Squidlog.net

This past couple of weeks AJ has been musing about being a “teacher”

In a galaxy, far, far away (thanks Alex for reminding me of this phrase recently!) I used to be a teacher. Not of children, but adults.

An eclectic mix of ex-offenders (some were probably still offending), substance abusers (current and ex), alcoholics (one returned after lunch totally drunk), kids from the wrong side of town, kids from the right side of town, returners to work following illness, accident or redundancy, single Mums needing to earn in a way that would fit in with their children and others who had no issues at all apart from the fact that they had a business idea and wanted to make it a reality.

They were a “lively” bunch but what made it work, was that they all had something in common and I had the information they wanted and needed. We had a common bond.

I have not taught in the Classroom for a good number of years but all of a sudden I have found myself back in the role of Teacher again, through my Blog AJ is Always Juggling Online and on Squidoo. I did not set out thinking “I am going to teach” – it just sort of evolved…..

As I explore the workings of Matt Cutts’ Link Wheel, under the guidance of Alex (Drifter0658) and try to apply the principles to my new niche blog Year of the Tiger Tattoos, I am also blogging about my progress on a daily basis and outlining what I do, step by step. Yep, I am finally managing to blog nearly every day. And I love it!

However, over the past week or so, the responsibility attached to what I am doing has hit me hard!

I do tend to think deeply about what I do online. Right from when I first joined Squidoo in July 2008, I had a very set idea about the way I would behave and the ethics I would adhere to. Despite my need for anonymity I knew I would want to be as open and honest as that anonymity would allow. And I believe I have kept to that.

When we teach, we tend to teach what we know

OK, that might seem like I am stating the blooming obvious, but bear with me….

A lot of what we know comes not just from what we learn from others, who set out to teach us, but what we learn for ourselves. Research these days is easier than it has ever been. All we do is “Google” what we are looking for and hey presto! It is all there. Everything we could possibly want to know about Belly Button Fluff removal!

We learn and then sometimes we start passing on what we have learned.

But as far as Squidoo and Blogging are concerned, are we teaching the right way to do something or are we teaching the way that WE do something? There can be a difference. The danger is that we can become so entrenched in the Squidoo lensmaking and blogging methods we use that we can miss out on finding out about the other ways to achieve what we want to achieve. When teaching or passing information on, we can fail to present all the options from which people can choose what is right for them.

Over these past few months I have been blogging on Word Press Multi User Platforms, (WPMU) here on Squidlog and on Crabbys Beach. I love it!

I love the sense of Community on a WPMU. I love it that members of the Community will support each other with teaching, passing on information and visiting each other’s blogs. I love the collaboration that is happening on some of the Blogs. I love the fact that the leaders of these Communities, Anne and Alex, are so Community minded and I could never imagine them throwing all their toys out of the pram and just shutting their platforms down.

There is another school of thought that promotes hosting your own blog

Common sense tells us that relying on a platform owned by someone else makes us vulnerable. There could be rule changes that will suddenly disadvantage us, for example. And yes, the toys could fly out of the pram and the Platform could just disappear. Phuttt! Gone!

I have also seen arguments put forward that all you are doing is getting traffic for the Platform. I don’t agree with this and my own Stats go a long way to disproving this as I commented on Susan52’s blog when she asked the question Should you own your own blog? But I am up for setting up my own self hosted sites and seeing what happens.

Recently I have started work on a couple of sites on my own domains – hosted by Anne at SEO Praxis. I am setting them up using the same SEO plugins that I use on Crabbys Beach.

My gut feeling is that the best way to Blog is to use a mix of Multi User Platforms and Self Hosted blogs, as then you will hopefully get the best of both worlds. But I will be interested to see if either method out performs the other as far as traffic is concerned.

But just to take us back to the bit about teaching….

Disclaimer: any teaching I do is based on the way I do things. I am not claiming it is the RIGHT way

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An email exchange with a Squidpal has AJ thinking about doing too much learning and not enough doing

Last week I posted that I am spreading my wings (finally) beyond Squidoo and today, during the course of a regular email exchange with Alex (Lensmaster Drifter0658), I found my self climbing on my soap box. I thought you might be interested in the gist of what I said as the realisation of what I was thinking hit me like a sledgehammer. Yep, I had one of those “lightbulb” moments!

The last few months have seen a huge metamorphosis as I have evolved from that newby who joined Squidoo in the Summer of 2008 (on Seth Godin’s birthday!) who wanted just to write from the heart and hope that it would earn her some money.

