More about the Purple Star debate later, but I was thrilled when I got an email to inform me that my newest lens: The Year of the Tiger, had been awarded a Purple Star only six days after it had been published! The actual tangible benefits of the award, as pointed out on SquidU, are negligible but it is the appreciation from your fellow Lensmasters that makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

To think that someone enjoyed my lens and appreciated the work that I put into it so much, that they took the time to send an email nominating it for an award is what does it for me.

This made me realise that while it is OK to question processes and procedures, we should not lose sight of the fact that as a Community we should always be pleased if something happens to make a member of our Community happy!

The Purple Star debate got me thinking so much yesterday, that I decided to make a Lensography of my Purple Star lenses. I am proud of my Purple Stars and I see nothing wrong is saying so. However, it does seem that some people feel inhibited about publicly declaring they have received one. They are worried that it may seem like over-promotion.

Obviously, it is a very personal choice that people make, similar to the choice about whether to leave a message in a Guestbook if you have Blessed a lens as a Squidoo Angel. But the diversity of views is what makes the Squidoo Community so interesting and what I particularly like is the people with whom you can disagree in one thread, who then pop over to agree with you in another. It’s what makes the SquidU Forum such a nice (and adult) forum to be part of.

Not everyone visits the SquidU Forum, so I added a debate module to my Purple Star lens, which has already seen some activity. On the whole people seem to be happy with the way the Programme is managed, but it will be interesting to see how the discussion evolves.

My other Purple Star lenses:

• Bullying at Primary School
• 10 Best Plants for Bees
• Auditory Processing Disorder
• Trooping the Colour
• Christmas at AJs
• Environmentally Friendly Halloween Lights
  

Thanks to the traffic I have finally broken the 2,000 barrier for visits to all my lenses and am edging closer to 2,500!

What this shows to me is that my recently revised SEO methods are now paying off, as the lens was featured very quickly by Google, within days of publishing on 19 May. What it also shows is that, unless you are already confident with SEO when you first arrive, it takes awhile to really get going on Squidoo.

Eleven months on and I am still learning! However one thing I have also learned is to put a positive Spin on Spam!

RocketMoms: a lensography, which is a gathering of the seven lenses I have published as part of the current RocketMoms programme. There’s details of the Tasks we have been set, info about the people behind RocketMoms and plexos that are filling up fast with other RocketMoms lenses.

For the Week 5 task we were asked to do a “holiday” or commemorative event.

I did think about seeing if anyone had a National Holiday that coincided with my birthday. My careful research only turned up ONE National Day and that was the very exciting “National Sheep Day” in the Cameroons. Right, I thought, I will do a humerous lens. But the problem was I could not find any clean jokes about sheep!

In the end, I did a topical lens that links in nicely with another lens Queen Elizabeth II:

Trooping the Colour

And one day I will do an X-rated lens about sheep!