Beliefs - An Idea and a Lens

WOW! It's another one of those fast-moving weeks and I'm amazed to see that it's Thursday already!

Even with a plan I find I'm frequently de-railed. The benefit of having the system though is that I can take a deep breath and climb right back on where I fell off. I'm loving that in bigger ways than I imagined!!!

So... the idea I was playing around with was BELIEFS. As you can imagine that's a pretty b r o a d topic... nine times out of ten when I mentioned it to people their immediate question was some variation of, "What kind of belief?!?" I simply had to narrow it down!

Now... to be fair, I must explain that I have a motive for wanting to work with beliefs right now as I have been working in partnership for the past month or so revising a most brilliant course called BeliefBusters. It's a course providing a series of processes that have an amazing ability to help you break through disempowering beliefs you may not even realize you hold... resulting in personal transformation like nothing I've ever experienced before.


You may have guessed that I am passionate about personal growth and development and it's clear to me that we all have adopted some beliefs that simply do not serve us and until we uncover and release those... we are stuck at the level of our beliefs.

So, I was left with the question... how do I select a keyword that expresses all that?

Perhaps I should declare here - "Do what I say... not what I do". LOL I simply decided to go with a very long tail keyword... Belief Busters for Personal Transformation
(my motto - when in doubt, tell it like it is ;-))

So that's the lens I built today... I decided to focus on creating a lens filled with a variety of resources that support breaking through limiting beliefs. I decided to keep it a bit broad on purpose as I intend to create a few lenses on specific resources like this that I will 'hook' together.

It's late and I'm too tired to do any bookmarking. Since Squidoo hasn't even indexed my lens yet it's undoubtedly better for me to wait until tomorrow anyway!

I'll keep you posted about this experiment...
--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

SQUIDOO ~ A Winner!

You may have noticed that it's now February 1 --

It's 10 pm in my world and I just noticed that myself! Whoops, time to turn the calendar page. ;-)

So we wrap up the Squidoo.com experiment with a big 5 STARS!

Certainly not because I made so much money from my lenses this month (though I DID make some money!! ;-)). It's earned it's stars as a successful 'experiment' because of the wealth of information, tips, tricks and tools that have been discovered in the process of exploration!

That's speaking for me... I certainly hope YOU have found something new for yourself. Whether you were already familiar with squidoo.com or it was brand new to you... I hope you've received some value from tools to various other resources as well as our walk-through of the various aspects of building a squidoo lens!

Hmmm... what will the next 30 Day Marketing Experiment cover?!?

Stay tuned...
--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

p.s. Happy Ground Hog's day tomorrow!!!!

more Effective Promoting ON your Lens

Being able to effectively promote what you want to share on your lens goes hand-in-in with creating an attractive, remarkable lens.

And of course, if people are remarking about YOUR lens then more eyeballs are going to land on YOUR lens and if you're touching people through your lens you WILL see more click thru's to YOUR remarkable products and services. ;-)

So I just have to share a bit more about how you can build the best lens ever. Find out what the people who know and love Squidoo lenses look for when looking for a great lens.

Sound difficult?

Not at all... you simply go search out a 'Squid Angel' or two... or three... or more! Not only do they have a lot to teach us... if you are very good, and/or very lucky... you might just even end up with a 'blessing'! ;-)

I'll save you a bit of time and share what I discovered from a couple of those marvelous Angel's. I hope that serves you and I still encourage you to seek out more!

Oh... what is a Squid Angel you ask?

How do you get a blessing? Well, you can go to The Angels Forum or to The Squid Angel Group and post a request. They look at a lot of lenses every day so you might find an angel has been by anyway! You'll find what the Angels look for in a lens there as well. *hint, hint...goldmine here*

Gods Grace Notes says:

Squidoo has created the basic structure, allowing us to decide which "modules" we want to use in our lens, then fill it with our personalized content...

The pages are uniform...things like the orange header, each frame contains basic information and the tools you need to create and edit your content...

Like a tool box....everyone gets the same tools; you just have to decide how many of them you choose to master!

A Squid Angel's "job" is to evaluate lenses based on how effectively the creator has used the tools at their disposal...

• Did you create an informative, engaging lens about your topic...

• Did you give the who, what, where, when and why's?

• Did you provide contact information?

• Is your lens interactive? (for instance; email, guestbook)
  

• Does your lens make people want to know more about you, support your cause; or click out to your resources and make purchases?

• Did your audience find your work compelling enough to coax them to your website?

Those are the criteria that determine a great lens!

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Flaming Lacer says:

If you want a blessing check out my top ten list of do's and don'ts - it will give you an idea of what we look for.

1 - Proper titles given to the modules - default titles are just plain lazy in my opinion. If you don't care enough about a subject to give the modules a proper introduction, then leave it alone!

