging about squidoo on a free blog usually has this disadvantage: you may get your blog removed for linking only to one domain. For about a year there has been squidtop. Now there's also crabbysbeach.

So far some familiar people are blogging at crabbysbeach: AJ blogs about green lenses, luvmyludwig blogs about squidoo anniversaries, I'm doing more tributes to squidoo lensmasters and calendars.

Why I love squidoo

I know, this is just about the least original title for a squidoo blogpost. But while I'm at it, I might as well confess... I AM addicted.

I love that squidoo is a community place where new squids sometimes start out sharing their favorite lenses... like JOAN did.

I love that it's such a successful online place that it's considered normal to create a blog (like this one) for squidoo purposes only. Check out: Squidutils about how tags are important again... and The question of the weeks by growwear. This week: What would make you a better lensmaster? Great question, and all her questions are like that. The added bonus is links to your lenses, website or lensography (depending on Mimi's mood I think) for the best answer.

I also love the challenges - giant squid summer school, rocket moms and now the teams that are helping new squids (and old squids) reach their goals.

Then the culture of helping each other out is great. The squidoo answer deck is only a selection of all the great help lenses out there or course. Would this blog be complete without bragging a bit about my own efforts at helping the squidoo community?

Getting your lens found in google

Two of my most popular squidoo help lenses are devoted to how to get your lens found in google. The first I made was about that subject specifically, but in order to be really successful one has to start with something else: keyword research.

If you want to make a lens that is successful economically and gets found by google, you need to think about keywords BEFORE you make your lens. This is called 'keyword research'.

I did a blogpost about keyword research on my squidtop blog: analyzing a weight loss lens.

If you've set that up right the next step is promotion. You want your lens found in google, so some people submit their lens to google, yahoo etc. This is a waste of time.

The basis for Search Engine Optimization is getting links (good links) to your lenses. There are all kinds of ways to do that. Within squidoo it makes sense to submit to groups in your niche. But that is also potentially a trap. So I thought I'd give some advice about what to look out for when submitting your lens to a squidoo group. I also did a post analyzing link building for that same weight loss lens I talked about earlier.

One more thing: when it comes to search engine optimization I still see a lot of advice relating to tags. Tag pages however DO NOT COUNT towards your lenses backlink profile. What tags ARE good for was explored here.

Get Lost In Your Own Sites?

I have had such varied interests and have done so many sites in the last couple of years that I had to have some way for me to keep up with me. So, I did a blog site just to keep up with me. I found myself forgetting about blogs or other writings I had started and for some reason never followed up on. It was not a lack of interest, but a lack of organization. How can you keep a site up if you forget you even developed it?

So, I finally decided to do a site specifically to keep up with my internet writings. I started actually searching my records for all the sites I had previously done. As of tonight I am probably still missing some, but will add them as I remember them or come across them in my lists of ID’s and passwords. In the future, it will be easier for me as I will have all my links organized in one place. .

For you “Squidooers”, you probably have a lensography and that serves a good practical purpose for you and for your “friends”. However, if you get to the point I have gotten to in a few short years, you will probably have to organize the rest of your sites in a similar fashion.

On the site I just developed for me [LamarRoss.Com ] I have used a Wordpress blog format, developed pages to categorize my squidoo links, and made various other categories of links to organize links to my blogs, ezinearticles, etc. This is the site where I will attempt to keep a running tabulation of all my internet blogs, sites, affiliate links, etc. as they are developed.

If my followers, friends, and casual passersby learn from these “parts” that the “whole” of me is greater than the parts, so much the better, but the site was done primarily to organize me. I, like most everyone in life, have now and have had throughout my life many varying interests. These interests are reflected in the links on this site.

Some of my sites have been for fun. Some of my sites have been for money. But all of my sites are an expression of me and my interests. That will never change.

I will make occasional posting on items related to my many interests and attempt to keep on this site a listing of links to all my internet ventures, adventures, and misadventures. Only time will tell which of these sites reflect the ventures and which the misadventures. But, I promise you that I will always be having fun.

Check out my site. Maybe it will be something you will decide to do for you.