I had the opportunity to be part of a very interesting Squidoo chat this morning with some of the top lensmasters in the arts and crafts categories, as well as bdkz, Corey Brown, and Stephanie Mangino. For those of you who don’t know Stephanie, she is the new magazine guru that is managing several of the new Squidoo magazines.
This particular chat was primarily to introduce the newest Squidoo magazine which is slated to launch on Tuesday, called So Crafty. As you can tell by the title of the new magazine, the topic is crafts. This is a very broad based topic which encompasses a variety of crafts. The entire category list can be found here.
I had mentioned in a previous post, late last year, that I had decided to opt out of the Happy Snowman magazine. My reasons at the time were worries about maximizing sales on my best Christmas lenses, during the time of year when we usually make the most money. Just like everyone else, I can always use more money to pay bills for myself and the gallery.
On the other hand, I also said that I was pleased at the innovation by the Squidoo team in coming up with the magazines as a way to drive traffic to Squidoo. In the ever changing market that we live in, especially online, innovation is the only way to stay ahead of competition, and to keep growing and renewing a company. Change, and being able to adapt is crucial.
The conversation today was vastly reassuring to me as to the direction the magazines are going, and the ongoing development of the functional aspects of the magazines.
One of the most critical complaints about the Squidoo magazines that I have heard so far was the failure of the search mechanism on each site to really do its job. Corey Brown explained today that the search feature is one of the items that the tech team has been working hard on to improve.
In a nutshell, the main idea behind the entire list of Squidoo magazines is to drive traffic to Squidoo in general and specific featured lenses through social interaction which is primarily focused on Facebook right now, although there is a Twitter feed, as well as RSS feed. As more and more opportunities abound like Pinterest, Google +, Squidoo intends to broaden the marketing for all of the magazines.
While I understand the worries from lensmasters regarding the possibility of losing traffic that they have gotten from search engines, or other promotions that they themselves have created, the main focus for the magazines is to drive more incoming traffic to Squidoo, not take it away. The Squidoo magazines are still in their infancy, which means that they will continue to improve and gain in popularity, so the incoming traffic should continue to rise. The more magazines there are, the more pathways will be created that are not self generated (by lensmasters) to Squidoo in general and individual lenses. Therefore, if you write in the categories the magazines represent, over time this will only be good for you.
I personally believe that the subject matter magazines will be the most successful, over and above the holiday magazines. They are the most unique, and generate evergreen year round traffic. However, I have decided to opt into all the magazines that come out this year to give them a real try, including the Christmas one. I think it is well worth my time to give Squidoo my best pages to populate this new venture, because the innovation is a good one, and I am very supportive of both the idea of the magazines, and Squidoo’s efforts to be innovative to continue to grow the company.
If you have any questions or comments relating the Squidoo magazines, or So Crafty, please feel free to leave them here. Corey Brown has said he will stop in and field the questions the best he can to help us all understand better the Squidoo magazine concept.
Incoming search terms:
- so crafty magazine
- Crafty Magazine
- ew \crafty\ magazine
- http/://socrafty squidoo com
- so crafty facebook
- squidoo com
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Great explanation, Paula. I was also a part of the “campfire” chat this morning. Like Paula, I came away with a much better understanding of how Squidoo HQ plans for these magazines to work and to generate more traffic for us and not less.
One thing that I took away from the explanations and conversations was that the magazines can not take traffic away from your lens. They can add traffic if your lens is featured but just by being in the magazine (whether people can search for it or not) will not take your traffic away. The url of your lens does not change when it becomes a part of the magazine…you just get the advantage of a really cool “theme”. The traffic that your lens would generate (magazine or not) would remain the same as your keywords and own promotion would lend itself to. Besides the awesome theme associated with the magazines, you traffic has the potential to increase if it is featured.
I am also very supportive of the innovation and willingness to implement new ways to get people to come to Squidoo as readers, potential buyers, fans, and maybe new writers that HQ is taking.
Good recap, Paula, of the online So Crafty chat. It was nice to get an inside look at the new magazine. I look forward to seeing all (or many, I should say) of the fun craft lenses in one easy-to-use magazine at Squidoo!
