There are perhaps a thousand ways to approach Squidoo successfully, and Seth knows that there are TONS of Squidoo gurus, but it seems to me that the staying power of Squidoo lenses is peculiar unto itself.

As the seasons of the years ebb and flow, there are particular lenses that rise back up to the occasion and they do it every year.  While the latest and greatest new fads, new toys, new gadgets and new fashions seem to have their short blitz, I have come to believe that even internet people, and internet shoppers are creatures of HABIT.

Those creatures of habit are looking for the same things year by year- comfort foods, Christmas traditions and information, child and family information, how to survive in better ways, how to feel more like THEMSELVES.

Yes, of course, if you can do it, build lenses for the latest and greatest, most fashionable and wacky.

Just don’t forget that humans are humans and, well, you can get a return audience year by year by tapping into the habits of creatures.

John Fenzel

The fastest way to make teeth grind in the SquidU lounge is to minimize the importance of SEO, or to come in with the idea that SEO can be ‘natural’ and also be ‘successful.’

Point well taken.  Certainly every squidooer needs to have their own blog and/or website to maximize their creative talents and make the most of their expertise.   In fact, a creative-type will benefit MOST from having their own site and using Squidoo as a SUPPORT.   It frankly guarantees that talented people will always NEED SEO experts to assist them in the very best SEO practices and support available.

The world, however, benefits HUGELY from creative types, creative spirits and souls obsessed with expressing their particular talents, and, like the artist that is focused and fantastic, just isn’t able to make the leap into marketing their best work profitably or well.

The old cliche ‘starving artist’ isn’t just a fantasy!

Oxymoronic Squidooing is placing your content or artistry FIRST, and based upon the information you put in your Squidoo lens, blog, website, the appropriate and natural SEO terms and techniques will present themselves to you.

One of the most significant examples I can think of is John Fenzel.  An extraordinary writer, his Squidoo lenses SUPPORT his work, give him a viable audience, and the SEO for his pages, his website and other web presence is NATURAL TO HIS PROJECTS.

There was no google search term for ‘Lazarus Covenant‘ until John himself CREATED that term.   There were no SEO searches, keyword searches or branding until John himself created that for himself.

The passion John Fenzel shows for his topic, for his projects, is the primary impact made on anyone who visits his lenses.  His writing is hard hitting and genuinely riveting, and content-free SEO simply can never make the contribution that John makes with his Squidoo lenses.  There is a ‘natural’ correlation to John’s blog, website & lenses.

Creating your content FIRST can make a truly new contribution to what is on the internet, what people see at Squidoo, and enhances the quality of all of our web-surfing. Geniuses, inventors and artists contribute new and exciting things to the knowledge and experience of humanity all the time!

If you’re not an expert at SEO, there is no reason to avoid Squidoo!  Squidoo itself does its SEO on each page naturally, according to your idea of the tags that make the most sense.

The fact that you’re putting your BEST forward FIRST builds your audience, your fans, your internet outreach and generates an audience that admires your finest work.  Definitely hard to SEO all that FIRST.

Replicated Eiffel Tower

Though I have studied communications in all forms from the earliest in human history through to the present, I have to admit that my education stopped JUST before blogs.  Therefore, blogs and web 2.0 writing is, in itself, an entirely new field of communication study, and basically a self-study course (if you want the full measure).

Usually, the communications platforms available throughout history were mainly populated with those who really could write.  In fact, those who couldn’t write just didn’t make it far at all, and were lost in the ash-heap of history.

This new web, however, is the first time ever that even ‘can’t write’ people have a massive platform and a global audience.

In a lot of ways, this is very much to the good.

Can’t write, but people enjoy how you talk?  You can vlog!

Can’t write or do public speaking, but express yourself best with photography?  There are LOADS of opportunites.

Can’t do those things but you can draw?  Ditto.  Music? Dancing? Hunting? Same, same, same.

All of those things make for a very enjoyable internet.

In fact, it looks as if the person who knows themselves and their best communication style, and works the internet according to that reality, can do very well.

Let’s talk the mucky muck, shall we?

There has been a recent surge in new levels of tips, tricks and techniques for plagiarism of written content.  Further, pointless and useless articles are written, re-written, and re-written again ad nauseum.  Great pieces are run through translators over and over until some semblance of ‘sense’ is made of an article and instantly re-published as ‘original content’ without concern.  Articles are totally keyword assembled.  Articles are run through thesaurus’ to replace main words until the copyscape checker comes back ‘clean’.

