Squidlog.net

Squidoo etiquette is a hot topic these days, as AJ writes her series on this topic on Squidlog, the hottest Squidoo News Magazine on the Internet.

You might wonder why anyone needs to be reminded to be kind to their fellow lensmasters, or anyone else on the various social networking platforms.

Common courtesy may not always be followed and this could be due to a number of reasons.

First of all, people are in their own separate realities as they create blog posts or lenses, or respond to any number of people all over the world by means of the world wide web. People are sometimes oblivious to the fact that they are not really alone, at all.

Second of all, a certain percentage of people are drawn to the internet and Squidoo included, who have a range of disabilities that may include infirmary, depression, Asperger’s, or Autism, or perhaps a terminal illness, or any number of other diagnoses.

Granny Sage made a very wise observation: respond to people by what they are trying to say, not how they are saying it.

Another way to look at it: the first human response is almost always of the ego. Let that response go. Wait for your highest inner power to answer. If this does not arise, then do not comment at all.

The Squidoo Forum was used as an example throughout the show. People fail to read the rules and guidelines. They do not take the time to familiarize themselves with the Squid-Nots. They allow their Ego to dictate a knee jerk and often rude response.

If you are annoyed by the rudeness of another, use some self-discipline before shooting off a one line comment meant to cut down a person at the knees. Again, look at the heart of the message, not the tone. Or simply ignore it.

The discussion turned to Twitter. I personally think that Broadcast messages are very rude. Lately, I’ve been getting Twitter direct messages asking me to join a person’s Mafia Family.

How idiotic is that?

Aj’s rule of thumb is to never criticize in the comment section of a lens. Praise in public, constructively criticize by contacting the lensmaster privately. Don’t be like some of the Doctors I have seen who scream at nurses in front of patients. This rises forth within my psyche what we described as righteous indignation on the show.

Do not respond to people while in the throes of Righteous Indignation, although I would like the doctor I am thinking of to read this and think before he does his screaming again. But he wouldn’t think I was talking about him, the Perfect One!

AJ and Joan think it’s rude not to put a Bio-picture of yourself on your Squidoo Lensmaster page. When you fail  to do that, an orange squid defaults as your identity. I tend to think that if a person is not internet savvy at all, they just don’t know any better. Some lensmasters establish identities by using avatars to represent themselves. Stargazer, Ohme, Susan52 and even AJ have done this, and it works on Squidoo very well.

Charly Leetham responded in the chat room by saying that many marketers forget there is a real human being behind the purchaser. People forget that first and foremost, building relationships is the most important thing.

I asked AJ how she thinks others see her. AJ said that she feels people do not understand her sense of humor, which she is better able to express through her Squidlog articles. I thought it was hysterical when AJ called  someone who responded inappropriately on a lens of hers as a “toe-rag.” Her cheeky side, as she calls it, certainly came out in that remark!

Spamming is a problem almost anywhere you go on the internet, but especially on Squidoo. This is why the Angel Blessing (and appropriate Dinging) program was established on Squidoo. Angels oversee all lenses being published and can see where spamming arises, and nip those in the bud. They also can see great lenses and lensmasters in the making and encourage these by incurring a blessing. Even as we did the show, many were waiting to hear if they were accepted into the Angel Program–or not.

All in all, spamming is bad etiquette. I think it takes people some time to know exactly how to conduct themselves on Squidoo and everywhere else they go on the internet.

Once the learning curve is overcome, anything is possible!

Join us on Giant Squid Open Mike October 19th when our guest is Charly Leetham, discussing email marketing and building a list, and how this ties into Squidoo.

Join us on Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom, October 20. Guest to be announced!

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The Giant Squid Challenge for 2009 was our GSOM topic on 10/5. The following is how this latest challenge is set up and who is in charge of what. This time around it is one big team instead of several teams seemingly competing with the other, if only in jest.

Interested lensmasters should read the following lens and follow those directions to apply.  http://www.squidoo.com/new-giant-squid-challenge

The challenge is led by Robin.

Then, there’s the ning which is  by invitation only.

The ning is divided into subject groups.  Each greeter manages a specific study area (“group” in ning vocabulary).  Greeters are answering questions or referring lensmasters to the place to find the answers to their questions.  Members are encouarged to join all groups and ask questions as needed.  They are all one team.

As stated, there are no specific teams as in the past.

Here are the following Greeters for this next Giant Challenge!

Ohme (Nancy) Creating a Local Network using Squidoo

Crystal (luvmyludwig)  – Making a Good Lens Great!  — how to polish a lens with all the “extras” to make it stand out.