2 - Lensmaster Bio - I do like to see something in here, even if it is a general bio for all your lenses, it gives me a feel for the person and how/why they are dealing with the subject. I prefer to see an image (not necessarily a photo) because it makes the lens look more cared for. A specific bio for that lens gets extra points as it is indicative of the Lensmasters interest in the topic.

3 - The Introduction should be just that - short, sharp and to the point. I don't like to see all / most of the lens content in here and I particularly don't like to see it all in bold. It is hard on the eyes and aesthetically unpleasant.

4 - A good variety of modules which are suitable to the subject. Interactivity via Polls, Plexos, You Tube etc is always a plus - where it is appropriate. Sometimes I feel modules have been put there just because the Lensmaster thinks it's a must have and it doesn't add to the lens.

5 - Appropriate images - they help break up large blocks of text and make the lens more attractive visually but again, only if appropriate.

6 - Good grammar, punctuation, spelling are an absolute must - no need for a reason here!

7 - A good flow to the lens, a logical progression of information and content. Monetised modules should be appropriately placed so that they follow the natural rhythm of the lens.

8 - Length of lens - I don't have an issue with long lenses (I have a tendency that way myself!) but I don't like encyclopedic lenses. If you have that much content - split it! Viewers lose interest after a while.

9 - Visually attractive - spending a little time to make sure your modules are properly formatted and look good is always worth it, viewers prefer it and will spend time browsing a lens that is pleasing and easy on the eye. Technical wizardry is not necessary - it doesn't win or lose 'points' and should only be used if it adds to the lens.

10 - Most important with all the bells and whistles you can muster is CONTENT. Good content is the most important thing of all. I try never to judge the subject - that is not the role of an Angel in my view. If I read a lens and feel at the end of it I have knowledge that I did not have before, or that my knowledge has been enhanced (even just by being presented well) then it is a good lens. If I have been entertained as well, so much the better.

Okay... I hope that gives you another idea about what steps you can take to tweak and hone your lens... and perhaps you'll be inspired to search for even more 'how-to' information over at Squidoo and come back and share with us. There are only so many hours in the day, ya know? The more we put our heads (and eyeballs) together the more we ALL gain!

Thanks, I appreciate you even more than Squidoo...
and I LOVE Squidoo!!!! ;-)

--Mary K

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-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Building a Squidoo Lens?

Today we are going to look at building a squidoo lens around your long tail keyword. First of all you want to make sure you have an open account at squidoo. Once you have your account opened you want to put the url you would like to use in the search bar. So continuing with yesterday's example I would want the url www.squidoo.com/how-to-clean-cloth-diapers. When you put that in the search bar it will either bring up a lens someone else has already done on this topic, a note that someone has this url and are still building it or you will see a nice little hello sticker. This little sticker says this lens can be your if you just claim it now.

Just click on the place it says click and it will take you to the set up process to get started on your lens. Mary K has walked you all through this part already, but I want to add a couple points.

Make sure you use your long tail keyword as the title of your lens, also once you get inside the editing area make sure you use it as the title for your intro module.

If you are using this lens to refer someone to an affiliate product make sure you jump right to the chase in your intro module. Leave out the hi I'm Jackie Lee stuff ~ make sure to put it in your bio though. I say this because google will pick up the first paragraph of your intro module to put as a description. You want people seeing it in google search results to know this is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. So start off your intro module with the problem you are solving, and try to get your long tail keyword in the first two sentences exactly as you are trying to optimize for. This will show up in bold in your search engine listing, giving you bold keywords twice in your listing.

The next step is to give the meat of your lens. You will need at least 2 more modules, and then of course a guest book. It's always great for fresh content to have a guest book. I'd try to start with a couple of write/text modules. Start giving the reader information about the problem you are trying to solve in the first. Then in the second text module go ahead and show them how you are going to solve the problem.

There's some conflicting opinions on just how to do this. Some say to leave all the outgoing links out of your module until google has got them, but I don't know how true this is. I would probably stick to only one or two outgoing links in the beginning.

Remember, you need to update your lens every day or every other day for the first few weeks so you want to leave yourself room to grow.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about how to find products for your niche. If you don't have any products, but know the solution to the problem go ahead and get started, don't worry about links you can put them in as you go. You can also rearrange, change text and whatnot ~ which will be counted as fresh content.

When you have at least 4 modules in your lens go ahead and hit the "publish" button. Once it has published go ahead and "view lens" to take a look at what everyone else is going to see.

As you can see the logistics of actually building a lens is not really my strong suit in explaining. So maybe I will have to start making videos again since the research part is really over. ;)

No matter how much information you have it never matters until you use it. Now Go Build Your Lens!!!! Talk to you tomorrow.

Jackie Lee :)