AJ is Always Juggling

What IS the difference between promoting a lens and bragging? And why am I thinking about this now?

As part of the September Squidoo Giant and Giant 100 Challenge, I am coaching a small group of Lensmasters on JJJ’s Challenge Team called AJ’s Jugglers. The aim is to help each other with tips and advice as we work towards our goals.

In answer to a question I posted on our Group Forum, as to what aspect of lensmaking they find the most difficult, two members of AJ’s Jugglers have recently raised the issue of Lens Promotion. They are finding it hard to promote their lenses because they cannot get away from the British definition of bragging (out comes my Little Oxfird Dictionary), which is: talk boastfully, boast of .

Now my view is that a lot of our lenses are helping people. Our lenses help people find solutions, whether we are telling them where to find products, outlining our personal experience with health problems or giving step by step instructions on how to insert a picture into a lens.

And to be able to help people, we need to tell them where to find the information!

I am going to stick my neck out here and say that I see an awful lot of bad lenses being pushed, promoted and yes, bragged about. It would be great if the more “shy” and reticent Lensmasters found it easier to promote their lenses. There’s an awful lot of very good lenses languishing low in the rankings that deserve to be a lot higher but they ain’t going to make that climb if people don’t know they are there…..

So this is a message to those lensmasters who find Lens promotion difficult. I challenge you to do the following with five of your lenses, over the next two weeks:

Blog about them. One at a time, a new post for each lens, do it every couple of days. Tell us why you made the lens and one thing in particular that you like about it. Then when you have posted, put the blog link on Twitter. And if you don’t have a Blog, then get one going. SquidTop is a good place to start!

Tweet the links. Take one lens a day and focus your Tweets on that lens – say three Tweets about that one lens during the day (so if you blog about it, make tweeting the blog link, part of your Twitter strategy). Space out the Tweets so they appear on your followers’ screens when THEY are normally most active, so you will need to take the different time zones into account.

Every three days or so, post the link to one lens in “lenses we like” on the SquidU Forum.

Find other people’s lenses to lensroll the lenses to. Do a search on Squidoo for similar lenses. Go visit some. Leave a genuine comment in the Guestbook and if you really like that Lensmaster’s style then join their Fanclub. If you Lensroll, then tell the Lensmaster that is what you have done – I will leave it to you to judge whether to leave a link to the lens, or just tell them the name of the Lens. Check the Guestbook to see if they say HTML is disabled – if you try to leave an HTML link when it is disabled, then not only will you hack off the Lensmaster but you will look very stupid as well!

Add the Lens link to any relevant plexos you find on other people’s lenses

Send out a Squidcast for each of the lenses. Again tell people what you like about the lens and what the benefit is to them to visit – but space Squidcasts out – or again, people will get fed up with you!

And this is just for starters! There’s some great lenses on Lens Promotion. Here’s a few I found by searching on the phrase, err….”lens promotion”:

How to promote you lens on Squidoo

Top ways to promote your Squidoo lenses

Promote your lens using FeedCat

So stop worrying about being seen to be “bragging” – remember you are HELPING people to find the information that they WANT to find!