Mimi (growwear)  – Photo Studio — all about photos, where to find them, how to use them, copyright issues, etc

KAB — Squidoo Co-Brands –How to personalize a co-brand lens, what the co-brands are, etc

Michelle Willow (a_willow)   Squidoo Tools – Squidoo blogs, squidcast, tweets, dashboards

Joan Adams (joan4)  – Writing from the heart –help with lensographies, personal lenses

Bonnie (justbon) -Squidoo earnings elevator – advice to help you increase your squidoo earnings

Bev Owens -(Bev’s Paper) Mod Squad – all about squidoo modules– using them effectively, placement, etc

Rajays – Promoting your lenses – tips and tricks to promote lenses the right way

Robin will have a suggested lens subject every week, but not required. There is an active forum for critiques.

In addition to the ning, there are specific contest lenses.  These are set up by the greeters.  Participating  lensmasters can add their lenses to the plexos to compete for a spot on the Giant Squid Community Showcase blog in these categories.

http://www.squidoo.com/giant-squid-challenge-lenses-about-me-squidwho-lensography

http://www.squidoo.com/book-lenses-giant-challenge

http://www.squidoo.com/animals-and-nature-lenses

http://www.squidoo.com/entertainment-giants

http://www.squidoo.com/giants-and-hobbies-how-to-do-it-yourself

http://www.squidoo.com/local-lenses

http://www.squidoo.com/giant-squid-challenge-parenting-kids

http://www.squidoo.com/pop-culture-giant-challenge

http://www.squidoo.com/potential-giant-squid-shopping-lenses-showcase

http://www.squidoo.com/pop-culture-giant-challenge

Ohme came on the show today which was a wonderful pleasure! She is purely delightful! She is Pendleton, South Carolina’s Squidoo Queen and has put Squidoo on the map in that town.

Ohme ordered a little Ohme bug which she hides throughout the town of Pendleton. When people find it, they get a dinner on the town, and other assorted gifts! All of this links to Squidoo in some capacity.

Ohme also has a Community Bulletin Lens which gets terrific local traffic. I think she updates that almost every day!

Ohme has a Pendleton Town List of 12 groups of local churches, media, Clemson University, Boy Scouts, the High School,  and every week people call her to get on the list.

She said this Bulletin is Pendleton’s newspaper! In addition, Ohme’s Blog showcases Pendleton’s local businesses.

No wonder she is the Squidoo Queen of Pendleton!

We discussed how Local Lenses are wide open territory!

I made one this week which features a local Astrologer, also an old friend of my mother.

I bought a domain name and helped her set up a blog.

Her name is Sheila Audet and she is Astrology’s Astrologer! She will be on Moon, Moon & You: The Collective Wisdom the second Tuesday of every month, starting October 13th, this coming Tuesday, my mother’s 95th birthday.

Kab came on the line whose category is Brands and Co-Brands in her new greeter role. I think she is also involved in Pop Culture topics. Kab joined Squidoo around he same time i did 9/2006. In fact, we are both celebrating our three year Squidoo Anniversary!

Kab went for Giant as soon as this option was available. Me? I didn’t even think about it until Joan told me about doing it, probably for the 50th time!!

Kab created a local lens called “Capitol-District-Twitter” which features all the local businesses in her area who are on Twitter. Joan and I must do something similar for our respective areas. Kab, I couldn’t find the proper link, so if you are reading this, please put it up in the comment’s section?

Every now and again, a new Giant popped in to say that they just heard about becoming a Giant!

How much fun is that?

Join us Monday 10/12/09  GSOM when AJ will discuss with us Squidoo Etiquette.

Join us Tuesday 10/13 When Sheila Audet, Astrology’s Astrologer will be on Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom.

Thank you Joan Adams for helping me get straight about the new Greeter Challenge!! This was not easy after too many days with very little sleep!

The next deadline to make 50-100 lenses is 12/31/2009.

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Recently I was ill for about two weeks and had to limit my computer time dramatically.  Along with suffering from my illness, I was experiencing Giant Squid OpenMike withdrawal syndrome – I couldn’t sit at the computer and listen to the Blog Talk Radio Show!

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.  I decided I needed to get the latest show on my iPod so I could take it to bed and listen to it…and I achieved this.

Here’s what I did:

1. Right-clicked on the iTunes section of the Giant Squid OpenMike player.

2. Downloaded the show to iTunes.

3. Checked the download by clicking on “podcasts” in iTunes and then right-clicked the relevant folder to view the menu in Windows Explorer (all six shows were automatically downloaded to iTunes).

4. Updated my iPod with iTunes (synchronizing).

5. Viewed the podcast menu on my iPod and clicked on the show I wanted to listen to.

6.  Laid back and enjoyed the Giant Squid OpenMike show about the New Paradign for Internet Marketing - withdrawal symptoms evaporated!

P.S.  The next time I opened iTunes, it automatically updated the podcast with the latest show.

I am continuously amazed at the quality of the material on these shows and the latest one with PotPieGirl is no different.   There are heaps of ideas and a new Squidoo business model in this show and it is ably reviewed by mukunda22.