In short, human communications have increased their reach, yes, but in new ways these things have turned written content into a mucked up bog.

“Abusus non tollit usus” Marcus Aurelius told us, and it is true to this very day.  “The cure for abuse is proper use, NOT disuse.”

The use of an online thesaurus is a great help to the writer who notices too much repetition in their words.

A translator is enormously helpful in reaching foreign audiences, especially if the translator skills get some improvement.

Yet all these, and other, tricks and techniques won’t make a writer out of a non-writer, and cause two significant problems.  First, it abuses others who do write, and write well.  Secondly, they distract from the natural communication talents an internet person may actually have, and profit from exploring and developing.

If you are a ‘can’t write’ person, it isn’t necessary to get bogged down in destructive techniques that will do violence to your own self respect and delay the discovery of your own best style.  In fact, you could damage your future reputation on the internet, and reduce the trust people have for you, by practicing these thing.

It really doesn’t take much to turn this into something else that can be to your advantage and to your BEST advantage.

Begin by asking everyone who knows you, ‘what do you like about my communication style?  What are my strongest points?’  This isn’t asking for people to condemn you, but an opening into the truth about what everyone will enjoy the most.

Armed with the feedback from those who know and like you the most, take a little bit of time to consider- what is the best platform and the best outlet for me to use my particular communication talents?

That type of talent, of skill, of approach cannot be easily plagiarized no matter how many tricks of the trade there may be.  The authenticity of the personality that comes through such a program of content sharing disappears when plagiarized, and actually helps to safeguard what you are best at.

There is no shortage of ways and means for you to express those wonderful and interesting things about you and your true presentation to the world.  From blogs, to websites, to Squidoo pages, the platforms are ready for you to show your best to the everyone.  Isn’t that what the world, and the internet needs most?  Your best?

These types of pages are filled with the talents, activities and passions of the people that write them.

Usually you’ll find that quality in a lensography or a SquidWho page.

Recently I was honored to give a speech at the Vietnam Veterans Moving Wall Memorial.  This talk happened to be taped, shown on television repeatedly and broadcast on the radio over hundreds and hundreds of square miles.

I was able to blog it, putting the text online, and I was also able to add the video to my Eccentricity lensography.  This is a living, growing VITAE, a new type of resume, a new type of opportunity to keep family members, friends, supporters and even fans up on the latest activities you are busy with.

The possibilities are endless!  I hope you make at least ONE living and breathing Squidoo lens- you will most likely discover that people appreciate having that information all about you easily available.

Evrin Celimli is a FABULOUS composer, having won at Tribeca Film Festival AND at the Woods Hole Film Festival, done some amazing soundtrack work, and also some music for soundtracks for corporate films!  You can listen to his work at this website.

But do take a look at his Squidoo lens, Music for Pictures, Film Scores and Soundtracks, where he has so much other interesting information and videos!

There are truly passionate people out there in the world, and Evrin is one of them.

Like Evrin, I enourage you to ‘take control of the passions of your soul and make a Squidoo lens about them.’

I hope this automatic masterpiece of music mastery will inspire you to share your talents and inspirations!

Now that that contest is over, I’d like to talk about some little known ways that you can use your Squidooing to really help charities, that many folks don’t know about.

First thing- did you know that volunteering for a non-profit helps them at a value of $17 per hour (in 2004 figures- the last time I was responsible to know that)?

Yes, Squidooers, $17 an hour or more for your charity just by donating your time. More even than that, if your charity seeks out funding from someplace like the Kellogg Foundation, your hours working for them at that price increases their chances of getting an in-kind financial donation?

In kind donations are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for nearly EVERY charity you can think of. By accumulating volunteer time, say 2,000 hours, valued at $17 per hour, the charity can seek in-kind money from many organizations to the tune of $34,000 CASH.

Why am I telling you this? Because this is a wonderful way for you to maximize your time spent Squidooing!

Make a page about or for your favorite charity. Then, donate it TO that charity at market rates- I think Tiffany Dow and Lewis Smile are advertising somewhere in the area of $500 per lens? In addition, you may include the value of each lens TO SQUIDOO, which (last time I looked) was about $250. Therefore, your donation would begin with about $750 per lens, that they can use as an in-kind donation.

