Online Promotion

I try to visit 2 or 3 "new" (new because I never saw them before that is) lenses every day. If the first 1 or 2 text modules interest me (I always read at least the first 2 text modules) than I read on. More often than not I'll read every thing on the lens, because I'm just a rabid reader and I love reading everything I can find to read, so as a general rule I seek out really long lenses with lots of text modules on them, because those are the ones I like best of all... they give me lots of new stuff to read, and I get to know the author better, which is what I like best of all. I like lenses with hand written text module because it's like reading a letter from a friend, or reading an editorial in the newpaper: you get to learn why the author thinks about the topic at hand, and than you can reply...

I like to leave comments... and long ones at that. After reading the lens, that's my next step, to leave a comment. Lenses (like this one) that really opened my mind up to the topic inspire me to write really long rambling comments about what it is I liked about the lens and how I feel about the topic, things I know about the topic, etc. etc.

After that I leave stars. 4 if I liked it but thought it could have been better, 5 I if I liked it and thought it was done great. I never leave anything less than 4 because I feel that either the lensmaster is still working on it, and it may become a 4 or 5 star, thus I wait to see what they do to it latter on to improve it. Or if I just didn't like the lens or it's topic, I don't leave any stars at all rather than leave lower stars.

For most lenses that's the end of it. For a few however, the ones I really like, I continue, by added them to my favorites.

If they have a duel module, after I submit the comment, I use the email friend to send the comment to my mom and my 3 brothers, all of whom are also Squidoo lensmasters and often end up commenting on lenses I previously commented on.

If there is no duel module and I want to tell my mom and 3 brothers about the lens, than I'll use the email button for that.

Sometimes I'll send a twitter message, telling my followers to check out the lens (even though it's not one of my lenses). A few times I've gone to SquidU and said "Hey check out this lens I found". The way I see it it doesn't have to be my own lens for me to brag about it.

I have 32 blogs, one about anything and the rest topic specific... if the lens falls into one of my blog topics, I'll post a comment or review with a link back. If it was really helpful for the topic, I add it to my blogroll list. If the lensmaster has a lot of lenses on the topic I'll add the RSS feed for that lensmaster's list of lenses to my blogroll.

I send bulletins out on MySpace about both lenses I've made and lenses I've just read. There are 2,000+ friends on my myspace list, all of whom are people I met and talk to on online forums...many of whom are fellow authors and cosplayers, so often if I like a lens, they well like it too.

Lastly, if I have a lens on the same topic, than I will not only lensroll it, but I will add it to the featured module right on my lens.

I was a door to door salesman for 7 years, so promoting things that are not mine, became a big part of my life, and here on Squidoo I can promote lenses to my hearts content, so if I find a lens I like, you can be certain that I'm promoting it left and right, right along with my own lenses. It's just something I like to do.

In resent years there has been an on growing problem with online rudeness and lack of professionalism. An epidemic caused by one person not being face to face with another. No where does the problem stand out more than it does on eBay.

The question is: Does anybody care about customer service any more?

Business folks like you and me care of course and that's why you are here reading this lens and why I'm writing it. Ebay is an easy place to look for this, because there are millions and millions of sellers on eBay and each have very different selling practices and if you've been an active buyer on eBay as long as I have, you start to know which sellers are good sellers and which are not so good sellers and you start becoming a repeat buyer from the good sellers because you enjoyed their good customer service.

While there are many professional sellers on eBay, most sellers on eBay are not business folks, but rather someone selling stuff they found in their attic, because it's easier to sell it on eBay rather than host a yard-sale. This is not a bad thing. It is however on of the reasons why eBay has such a high rate of poor customer service. Why? Simply put, most of the sellers on eBay have no training in sales and customer service; they are not "out to get" the buyer as some buyers like to say on the eBay forums, they just don't realize that they are not acting in a professional manner.

I do not sell on eBay, buyer only, but off eBay I am in costumer service: 7 years as a door to door salesman, and since than in doors as a sale associate. Retail sales repping is "my thing". I love doing it. I was a door-to-door sales rep for 7 years, loved it to pieces, quit due to family emergency, but I may take it up again, because I loved that job so much. Since than I got another job temping as a sale associate for a department store. Like my first job, my second one involved pitching sales and getting costumers to buy. All in all I've got 10 years experience pitching sales and I love doing it. My job is to find out what customers want and keep costumers happy, because that is the job I enjoy doing the most of all.

I pride myself in my ability to keep costumers happy... though my manager does not like the fact that that sometimes means I send them to another store! o.0 I love what I do, sadly, as you pointed out, costumer service is for the most part a thing of the past. The other girls I work with are all fresh out of high school or college and they are working retail "until something better comes along"... these girls come and go a dime a dozen and worst of all, they could not care less about the costumers.

