Squidlog.net

AJ is musing about all the generous people on Squidoo who give so much time to help others.

When I first joined Squidoo, it was thanks to the willingness of other experienced (and busy) Lensmasters to pass on what they knew that made my very steep learning curve seem less like a climb up Mount Everest.

OK, it was still a tough climb that I could relate to my ascent of Mount Tryfan in Wales many years ago, but when you are climbing with the right people, it makes all the difference!

Just recently I have again been on the receiving end of some brilliant help, some of it a complete surprise.

A couple of weeks ago Giant Squid Organiser Bonnie posted a message on the Giant Squid Tips Blog,  inviting Lensmasters to submit the link to one Lens that they would like reviewed. Bonnie said:

Robin and I (with some help from Squidoo HQ) are offering a no nonsense way to help get your LensRank, traffic and sales up this Holiday season.

We were told:

Pick one holiday lens that you wish had more sales, more traffic, more comments, more reader interaction, more editorial prowess. Whatever your goal might be, pick just one lens that you really want to work on for this season.

OMG (that’s Oh My Gosh), what an opportunity! The chance to have a lens reviewed by people who really know what they are talking about. It would be pot luck who you got out of Bonnie, Robin, Seth, Megan or Kimberly but whoever it was, I knew we would get some great help.

I submitted: Twelve Days of a Green and Ethical Christmas. It is a lens that was made nearly a year ago, before I learned about Keywords and how to use HTML to make a lens stand out. Then I waited to see if I was one of the lucky people….

JAHOOOOOOOOO!

The lens was the second to be reviewed on the Giant Squid Tips blog. But not only was there a review from Kimberly but also a new thread started by Bonnie on the Giant Squid Forum.

Other Giants have taken the trouble to not only visit my lens, but post their own feedback, which will also help me to improve the lens. And it is help like that, which makes Squidoo such a great Community.

All this help is very visible and it demonstrates time after time all the hard work the GSOs do to help us learn good techniques to make our lenses even better and hopefully get the traffic we are all after.

When other Lensmasters also happily join in on these projects to lend a helping hand, then the little pebble that the GSOs threw into the middle of the pond that created a little ripple, all of a sudden turns into a huge deluge of generosity. The analogy is a good one because there’s times when I feel swept away by people’s kindness on Squidoo.

I was also swept away this week by Lensmaster Tipi, who took a real liking to my Lens Trooping the Colour (which is about The Queen’s official birthday celebrations) and proceeded to promote it all over the place. Susie tweeted it, she emailed it to her sister, she lensrolled it and it even got a Purple Star as the result of Tipi’s nomination.

This is a great example (and I’m not just saying it because it was my lens) of what Lensmasters can do to ensure that the cream rises to the top on Squidoo.

That Champion of Newbies, Lensmaster a-willow is also encouraging her Fresh Squids to become more Community minded by setting them a task to Say Thank You to the Community and all members of Squidoo can add relevant lenses to a plexo on Kathy McGraw’s lens: Community Appreciation – another great way to help each other.

But what about the other sometimes not quite so visible help that goes on all over Squidoo? Are we sometimes guilty of confusing visibility with activity? Or to put it another way invisibility with inactivity?

It was a thread on the SquidU Forum started by Lensmaster KathyMcGraw that got me thinking about all the people who quietly go about helping others on Squidoo. I realised that unless people who have received that help say anything then often we don’t get to hear about it. And if we don’t get to hear about it, then neither does HQ.

Kathy used this thread to say thank you to some Angels, but she particularly wanted to thank Lensmaster Spirituality (Katinka). Kathy said in the Forum:

Spirituality took it upon herself to see if I was good enough (after I questioned it) to be a Giant.  Boom, boom, boom emails were flooding my mailbox to say I had new comments.  And each one was from Spirituality….she really was checking a variety of lenses.  She gave me blessings and encouragement as well as writing about my lenses to help me.  Now that is one special Angel in my book.

And earlier this year I was another recipient of some private help from Katinka (although I did blog about it on SquidTop) when I decided to publish a lens about *GASP* weight loss!

Well, I was fed up with all the crap lenses about weight loss and not only did I want to prove that it was possible to compete in a hugely competitive market, but I also wanted to prove you could write a truthful lens about genuine personal experience on a topic that is one of the most spammed on Squidoo.

Katinka read my blog post about my newly published lens and asked if she could pull it apart from an SEO perspective and then publish her findings.

How could I refuse? Here was the chance to learn from one of the Squidoo Jedi Masters of SEO!

It was the start of a long exchange of emails, peppered with Katinka’s very special blend of direct (and I mean very direct) honesty and great sense of humour. During that time I learned much of what I now know about researching keywords and phrases and how to use them on a lens. It was also Katinka who helped me narrow the niche down from Weight Loss to Losing Weight on a Wheatfree diet.

Not only was Katinka helpful in teaching me what to do, she is undoubtedly the reason why the Lens did (and is still doing) so well.

Katinka has some great lenses on keywords and SEO and she has just started up a new blog: Marketing Spiritual – Online marketing with spiritual integrity. I particularly like her post:  Search Engine Marketing Basics – 5 SEO Techniques, which like all of Katinka’s lenses and blogs is written in such an easy to read and understand style.

So what should we be doing to say Thank You for all this unasked for help?

There’s lots of ways:

Some people thank Angels for their Blessings publicly in the SquidU Forum as Kathy did

Others blog about the help they receive

You can email your thanks via the Contact Me button on a Lensmaster’s Bio

You can thank them on one of your own lenses. I published Thank You For The Help as a direct result of the help I received in my first couple of months on Squidoo and MiMi published a tribute to her SquidFriend Joan Adams

Or…..

You can simply visit their lenses and leave a thank you in their Guestbook.

And remember that Japanese Proverb?

One kind word can warm three months

Crikey, I shall never be cold again!

For further reading about AJ musing on manners on Squidoo, visit Squid Etiquette – the Do’s and Dont’s on Squidoo

Last week I said I would be doing an article about Guestbook Etiquette – this has been held back to allow me more time to work through the great comments people have added to the thread I started in the SquidU Forum. As for next week’s post – we shall see…..

[ratings]

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