I will be totally honest, but from before Christmas until a couple of weeks ago I was utterly lost as far as my internet activities were concerned. Not just lost, but feeling I was swimming in a sea of treacle AND against the tide. My demons of self doubt were kicking in BIG time and I was in despair, just not knowing what direction to take and yes, I came very close to hitting the delete button on my Squidoo account. When you are depressed, or lacking in self confidence, self harm exists in many forms…..

I had a feeling I was on a threshold of something. BUT there were too many doors to choose from. Too many people I could learn from. And it seemed like some of them were saying: “Open my door, the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold might be here”!

Then, as I realised I just did not know which way to turn,  or who to listen to, I had an exchange of views with Alex and he made an offer that I could not refuse. He offered to teach me about Link Wheels. We would set up a niche blog from scratch and use it as a hands on teaching exercise, that we could share with other people in our networks.

Within just a couple of days, the demons were nuked!

I now have my motivation, optimism and AJ vitality back. I think my husband is silently thanking Alex – hubby is a Sagittarius, so articulating what he is feeling comes hard, but I know him well enough to sense what he is thinking

Because of how I was feeling I did a huuuuge amount of thinking and I have come to realise that in our quest to learn and absorb as much as we can about Squidoo and online marketing, we end up listening to too many teachers and self-labelled experts. We click on so many links to free advice and we end up confused, bewildered and achieving diddly squat – a phrase I use instead of “sweet f a”!

We spend more time reading and creating “to do” and “step by step” lists and less time actually doing. Our outputs reduce as our reading increases. We constantly think

I must just look at this and then I will make a start tomorrow……

Do you identify with the feeling of sometimes being totally terrified?

Scared that if we pass up on the opportunity to subscribe to the latest “must read” blog, or download the latest “must apply these methods” free e-book, we are in danger of  missing out discovering the one magic ingredient that we need add to our internet recipe – the one that will make the difference betwen failure and our success? We are so frightened of failing and yet it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because we are constantly planning and never actually taking action.

So what happens?

We lose so much time, that we end up sticking to the things we know we can do quickly and that will have some positive, even if it is miniscule, effect – we publish a Squidoo lens, or a Hubpages hub or an E-Zine article. Less than half a day, it is easy peasy and we can be happy knowing we have produced an output!

And THAT is what so many of us do – we stick with an activity that we know inside out. We crouch behind the protective fences of our Comfort Zone, too scared to leave.

(Am climbing down off my soapbox now, before I have a dizzy spell and fall off it!)

Last week I left  my Comfort Zone!

Last week I did something I have not done before on Squidoo – I made a lens for the sole purpose of promoting a new niche blog. The lens Year of the Tiger Tattoos is in the rim of a Link Wheel and the hub of the wheel is the new blog, called errrr . . . .  Year of the Tiger Tattoos.

The thinking behind the Link Wheel is set out in a series of posts in Blogging for Profit on my Always Juggling blog. However the principles can be applied to any micro-niche blog, no matter where it is hosted, including here on Squidlog. I will also be applying what I have learned as I develop my websites, which are hosted by Squidster on SEO Praxis.

I am just wondering who is up for trying out establishing some Link Wheels on here, with your own Squidlog micro-niche blog at the center?

On Tuesday 02 March I will be on Giant Squid Open Mike with Drifter0658 and we will be discussing Link Wheels and taking questions from the GSOM Chat Room. Show is for 30 minutes and starts at 5pm EST, which is 10pm AJT – which is also GMT

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AJ is musing about thinking “outside the lens”. My post is late this week because I accepted an offer I just could not refuse but it got me thinking…..

Yep, I do a lot of thinking, alone here in my ivory tower, across the water from a lot of my on-line friends, in a very lovely part of England. And this week my brain is buzzing. Eighteen months on Squidoo and still learning all the time about this online stuff and still hoping to turn my writing into an income. Which I am doing, oh ever so slowly but the way forward is becoming more clear!

The offer I could not refuse came from one of my online buddies, Drifter, but it is not the offer I am going to talk about as I do that on my blog Always Juggling. And Alex and I will be discussing what we are doing live on Giant Squid Open Mike on 02 March, 5pm EST, in a program called “Blogging for Profit”.

What I AM going to do on here is get you thinking about something that I have been pondering these past few weeks.

All over Squidooland there’s blogs, forums, Nings and networks that provide help for Squidoo Lensmasters. People share information, they post links to their lenses and it seems to me that supporting each other is frequently focussed on increasing lensrank. The networks start out as sharing and teaching communities but how many people join them because of what the network might do for them, rather than what they can contribute to helping their fellow members?

If I asked you what ONE thing would help you in your online endeavours, what would your immediate answer be?

• Would it be increased traffic to your lenses?
• More Blessings from Squidoo Angels?
• Would it be to always have someone instantly available to answer your questions about Lenscrafting?
• Anything else to do with Squidoo?