Doing this is a tax deduction for you, unlike donating directly through Squidoo which you may want.

Here’s where the $17 per hour time comes in. You ALSO donate your time that you spend building and maintaining that (those) lenses for that charity. Just report your time to that charity each month and they’ll do the rest.

If the charity has a paypal account, the payments for those pages should pay directly into the charity. Each month of that payout is additional income for that charity.

Now, if you do NOT itemize your deductions, doing this won’t help you, but the charity will still benefit and they’ll make excellent use of the hours of time you spend on their pages.

If you do itemize your deductions, then this is much preferred as you can then take a deduction on YOUR tax bill.

So, consider ways to maximize your charitable activities with Squidoo. In this economy, they can use every bit of help they can get!

Edit: Yes.  Create a new account with a paypal email for your charity.

Transfer the lens to the new account that pays them directly.

Send a statement to the charity of your donation of the lens(es) and the value, which I estimate at this time to be between $750 & $1000

Thereafter, as you maintain or upgrade the page, keep track of your hours and send a statement of your volunteer hours on a monthly or quarterly statement.  The charity can value those hours at about $17 per hour for purposes of seeking in-kind matching grants.

If you create more lenses for the charity account, wash, rinse and repeat!

The duplicates of the statements you send can be provided to your accountant for your charitable deduction.

Depending on your product, there are lots of ways to do this.  However a better way of thinking about this step is to show somehow that you KNOW what else is out there, and that the way you are offering it, the product you’re offering, the service you are giving, is better than almost anyone else’s.

It is easier to do this sitting face to face with people, and so to some degree, your page needs to give people a little bit of that ‘face to face’ feeling.

The most effective way to do that is to write your page as if someone IS sitting in front of you, someone you care about, and your text is what you are saying to THEM.  This is called a ‘conversational style’.

Therefore, a copy/paste of someone else’s text is the LAST thing you want to do on your page!

How you do this, demonstrate your knowledge of your product/field/industry can take a few different forms.  One very successful way on a webpage/ Squidoo lens is alternatives.

What is the need you are trying to meet?

Example:

“You could buy heavy wooden outdoor furniture that is difficult to move, or you could get this light, beautiful and easy to store, easy to take care of recycled plastic outdoor furniture”

“You could take a chance that your downloads are illegal and cause you problems later, or you could download from this secure site, knowing that you’ve done this securely, legally, and honestly.”

Understanding the problems people run into in your topic area, and addressing them genuinely, even if briefly, goes a very long way to gaining an emotional connection with you and your potential customer.

The ONLY customer that is important is the one visiting your page, right now.

Perhaps the page will make the rounds among the kind of people that could bring some SERIOUS Squidoo pages, some SERIOUS credibility, some SERIOUS traffic.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Many successful pages do these things, perhaps intuitively, but if you can’t intuit your selling approach, take a look and see if you can improve elements of your page.

The first essential is ALWAYS to establish your credibility with your visitor.

Without taking up huge amounts of space, you can create a credibility builder default bio as an overall feature of your Squidoo lenscrafting, or an ‘about me’ page on your website.

Secondly, on a Squidoo page, you get the specific bio that does not need to be the default bio, and if you have pages on many topics, I suggest you use this space to increase your credibility on the topic.

You can create a Squidoo lens about you, about you and your specific niche, a SquidWho lens, or a lensography that addresses your niche credibility as you display your specific lenses.

How do you approach the topic of credibility?

Ask yourself questions.  Why am I interested in this, how is it that I know something others don’t?  If I saw a biography like this, would I feel more comfortable, more welcome, more likely to be in good hands?

This can be done with good humor, you can share your excitement or successful use of your product, or an established history.

Credibility is also a form of ‘authority’ which all webmasters and Squidoo lensmasters have a need to develop with Google, digg and other forms of social marketing.  Authority or credibility will help your page survive the test of time, will help you achieve over other competitors, and help you to build your online business one visitor at a time.

Many of our Squidoo lensmasters also have websites that are linked to their Squidoo pages and other places. If you have competitors, you can now use Google Trends to compare your traffic with theirs.

This will certainly increase the competitiveness among websites, just as Squidaholic has increased competitiveness among similar Squidoo lenses.

There are quite a number of individuals around who are very experienced at using these tools to increase the traffic to their sites. My suggestion is that you spend some time practicing with these tools yourself and learn to protect yourself and to compete the best you can.