This is one of the Squidoo projects I have been eager to support with my time and talent. Squidoo has always been working to maximize the benefits to lensmasters and the Squidoo online magazines are a fantastic way to drive traffic to Squidoo lenses and other relevant sites. Stephanie and Megan Morris have been very supportive of my work on Happy Snowman, UpMarket and SoCrafty. Glad you’re on board with it, Paula!
Good to hear from you Bette. I like seeing innovation, and the continued effort to improve.
I hadn’t heard about this new magazine concept and am interested since art and craft is one of my niches, my husband and myself being artists/designers. I look forward to seeing what becomes of this. I don’t have all of my lenses remain in the holiday magazines all year since gifts and some of the decor, for instance, are appropriate at any time of year. As we work so hard on the lenses it’s good to see the Squidoo HQ working too to drive traffic to the site as a whole. I do sometimes see that my lenses seem to get buried in the holiday magazines when not in the top ranking and don’t see how they can be searched or where there is a master index and that sometimes concerns me.
We talked about having an index for the magazine during the discussion. I believe that this would be a very good idea, but I do not know how difficult it would be to implement.
There’s some hugely positive things here and I am so pleased that this time around HQ discussed this with experienced lensmasters to explain what is happening and also hopefully take on board any concerns that they may have had.
The biggest concern I have is the quality of the lenses that end up appearing in the sidebars of our own lenses. It seems to me that it is lensrank, in addition to relevance of tags, that auto select these lenses and there’s no way we can ensure that lenses with TOS Violations are not spotlighted on our own.
This is the reason why I opted out of the Magazines last year – I just could not bear to have one lens in particular being highlighted on my Halloween lenses, when I take so much time to ensure as best I can that all my images and content are “legal”.
If I had more of a choice regarding the lenses that appear in the sidebar then this would go a long way to convincing me to give the magazines a try.
It DOES make sense to try to group pages on the same topics together, because I am guessing it will increase the authority of those pages in Google’s eyes. So I will be watching to see how my friends on here fare with the new Mag – I dont have any craft lenses so I can stay “neutral” this time around
I may have mentioned this in the post, but I think the topic magazines will be better at this than the holiday or seasonal ones.
I have opted out of every magazine so far. Your aim may be to drive traffic to Squdoo, but it certainly does not drive traffic to my lenses. My lenses are not in the Tier 1 rank, so when I go to the magazine, they’re nowhere to be found. How does that help me? I can’t see that it does, and until such time as the magazines help the individual lensmaster, there is no point in having the lenses there. It’s a good idea, but it isn’t working right yet. Let me know if and when it does.
Just to be clear, Nancy, you have every right to opt out of the magazines. But realize that I am just offering my opinion, the magazines are the work of the Squidoo staff, not Squidlog. If the magazines are working properly, readers should be able to find your lens through the magazine search.
Interesting observations and I will be interested to see how your fare in the Magazines. The evidence from my own experience is that they had a detrimental effect on traffic. That I suspect is that the Toolbar at the top with the “Home” Button on it leads a lot of people to try and get to the homepage of the “site” they perceive themselves to be on.
My concerns about the Magazines in general and the So Crafty one in particular are:
1. Lenses are abducted into them and one is then told that one’s lenses are being “featured” whereas the reality is that they are hidden from view. To not have a basic piece of functionality in the form of a working search really is very bad. The most basic of sites/blogs are easily able to do that.
2. The most recent Magazine that I left some of my lenses in had featured articles which included an article which was word for word a replica of the author’s blog post from three years ago – even down to the title. A lens which was being heavily promoted on the homepage owed much of it’s content to a leading UK Computer Magazine and remain unaltered and over promoted despite many UK Lensmasters raising concerns. So duplicate and stolen content being featured fills me with little confidence.
3 I have the good fortune to write for various publications in the UK and when they tell me that my article will be “Featured” I can anticipate it being visible to even the most casual browser of the publication. There is not the least chance of one of my lenses being found unless it is above a certain lensrank; has the good fortune to be “selected” by the editorial team.
