Fish Tanks and Funnels: Simple Squidoo Marketing for Your Website

Do you know what marketing is?

Is it:

• Lots of hits?


• Lots of visitors?


• Getting a high lens rank?


• Getting in the Top 100 lenses?


• Achieving #1 position on Google?


• Hitting #1 position for certain tags?


• Irritating pop ups that you can't close?


• Email subscriptions that turn out to contain no content (and you can't even find the unsubscribe link)?

Or,

Is it about finding a cost effective way to present yourself to groups of people who need your product?

OK, so the first list is probably a list of things that we want. Or, maybe its a list of things that other marketers want you to want.

Why do people talk about strategy? Many people talk about it, but what does it mean?

Is it just a list of links and recommendations?

Is it a set of tips for promoting your lens?

Or,

Is it about setting a marketing goal and working out a plan to get there? This gets my vote.

OK - so what is Squidoo Marketing Strategy?

Simple! Use Squidoo as a cost effective way to reach your group of prospects.

Squidoo is part of your overall website strategy.

This lens talks about ways to use Squidoo to market your site.

Of course LensRank is important in your Squidoo strategy. A good lens rank gets you higher up on various pages (eg tag pages). If you make it into the Top 100 then you're on the hot list and very visible to other Squidpeople!

I'm afraid I don't know the secret LensRank formula. Those Squidoo people just won't publish it. I do know what helps though...

So how do you get a good LensRank (and keep it)? Here's the recipe. There are some other factors, but they are probably just seasoning:

• Write original, interesting content. Lots of it. Stuff that people read and say 'wow'.


• Write around your keywords. Use all 40 tags and use your keywords here too. Tags set your position in the Squidoo 'tag space' and define your niche within Squidoo


• Include your tags in your title, URL, and description/introduction. These are the hot zones for finding keywords, used by search engines (and probably the Squidengine)


• Select a good primary tag, using your main keyword


• Promote your lens and lensmaster pages internally by commenting on other people lenses and joining groups. This build links (good for the ranking) and increases your visibility to other lensmasters


• Promote them externally via blogs, social networks, email. This will increase traffic (definitely important for lens rank) and increase the number of links (also good for lens rank and Page Rank)

And finally...

• Update your lens regularly. Add new content. Sharpen up existing content. Google and Squidoo love new stuff

Obviously traffic is a key part of the success of your site and Squidoo is great for winning a ton of targeted visitors to your site.

This is because your lenses sit in the middle of a vast, high PageRank site which already attracts thousands of visitors each day. You can share some of that link juice that flows around the site and get your pages ranked highly in the search engines.

Even within the Squidoo site itself there are many hundreds (thousands) of people building, searching, tagging and generally keeping busy - and you can attract some of these people to your lenses.

Because of the categories and tag system the visitors that you attract to your lenses can be ultra-focussed for your product area.

This is fantastic for pulling in people who are looking for your niche, so you can easily get:

• News/email signups


• People looking for the products that you sell


• Pre-qualified traffic to your own lens or website


• Razor sharp links into focussed areas of your website... probably higher value than you can create yourself.

It's easy to create a professional, well laid out lens so you can present yourself in the best possible way.

Of course you have to supply the content but with these great tools there's no excuse for not showing yourself as 'the' expert in your area, whether its Wall-E toys, iPhones, CSS coding, etc

If you can build your reputation as an expert then this will help you to sell your products.

Are you original or are you just churning out information that I can read everywhere else?

Part of successful marketing is to make yourself stand out and be different from the rest. This gets you noticed, and attention is good.

It's true that no 2 lenses, or websites are the same and that creative writing can make you stand out.

But are you really creating something useful and unique? Something I'll remember tomorrow? Next week?

Squidoo is an ideal place to explore your differences and make yourself stand out from the rest.

Look at your tags, and your content and your title. Look at the place where your lens appears (tag page, Top 100 page, group page). Are you unique enough to stand out and get noticed?

There's no point using all this new marketing technology if you don't listen to the messages it tells you.

These days the worst thing you can do is keep pushing the same old product when customers are telling you they want something else.

How are you listening and responding to your customers? Can you adapt your website or online business to what you learn?

Today customers want quick chunks of info, customized everything, and happy meals. They want the latest gizmos and technology (look at the iPhone lines at the local wireless store).

This means that if you can't adapt and deliver these things, you will lose customers.

In order to build trust and familiarity between you and your customers you need to keep talking to them via your marketing channels. You need to keep them coming back for more.

If you rely on success from a one-off visit to a site, or a lens, this is expensive and stands a very low chance of succeeding.

You can build trust and familiarity through a number of repeated conversations:

This could be via blogs, email marketing, updates to existing sites, adding more sites, Twitter, friends on digg etc. You can include many of these into your Squidoo strategy.

Somewhere out in Squidspace there is a funnel where visitors you want are passing through lenses, groups, tag pages and the Top 100.

Why a funnel? Well, a bunch of visitors arrive at a certain place and they are 'funneled' off from there to their next destination, which could be another lens. Hopefully it is your lens.

Actually it's more of a leaky sieve since there are multiple holes where your potential visitors can disappear.

You job as a Squidoo marketer is:

1. Find the relevant funnels

2. Make sure they have a good flow of visitors through them

3. Make the holes compelling enough for visitors to choose yours

Simple!

One of the challenges in marketing your website is to get yourself seen. Even harder, is to get yourself seen by the right people who will like your website.

It's a bit like being a fish in the huge Google ocean. It's a big place, and you're unlikely to get yourself noticed unless you are a really big fish, or a really scary one.

Actually it's better to be a specialized type of fish, in a tank where people are looking, in a shop where people go to look at fish.

Don't just be a cod or a haddock. Be a bright orange clown fish. And remember, you can choose the tank where you swim, unlike a real fish.

Do you own a website? Are you planning to build one? You can use the Squidoo ideas in this lens to bring a ton of targeted visitors to your site.

How do you create a great website that these visitors will like and come back for more? How do you convert them into signups, or profits?

You'll find the answers in my guide Squeeze More Results From Your Website. It's free, and just a click away.

Once you've signed up I'll send you the guide and will also check in often to send you more tips and advice and to see how your web design is doing.

The beautiful picture of Table Top Mountain at Cape Town, South Africa came from morguefile.com