But are we in danger of focussing too much on Lensrank? What about all the other pieces of the Internet Marketing puzzle that our lenses are only a small part of?

Currently I am seeing many threads on the SquidU Forum devoted to Lens promotion to the extent that folks are in danger of obsessing over Lensrank and are perhaps missing a crucial point. Which is that 2,000 lenses fighting for the Tier 1 payouts on a site that has over 1,000,000 lenses means that the amount of work it can take to keep a lens in the Top Tier can be hugely disproportionate to the financial benefits.

Getting back to my original question……

Do you believe that the best help you can get is something that focuses on helping you with Lensrank? Perhaps you should be thinking more “outside the box” – or in this case “outside the lens”?

So I guess the point of this post is to try to get you thinking outside the Comfort Zone of Squidoo. Don’t focus exclusively on your lenses. Think about how they should be just a small part of your online activities.

Is it time to spread your wings? I am spreading mine

In the last three weeks I have set up two websites (hosted by Squidster’s SEO Praxis) and a micro-niche blog plus I have finally published my first hub on Hubpages! More micro-niche blogs will follow. I will still be publishing lenses on Squidoo but they are just a small part of my planned Internet Mix.

I am not flying yet, but I am flexing those flight muscles. I’ll keep you posted!

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AJ is Musing about how we can lose friends fast if we embark on a campaign of Self Adulation when we thought what we were doing was Self Promotion

OK I admit it, I was struggling for a topic for this week’s article and then my daily feed from Copyblogger dropped into my in box. Thanks to a recommendation from Drifter, Copyblogger is one of the very few blogs that I try to keep up with on a daily basis and it is one that I would recommend to anyone. But I digress….

Today’s Copyblogger post is The Art of Shameless Self Promotion and it helps us distinguish between a perfectly acceptable behaviour on the net and one that will earn the disdain of our intended audience very quickly.

Nathan Hagan defines Self Promotion as:

the art of spreading ideas, concepts, and a greater vision

Self-adulation is

just the promotion of accomplishments, deeds that have already been done

By promoting ideas, especially if they are something that will benefit people in general and not necessarily just yourself, you are giving others something to cheer for. It is ideas that inspire not achievements.

There is a great comment on the blog:

Self-promotion vs. self-adulation is like self-belief vs. arrogance. The former is about your positive place in the world, and the latter is simply about you

Yep, that sums it up very succinctly!

So when trying to promote a new concept or idea in some of the great debates and discussions about Squidoo, no one needs to try to establish their credentials by highlighting their own achievements on Squidoo – we can check out their Bios if we want the details! All it will do is turn people off to the message, because they may just assume that the message is actually all about building the “Kingdom of Me”!

The Art of Shameless Self Promotion also gives tips on how to create a Self Promotion Platform – go check it out. It makes for very interesting and thought provoking reading.

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This week AJ is taking a short break from musing about Squidoo Etiquette and Netiquette to say a very personal thankyou to the person who keeps Squidlog running for the benefit of so many people.

Last week, following the publication of Seth Godin’s new book “Linchpin” and a related Squidoo Co-brand template, Bonnie (Lensmaster bdkz) suggested to RocketMoms on Squidoo that we make a Linchpin lens to acknowledge some very important people in our lives. I can think of many Linchpins on Squidoo – Megan Casey and of course Seth Godin himself are ones who come immediately to mind and I am sure we all have others we could nominate.

For me they include several well known Lensmasters, such as MiMi who was the driving force behind Squidoo Step by Step and Joan Adams who is very good at keeping me sane, with her wonderful “wicked” sense of humour and her down to earth advice. I would love to make a Linchpin lens about my husband, but my need to remain anonymous means that I cannot at this point in time.

However, in the end I chose to make my very first Linchpin lens about the one person without whom Squidlog could not exist: Squidster. The timing is also appropriate coming up to Squidlog’s first anniversary and Squidster’s birthday, which is 1st March.

I am so happy and proud that Squidster is one of my Squidpals. She epitomises everything I love about the Squidoo Family. Squid Giant, former Squidoo Angel and Purple Star winner, Squidster gives so much to help people and make Squidoo and Squidlog the great community that they are.

Squidster and I don’t exchange emails on a frequent basis, but we do stay in touch and although we are very different personalities, we do have a lot in common. Squidster has a great sense of humour and I know we make each other laugh from time to time.

My lens: Linchpin Squidster needs more work on it and I will add to it, but it is just my way of acknowledging the huge (and indispensible) role Squidster plays on Squidlog and I hope you will join with me in saying thank you, either here in the Guestbook below or on the lens.

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