4 I have a niche accouunt with 35 Crafting lenses in it and the first I formally heard about this was when I logged into the account to edit a lens. I then discovered that it’s theme had been changed, the heavily promoted lenses on it were other people’s and mine had been relegated to text link “recommendations.
Paul
Some of your concerns were voiced in the preliminary meeting that we had, and I brought up the search problems myself. Search for the magazines is one of the priorities that Squidoo development team has been working on, and it is much better than it was even for the last magazine.
I think personally that using the word abducted is a little harsh, as the entire platform belongs to Squidoo, and therefore they do have the right to tinker with it. However, I do understand where you are coming from. Hopefully, we can get a team member to answer some more of your points here.
Paula, as I have said elsewhere, when I am harsh with my criticism it is because I care about the site, the people who create it and sustain it and all those who make it the amazing place it is.
I think the word “abducted” reflected my feelings quite well where we were not offered the option to include our lenses but they were simply “taken” onboard the Magazine. I still cling to the idea that Squidoo is a form of partnership arrangement where they provide an exceptional platform and we provide the content which enables us both to succeed. It may be that I am wrong to think like that but given the countless hours we invest I do think it’s a reasonable approach.
I left my lenses in the Magazine for the time being, having initially decided to take them out. From a random sample I am seeing a drop in traffic as a result but of course one day is not enough to make a judgement on how they will fare and I am prepared to give it a little time.
I received emails from the Editor yesterday which were clearly initially written in Microsoft Word and then pasted into emails because they were largely unintelligble. I replied very soon after receipt asking for an “English” version
I received a response saying that it would be with us “very soon.” Twenty four hours later still nothing. Customer Service and encouraging our participation?
I do hope a team member will come along and address our concerns. I want these Magazines to be a success because if they are then we all benefit. But, right now I am not convinced.
As I said earlier I am passionate about Squidoo, supporting one another and building success here.
While the introduction of these new magazines may be a step forward in some ways, when it comes to the design of the individual lensmaster page, it is less than appealing.
All the input from the lensmaster in the right sidebar has been shoved down. Firstly by a Facebook box, then by an ad and a “recent articles” link box. Consequently, any control over what appears “above the fold” here is out of the control of the lensmaster. The “author recommends” area has been pushed down the page and relegated to mere text links.
I’ve also noticed that the category link at the top of the page has now been switched to “Home > So Crafty” rather than the categories formerly chosen by the lensmaster. Correct me if I’m wrong, but won’t this have an effect on how Google (and other search engines) categorize the lens? It’ll be lumped into one (unchosen) category, losing its individual search ability.
I’d also like to have the choice to include or exclude before the abduction takes place too
Rich.
It seems from the Facebook Squidoo Group that there’s a lot of concerns about the Magazines and I hope people drop by here to ask their questions for Cory to have a look at.
In the meantime, I have a question and that is does HQ have any way of measuring the impact of these Magazines on Lensrank. For instance, some lensmasters report that for them lensrank “rollercoasters” and are wondering if the magazines give an advantage to all the lenses that feature in it or perhaps just those that are featured? Does HQ have a method for assessing this impact?
I will admit that before I was involved in the pre-launch chat for this new magazine, I misunderstood how it works and had some of the same fears that many have expressed here.
I don’t see how participating in the magazine by allowing your lens/lenses to have the theme takes any traffic away from you or me. Our lenses have a “url” that DOES NOT change if it is a part of the magazine. If it becomes a part of the magazine the theme changes but the url stays the same as it was. So anyone who searches for our keywords on Google will still find it the same as they did before it was added to the magazine. Makes sense, right?
Honestly, I don’t think people who are looking in Google will be searching for the magazine itself. The magazine is being promoted via Facebook. So people on FB who are interested in Crafts might do a search for crafts, crocheting, quilting, etc. They hopefully will see a result from the So Crafty FB page where there is a good chance they might see your lens “featured” there and click on it, like it, or ask a question from the “sharing” of your lens on the page. We are encouraged to answer questions and create a relationship with those people who are visiting the FB page. The goal is to have non-Squidoo people become followers…and hopefully repeat visitors.
