A Homeschool Mom's Squidoo Tips & Tricks

Keeping a lens fresh means periodically updating it, editing it, and tweaking it. Updating your lens makes it "fresh" and helps a bit to raise its lensrank.

photo credit

How often should you do this? I say whenever you have something worthwhile to add to your lens!

• One super easy help in updating lenses is the Mozilla Firefox add-on for Squidoo. (Sorry, if you use Explorer, there's no equivalent.) This add-on installs two buttons on your browser. One takes you right to your dashboard and the other opens a special window that allows you to add the page you're viewing to any link list on any lens. It's super convenient!



• Use your feed reader for fresh ideas! When I find a blog entry that's interesting but I don't have time to add an idea or link to a lens, I mark it unread in my Bloglines reader. When I do have time to update lenses, I can look through the feeds that I've marked and easily find some material to touchup a lens.


Besides the blogs you love to read, add some other helpful feeds --


• Subscribe to Flickr feeds for photos that are tagged with tags you use for your Squidoo lenses. (You don't have to have an account at Flickr to do this.) For example, I have lots of homeschool lenses. So I subscribe to feeds for all pics posted to Flickr that are tagged homeschool, notebooking, and lapbooking. When I find a neat photo, I can add it to a Flickr module on an appropriate lens. If it's a super duper good image, I may add it to a text module (making sure it's appropriately Creative Commons licensed, of course).
  
  Here's how to find a tag feed. First go to the tag page and enter whatever tag you're interested in. I used snails for this example.
  
  
  
  Then scroll down to the bottom of the page where it has links to the feeds.
  
  
  
  The next page will ask you which feed reader you use. Choose your reader, and you're on your way!
  
  



• Lots of sites that continually change offer feeds. My favorite resource is Librivox. With the new release feeds, I'm on top of whatever new audio files are released. When they are relevant, I can link to the freebie on a lens.



• Subscribe to Google alerts for your particular lens tags. These are daily emails giving you the latest blog posts or news posts that pertain to whatever tag you choose. Again, I have an alert for notebooking and lapbooking. I've found neat blog entries, websites, and freebies to link to on my lenses. Through Google alerts, you also keep the pulse of what's going on in a particular field, and can make new lenses or add to old ones accordingly.



• Join email groups, forums, and social networking sites that deal with your topics. Not only will you find ideas and links, but you'll also have an audience for your lenses. Especially effective is when someone posts a question that your lens can answer. You'll be thanked for posting the link to your lens. It's not spammy but instead very helpful!



• Every now and then, you'll want to check to see that all your links on a lens are working correctly. You could do it manually, or use an free online tool like W3C Link Checker. It's super easy and keeps your lens fresh and useful to your visitors.

Most all lenses could benefit from a new module. Here are some that are especially fantastic.

• An Amazon spotlight of a new product or one that you've recently used and can write a glowing review about. Here's a helpful article --How to Write a Review.
  
  I've used this module on my 50 States Notebook lens to highlight the Scrambled States Game that I just love! You can use HTML inside the introductions of Amazon modules. You can see that I included my own photo of the product. That verifies that you really believe in this product and makes it come alive.



• A poll - great for interaction and finding out what your readers want


• A sticky note with some helpful tidbit or quotation