They rarely smile, they do not engage the costumer in conversation, they never fold the cloths before putting them in the bag, they never wrap fancy prom gowns in tissue paper and pack them in boxes, they never leave the cash register to help a costumer try on a dress in the fitting room, and twice I've seen girls actually tell costumers to leave because they did not like the costumer!!! (a cross dresser, each time... which the store has a no discrimination policy and it says right in it that we can not discriminate against trans gendered folks... hey, we sell fancy dress items, the cross dressers are going to shop here! the sales girls need to get used to it or get a new job!)

In my experience it is the young people that are the trouble... they do not care about the costumer, they hate their job, they take out their hatred for their job on the costumer, they feel like they are in a rut, costumer service suffers because they refuse to respect their job and take it seriously. They act like spoiled brat punks instead of professional business men and women.

On eBay, the lacking in business professionalism is worse, because the seller can sell underwear in their underwear and it's that casual aspect of eBay selling that causes sellers to not think they are business professionals. Sad but true.

But how does any of this effect you and your online promotion of your site/products? Well it effects you greatly! How you represent yourself online is how your potential customers will view you. How you speak to people on forums and chat rooms tells people that something about the kind of customer service they can expect from you or your company.

Think about it this way: How you interact with people online is a form of customer service and it is also online promotion of how well you treat people. Ask yourself this: Do you want to be seen as a fowl mouthed rude punk whom no one trusts or would you rather be seen as a smart professional whom people want to do business with?

I joined the internet in 1997, back than my "thing" was forum chatting, which I did daily and on countless forums. In 2004 however, I discovered blogs, namely BlogSpot (now Google Blogger). I started my first blog, posted 5 times and than got bored. Than I discovered WordPress. Did the same thing: started a blog, posted a few times, gave up. A year passed and in 2005 I was hit by the blogging bug, which resulted in the 32 blogs I have today... a sum total of over 4,000 posts (all original content written by me, btw).

My next move was, to start forums. 12 of them.

Than I discovered that I could build my own websites and went on to start just over 74 different sites.

In all that time I never once considered that I could be doing any of this to make money! OMG! I was having so much fun all those years and I never made a single penny!

All of that changed in 2007, when I discovered Squidoo. I created 15 lenses and than, gave up thinking Squidoo was a lost cause. Than 3 month later I got paid $37. So I went back to Squidoo and made a few more lenses, and a few more, and by September had over 100 lenses. By March of 2008 I had 300 lenses bringing in a minimum of $80 per month, with more money coming in from affiliate links off the lenses.

Today, I continue building lenses. I talk about my lenses on my blogs. I talk about my blogs on my lenses. My blogs send traffic to my lenses. My lenses send traffic to my blogs. And I'm having the time of my life writing articles about my hobbies!

It takes time, but if you keep working at it, blogging combined with Squidooing will bring in a pretty steady income. Maybe I can't live off of it yet, but who knows, by 2009 I may be living off Squidoo income alone... at least I can hope it comes to that!

Well, all in all, I have discovered that blogging about your life draws readers. Blogging about the lenses you've made is great promotion for them.

Likewise, writing content for your lenses brings readers. Adding links to your blog, is great promotion for it.

They promote each other, it's a win win to have both.

Good luck with your own blogging/lensing!

I think it depends on the lens topic and the type of reader it attracts. Some niches topics just attract people that will stay with you for an hour to read the whole thing, but most readers are not going to do that, they'll read the first few paragraphs, 5 at the most, than leave.

I've got some pretty huge lenses, and a whole bunch of short ones, and oddly it's my really super long ones that stay as my highest ranked most trafficked lenses, however, looking at my stats on these lenses, I can see that the people that are reading them are coming from a forum where I know maybe 70 of the members and we talk together a lot, so I think a lot of my traffic is the same people coming back... they read a paragraph today than another the next day, etc, until they read the whole thing a little bit at a time. If you can find readers like that, than big lenses are okay, but I don't think finding a lot of people like that, for a lot of topics is not too plausible. I wouldn't expect my lenses on other topics to get any repeat traffic at all, because they are not the topics my forum buddies are interested in.

And if you read all that, I'll add one more thing: I have a lens with like 20 different polls on it. The first poll at the top has about 30 votes, the next one has about 26 votes, and as you go down the list each poll has less and less votes until you get to the last one, which has 3. In other words, of the people who started reading that lens, only 3 made it to the bottom! I found that very interesting.