As I see it, being a part of the magazine gives the potential of getting new traffic and more importantly non-Squidoo traffic that may be potential buyers because they are interested in the topic we have written about. Basically it is added exposure but I don’t see how it could cause a drop in your traffic…the url didn’t change. If there is a drop in the traffic, it would seem to me, that it was coincidental and would have happened whether your lens was included in the magazine or not.
I do understand the concerns about the not being able to control what lenses show on our sidebars and whether they have TOS violations. Perhaps if enough of us participated by leaving our lenses in the magazine theme, that could change over time.
The articles that are shown on the magazine, except when they showcase a lensmaster, are written by non-Squidoo people who are experts in the field that they are writing about. Again, trying to draw in a new crowd of readers. Hopefully, Corey can pass on the concerns that the “guest” writers follow the same guidelines that we try so hard to follow. Perhaps a suggestion could be made for them to only write new content for their guest post and to adhere to no copyright infringement.
I had a few lenses go to this new magazine and I opted out. Why? Yes the sidebar issue and the whole emphasis of the magazine itself and not the lenses was a concern. Point in fact….when they include WIP’s and crummy lenses just because they have the common thread of “crafts” I am concerned.
When I have to make my lens and compete on Google by what I do, I figure it’s fair. When the lens is now a piece of the Squidoo Magazine name and then Squidoo then me..there is a lot less control.
The ambiguity of the way the magazine tells people they are “featured” then they can’t even find their lenses has turned many people off. It was sad watching people in the beginning going to SU and being all excited about being “chosen” and “featured” just to find out everyone in that category was “chosen” and “featured” made for a lot of hurt feelings.
The other thing is in the beginning, they said their would be quality control….didn’t see it. I am glad all of you are giving it a chance. Me, I am more a wait and see kind of person.
Hi All,
First, thanks to Paula for posting this! And thanks to all of you for sharing your comments.
I wanted to let you know we’re working on a number of things in the next week or two to really showcase lenses inside magazines. As with all things web, we’re learning as we go by monitoring analytics and other data, and adjusting. It is clear we can do more to promote great lenses.
Just a few points of clarification and some definitions:
1. “Featured” is a confusing word in this context. Featured on Squidoo means that a lens is no longer WIP (Work in Progress). It can be found by browsing Squidoo, searching, and is submitted to search indexes. We don’t use the word “featured” to mean included as an article on a magazine, to avoid that confusion.
2. When a lens is selected as an article, it is showcased like all other magazine articles (non-lenses). For example, if you go to the “Knitting” category on So Crafty, you’ll see a combination of lenses and articles as you page through: http://socrafty.squidoo.com/knitting
3. Of course, lenses promoted as articles are also shared through our social networks – Facebook, Twitter and to the magazine’s subscribers (RSS and email).
4. WIP lenses are not available in our lists and not part of search results in magazines, just as they aren’t on Squidoo. You’ll only find “Fresh” and “Featured” lenses in magazines at this point.
As I mentioned, we’re working on several things to improve the promotion of participating lenses. This will include showing related lenses at the bottom of each article (not just the ones selected as articles), showing many more lenses by Squidoo Topic, in the Magazine’s category listings, and other ideas as we see what’s working.
We’re working on a really cool Pinterest project too – for the magazines which line up well with that social network.
We’re also working on a way to better communicate these things to you through some sort of opt-in communication. We’re going to do lens challenges for the upcoming holidays and events, and work hard to continue to showcase all of you and your hard work. As always, we’re laser focused on making this a platform for you to been seen, and we’re going to continue to do that.
For those of you who opted out, we understand your concerns, and we are listening. I hope that when you see these upcoming improvements that you’ll decide to opt back in. That’s 100% up to you, of course. But it is the only way we can discover you for even more promotion within the magazine.
Thanks again, everyone. We appreciate you more than you know.
I opted out of magazines for four reasons:
1. The “abduction” problem. I don’t like having lenses taken without my say-so. In many cases, the magazines seize my lenses which are not best suited to the magazine while ignoring those that are. You would’ve had a much more positive response if you’d presented them as a club we submitted our best lenses to (and the quality might have been better).