If all else fails take the Giant Squid OpenMike to bed or on your walk (as I did this morning!).

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Pot Pie Girl is a folk hero at Squidoo.com. I like to call her a lightening rod. She knows what she is about and tells it like it is. She is an agent of change.

The topic today was how to use Squidoo locally to help businesses get found on Google and very possibly get on the front page of Google.

She creates lenses which have so much more personality than a static webpage,  although she uses web domains, too.

People pay to have a website built for them costing 5 to 10 thousand dollars, and because the webmaster did not do a proper keyword search, no one can find the page.

Joan said that she has a Squidoo account under the name of Granny Geek. She made a lens for a local business whose specialty is solar energy, to back link to the website he already has. The business owner, Craig Ferguson, was also on “Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom” to talk about how to “get off the grid.” I am not sure how he utilized the audio of that show, but he sure could have gotten much mileage out of that.

The audio can be place on the lens, as well.

Has Craig started a weblog? That, too, would create extra push to Joan’s lens, his website, the audio and the blog all with just the right choice of keywords that will put Craig’s business on the front page of Google.

Ohme of Squidoo is Joan’s sister. She has a series of lenses to showcase her town, Pendleton, South Carolina. Ohme was recently awarded an honor never before awarded to anyone at Squidoo: The Queen Of Squidoo Of Pendleton, South Carolina.

We have  power as Squidoo Lensmasters. We can use the authority that Squidoo has with Google and “go local.” We can take Squidoo to the streets, as Pot Pie Girl recommends.

This is virgin territory.

Is there a potential to make money with this?

Pot Pie girl has a passion for helping her town. She has created a sort of “rent a site” model. She buys a domain, “Boonetown Electrician,”  Google Ranks it, and then she shows the business the results.

She now has fifty sites and soon plans to rent them out.  She then will personalize it for the business owner.

The lens is the site. The business owner will use the power of blogging  and ezine article writing to further rank the business with Google.

Businesses today pay a hefty amount for Yellow Page advertising. No one uses the phone book anymore. Phone numbers and business addresses are readily found with a simple Google search.

One barrier that we will have to hurdle in Small Town America is the idea that a small business does not need a website. We have to sell them that idea, as well.

Pot Pie Girl is still working on the pricing of this service. She currently is waiting for feedback from local businesses. We can charge a monthly fee for taking care of updating the lens, or sell the lens to the business owner.

Chef Keem came on the line and told a story. He has a friend who is internationally known for his chocolate covered coca beans, but once again, his expensive webpage is not pulling traffic, and he rarely makes a sale. No one searches for the keyword he was using: chocolate covered coca beans.

As a result of some of the work Chef Keem has done using the methods we are outlining here, he has been asked to set up a blog and Squidoo lens for a local business owner in Austin, Texas for a fee of $400.00 a month. Several of these jobs could supplement income quite nicely.

With the methods described here, we showcase the people behind the business, their personalities, as well as mentioning the products or services they are known for. The Squidoo lens is a perfect platform for this way of promotion. And it impresses the old fashioned business owner, as well.

Another fun example of Chef Keems was when he was writing about soft shell crabs. As he was doing his Google keyword search, he found “how to eat soft shell crabs” as pulling a fair search term result. He used 9-10 more keyword, too, and within 12 hours, he had six Google front page entries!

How fun is that?

How does Pot Pie Girl balance her business and home life?

She does the best she can. The first few years of business were difficult because no one in her family or support system knew what she was doing. So the support was not necessarily there.

Now she sends out her husbands shirts to be washed and ironed, but is waiting for the day when he can join her in all of her many online business pursuits.

She mentioned Health Insurance as an issue. Health Insurance: The great stifler of entrepreneurial genius in America.

When she realized that her computer can be used to make money, the ideas that keep flowing are endless. The whole family can get involved.

For every niche that Pot Pie Girl creates, she uses a different account. This is controversial on Squidoo because people misuse this by using one identity to lensroll and five star another identity. Many times, these lenses are spammy and lack quality.

Naturally, the question of ethics arises here. Squidoo is probably going to make new rules surrounding the use of multiple identities because of the abuse I mentioned, and much much more.

Pot Pie Girl uses multiple accounts because people steal her content. After all, she is a Squidoo folk hero

But the trick is to make a page for a person, have it represent a niche you are passionate about,  make it rank on the front page of Google, and show your client the results.

I had a flash of inspiration after we did this show. One of my friends is a multi-talented forward thinking person who also happens to be a wonderful Astrologer.

She also was one of my Mother’s best friends, and that ranks much higher than Google, in my book.

I have been thinking that “Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom,” needs to have a regularly scheduled Astrologer on the show, and my friend kept arising, like cream, to the surface of my mind. This woman has probably never used the internet in her entire life.