2. The magazine theme’s links across the top divert traffic away from our lenses before visitors get into the content of our lenses. This is especially problematic for lenses which serve as hubs to several other lenses.
3. Magazine “featured” lenses aren’t featured. Whatever terminology you want to use, I have yet to find any of my lenses anywhere in a magazine which has claimed it. As far as I can tell, the magazine gets the SEO and traffic benefit of the sitelinks across the top of my lenses, with no backlinks or traffic in return.
4. Having a lens reclassified in a magazine changes the breadcrumb trail from Squidoo’s SEO-friendly topic-based hierarchy like “Holidays … Christmas … Christmas Cards” to an SEO-meaningless breadcrumb trail like “Squidoo … Happy Snowman” I know social traffic is the way forward, but I don’t see a reason to sacrifice existing search traffic for potential social traffic, especially in light of #3.
I am deeply concerned to hear HQ is planning to integrate Squidoo magazines with Pinterest. Pinning images causes severe copyright problems, as many veteran Squids have explained: it (a) grants Pinterest the legal right to sell, sublicense, or distribute any pinned content, it (b) uploads a full-sized copy of the image file to Pinterest’s servers, which competes with the original in Google Image Search and remains even if the original image is taken down, it (c) provides embed codes which thousands of bloggers are using to grab free graphics for their monetized websites, and it (d) credits and links back to the lens the pinned image came from, which violates the image license of Creative Commons, affiliate images, and any other licensed photos which require a credit and link back to the actual image source. (Also, (e), a majority of the images on Pinterest are misattributed, but I realize that’s the problem you were trying to head off by automating the process.)
All these problems raise some copyright concerns even when the image is one’s own work. But when it is someone else’s copyrighted work, such as Creative Commons, stock photos we’ve paid for, affiliate images or licensed images, we have NO RIGHT to be granting those image rights to Pinterest and to the thousands of monetized blogs making money off of pinned images.
Google “Pinterest Copyright” for numerous articles, including ones by lawyers and ones in major publications like Forbes.com, weighing in on this issue. Squidoo HQ has so far ignored our pleas about this, but please, please, do not create any mechanisms that submit lens content to Pinterest without lensmaster permission. That would mean Squidoo was directly engaging in copyright violations, instead of simply encouraging and granting permission for visitors to do so with the “Pin It!” button.
There was a time when Squidoo HQ focused on giving us tools, widgets, and cool ways to promote our work, then stood back and let us find creative ways to use them. For the last year or two, support of tools, widgets, and open-ended ways to promote our work seems to have stalled, and instead Squidoo HQ has concentrated on ways to repurpose and coopt our work, usually without permission until we begged and pleaded for opt-out options. Whatever happened to Seth’s “permission-based” philosophy? I miss the old approach, which felt more like a partnership. This feels like a constant tug-of-war, and it’s left me disheartened.
Thank you for sharing this feedback Ellen. I’ll do my best to address each one:
1. “Abduction”. We’re working on new forms of opt-in for future magazines. I can’t say much more than that, because we haven’t finalized the plans. We’d hoped that the Campfire chat invites and participation would help with letting people know in advance. We can do other things too, and will.
2. Diverting traffic: We don’t see it this way. Yes, some people may land on your lens and visit other pages. But that also means that others will land elsewhere and land on your lens. (more about that in #3).
3. Featured. We’re busy working on new ways to make sure that every lens with Featured status participating in the magazine can be found throughout the magazine. We started with “Popular Pages”, which offers some, but not enough coverage. We recently introduced an integrated search, so people coming to the magazine can search and find lenses, and not just the articles. In the coming weeks (1 or 2), we’re going to be introducing “Related Lenses” in all articles and Categories across the magazine. In the case of So Crafty, if the article is about knitting, we’re going to show 6 or so random lenses which fall under the Knitting topics on Squidoo. Since it is our goal to drive lots of new traffic to the lenses you create, we’re going to be monitoring how visitors click on those links and fine tune as we go. Within Categories, we’lll do the same — balancing articles, lenses we’ve promoted as articles, and lenses that haven’t yet been promoted as articles, but match up with the Category the visitor is viewing.
4. Breadcrumbs. It is a technical challenge for us to show traditional breadcrumbs here, but I’m going to meet with the team to see what sort of options and ideas they have. No promises, but we hear you and we’ll investigate.
The big point I’d like to make is that the magazines are designed to be new traffic magnets to Squidoo, so we can drive new (and more) traffic to lenses. It isn’t the other way around. Surfers who visit a crafting lens are probably really into crafting. By “subscribing” to a magazine (via Facebook, Twitter, RSS, email or Pinterest), that person will see regular updates and come back. And the lenses you create in those Topics will be promoted and visible when they do return. We think this will have a significant impact on traffic, but as with all things on the web, there’s no overnight success. So Crafty is only a few weeks old, after all. We’re seeing stats that indicate the lenses we’re promoting are getting nice traffic boosts. We want lots more of that.
Thanks everyone.
Corey, thanks so much for your responses here.
I am sure we will keep getting more feedback on this.
I am sure we all appreciate Corey responding here. However, it would help enormously in terms of building engagement and a desire to participate in the magazines if he could address the questions so succinctly summarised by Ellen.
I have two objections to the mags I’ve seen so far:
As already mentioned, lack of a decent search means a lens that is adopted by a mag but not showcased can lose all system links. Some mags have had a rudimentary but inadequate navigation system. THere’s no excuse for not having a reasonable search – there are plenty of open source systems which handle large db/large demand. As to sub-nav – not difficult.
Secondly, the implementation of some mags has been poor, evidenced by very bad rendering speed. I have a fairly high spec PC and it coughed noticeably on mags like Halloween. If rendering is dependent on slow loading components then consider dropping those components, changing the design or changing the implementation.
I heartily applaud such new intitiatives but beware releasing too soon and then propagating errors.
I’d say the Squidoo magazines are a good idea that, like most new launches, could use some improvement. Getting the search engines up to snuff should be #1 priority for the people behind the mags. I’ve been opting out of them so far but may change my mind if I hear that they’ve improved.
One last concern that was not mentioned is the blank screen holding time when accessing the first lens into the magazine, via other lenses not in the Magazine.
It seems to be well over 20 seconds. I really get “bounce” happy if I have to wait more than 10 seconds.
I am still looking for the dashboard summary for the So Crafty. I am not sure how many I have in the Mag. I am going to give this Mag a longer test time to see which way my traffic goes.
Ellen succintly summarises everything I feel so I wont repeat any of the points she has made other than to say that I guess I am one of the “veteran” lensmasters who has expressed huge concerns about Pinterest. The fact that there’s no choice about whether to have the Pinit button on our lenses really frustrates me – particularly as Wizzley has listened to those of us who have concerns and the Pinit Button is now optional.
I am currently considering adding my own button to my lenses that says “Not Pinterested – please do not pin”.
To hear that, despite the huge concerns being expressed about Pinterest both on and offline, Squidoo is heading towards more integration, when some wonder how long Pinterest will last, is a huge disappointment to me. I would have thought the best thing to do is watch and wait, not use up precious staff time creating something that may just need “un-doing”.
However, I do appreciate the time HQ has taken to consult with Lensmasters during the phone conference and that Corey has taken the time to drop in and respond to our concerns. I hope that this dialogue will continue
I appreciate the discussion of the Magazines. My experience with Happy Halloween was so bad I had to really curb my impulse to just opt out of all of them (Happy Halloween took so long to load I didn’t even wait for my own lens to appear, and we lost the Halloween theme).
I did leave some lenses in the Thanksgiving and Christmas mags – they were all invisible and by that I mean never appeared in any search. They lost traffic. I lost money. And I understand they wouldn’t lose Google traffic, but they lost traffic on Squidoo because you are sent off the the Magazine and I’m sure non-Squids wouldn’t be able to come back (I found it very confusing to return to Squidoo). The sidebar links take them away to lenses I wouldn’t have chosen, and none of them are mine!
Fortunately I don’t have any lenses “chosen” to be “featured” in So Crafty, so now I can wait and see what happens. I would be thrilled if the magazines worked, but they don’t…. at least not yet.
I am really glad to see so many lensmasters posting their experiences, keep it up.