So we have gotten together the idea that I will make the lens, will help her create a blog, suggest submitting ezine articles on Astrology, and have this up in time for her debut on “Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom,” October 13th, my mother’s birthday. The collective wisdom will be parting the waters that day!

Next week on Giant Squid Open Mike, 10/5, we will feature the New Greeters for the upcoming Giant Squid challenge. We are hoping people have received the news about who achieved Giant so we can celebrate.

Next week on Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom, Karen Kay will be our guest to discuss her strategy for getting herself to Pat O’ Bryan’s Unseminar 7! I hope we can celebrate her new Giant Status at that time, as well!

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There are many moms on Squidoo who stay at home, create home based businesses, become entrepreneurial, and also home school their children.

Home schooling lenses abound on Squidoo and this niche has become one of the most popular.  Rocket Moms have embraced this niche as well.

What are the secrets to making such great home schooling lenses? How popular are these lenses outside of Squidoo?

How successful have these lenses been in attracting home schoolers to Squidoo?

Susan52 joined us and said that homeschooling used to be so much more controversial when she first home schooled her sons over 20 years ago.

Carma aka Tandemonimom came on the line and Joan expressed great admiration for the quality of lenses made by the home schooler moms. Carma joked that these superpowers are all outlined in the Mom Home Schooler Handbook!

Carma has 4 children. We discussed how she gets her children to listen to her, especially since mothers have a different kind of authority. Moms tell their children to make their beds and brush their teeth, but when moms begin to teach their own children, kids tend to say “You’re just the mom, what do you know?”

After this challenge is overcome, then the real work (and play) of learning begins.

Carma discussed creating a Blog and said she felt overwhelmed by having to update it all the time. But lens making has a different flow. She says she has nine lenses specifically about home schooling, now, and this number is growing.

Susan discussed how she kept hearing the most common objections regarding home schooling over and over such as: “Your boys will never fit in.” Or: “Your boys will never adjust to society.”

Susan said that home schooled children are often involved with the larger home schooling community of families and their home schooled children. These children mix with each other, and their ages span from younger to older children. The older children help the younger ones and are not in age constrained environments, a form of age segregation.

Instead of, for example, being in the fourth grade and having 4th graders socialize each other and being thrown into situations of aggression and competition, these children go to parks, travel to museums and historical locations, and socialize with a wide range of people of all ages.

Co-ops are growing in the home schooling communities, where the children gather together as a home school family, and different parents come and teach them.

Carma runs the Home Schooler Group on Squidoo. Moms who are WAHM need some adult interaction, which is why this group is so popular, as well as a place to exchange information and tips.

Lenses can be created as a teaching tool for home schooled children. Kids can learn to make lenses. A Book Report lens would be a perfect venue for a lens. The grandparent would be able to go and see what their grand child is doing in school!

Lenses are wonderful resources, too!

Squidoo no longer has X Rated lenses, so the site is safe for children.

Our friend Charly Leetham’s daughter RhiannonL makes beautiful lenses and may very well be the first child to ever reach Giant. Her greatest lens is My Dog Phoebe, a must see lens!

Unschooling is a topic Carma discussed. This means that there is no enforced sit-down learning. Whenever a child is struck with something that interests her, then that topic is explored in depth. By cooking with Mom in the kitchen, for instance, a child learns how to double a recipe or how to cut the ingredients in half.

Both Carma and Susan said that their children learned to read unbeknownst to both of them. Suddenly, they were able to read, and they did it in their own time. One of the children had an older sibling read comic books to him, and without fanfare or boring hours sitting in a classroom, the child could read.

Homeschooling is nothing more than living with your children and allowing the learning to evolve, as it will. Both women advised never to stop reading to your children.

In older times, children learned to read by reading the Bible. Biblical verses were memorized, something that no one does anymore.

Susan’s one son is a police officer. All of his fellow police officers bring their reports to him to look over because he can write so well. Her youngest boy at 21 years of age was head of an important platoon in Iraq and now is a straight A college student.

What these women tried to impart to their children is a love for learning. They concede that gaps exist in the home schooling education, but since when DON’T gaps exist in all forms of education?

You learn something, then you forget what it is that you learned. Facts are important, but not as important as empowering children to do what they want to do in the world.

If I want to learn something, I will find it in a book, or take a course of study or hire a tutor to teach me.

Susan runs a Yahoo group for home schoolers! She says that her goal as a home schooler was always to develop well rounded children who become citizens of the world.

She also has a plan to teach Squidoo to interested people in the future!

Our guest next week on Giant Squid Open Mike Monday on 9/28 is Pot Pie Girl.

Our guest next week on Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom on 9/29 is Gracefullady, Polio survivor who ran the Boston Marathon this year! A wonderfully resilient woman!

We will see you then!

Kate Loving Shenk

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