Interview with a Zuzanna
Read on for wild and wonderful tips from a top ranking superstar, Zuzanna! Brought to you by Guest Editor N376 aka Glen.Glen: How did you first hear about Squidoo?
Zuzanna: If I remember correctly, it all started with an email from Dr. Mani in which he described the benefits of Squidoo. I found it interesting, but all I did about it was to save the email for the future. Two months later I got a similar email from Bob Jenkins – (Bob The Teacher) talking about how Squidoo helped him with his beef jerky affiliate marketing. I saw his lens, then read the introduction on the Squidoo site, immediately fell in love with what I saw and the next thing was that I was working on my first lens. It was in October 2006.
Glen: You’ve got a lot of top ranking lenses. And two that are firmly entrenched in the Top 100. What is your secret?
Zuzanna: I don’t think there is any secret to getting into Top 100. I did that with seven of my lenses. I just use common sense strategies… First of all, I strive to provide good content – useful information presented in interesting way by using interactive modules, different media (text, pictures, video and even audio). I study the lenses from the Top 100 and lenses created by Seth. I use tips from SquidU (Learning Library) as well as those provided by the top-class lensmasters in their lenses (e.g., by MrLewisSmile, KimberlyDawnWells, N376) and I also use great lensmaster tools created by thefluffanutta. I highly recommend using his Advanced Dashboard for lens maintenance and promotion (SquidUtils). Regarding promotion – social bookmarking and social networking can do wonders for your lenses. Try MySpace, Facebook and StumbleUpon for the first part and AddThis.com widget for the second part. Yes, all of that takes time, but it works and you can do that gradually. Finally, make sure that your lenses are fresh! It doesn’t have to be anything big… For example, you can add a simple self-refreshing module (e.g. RSS module), you can re-order the modules or re-word some paragraphs. Even small changes, like HTML or tag changes will help. Those are especially important if you want to maintain your Top 100 position. If I have any secret or trick, it’s something that I use for research – even before I start a lens… What I mean here is that instead of Google, I use Clusty – the clustering metasearch engine. Just give it a try for any keyword and you’ll see how useful it is!
Glen: What methods are you employing to generate traffic to your lenses?
Zuzanna: The best way to achieve steady traffic to your lens is to have the best possible content. This always attracts visitors who will find your lens through search engines. I have many first-page positions on Google (especially my lens on The Beatles songs), Yahoo and MSN. The other traffic generation methods I use are: participation in forums, signing other people’s Guestbooks, writing comments on blogs, using profiles on social networking and social bookmarking sites. For some lenses I even used press releases and article marketing. Both work extremely well. For two of the lenses I even tried Adwords and had very good results. And for the traffic I call “local” – i.e. visits from fellow Squidoo lensmasters – it’s important to use the best possible titles and tags. Use the stats on your Dashboard for that.
Glen: How often do you update your lenses?
Zuzanna: It depends… The lenses that are in Top 100 have to be updated quite often to stay there, so I update them at least once every 2-3 days. Those less popular don’t have to be updated, unless you want them to get to the Top 100 or to the better paying tiers. And, of course, I update a lens when something important, interesting that is related to the theme of the lens happens.
Glen: Do you have a favorite html trick?
Zuzanna: Yes, I do have one – something that’s very simple, but I think that it makes every lens look better. It’s capitalizing and wrapping the text around the first letter in a paragraph. I learned it from Advanced HTML for Squidoo lens by N376. There are many more great HTML tricks there and they are easy to implement – just copy and paste!
Glen: What ways do you try and encourage visitors to participate in your lenses?
Zuzanna: I didn’t have time yet to try Duel, but I see it on other lenses and it looks very interesting. I always use Guestbook and various Plexos, although sometimes it’s necessary to delete spamming entries. The best way to encourage participation is to have interesting ideas/questions for those interactive modules. By the way, if they are well designed, you can gather a very interesting material for another lens or two…
Glen: What common mistake do you see even experienced lensmasters make?
Zuzanna: The one I have in mind is either a mistake or a sin – I’m talking about inappropriate comments in other people’s Guestbooks. Very often those “comments” are not about the host lens – they are simply spam. They can be fought by deleting them, but it’s really annoying. It’s unfortunate because the Guestbook is one of the most useful modules. When writing Guestbook comments, be nice to the author of the lens and write only about his/her lens – not about your stuff, unless, of course they are really related and the visitors can benefit from seeing your lens or website too.
Glen: What mistakes have you corrected as you’ve built up your Squidoo expertise (answer presented in a live-and-learn type way)?
Zuzanna: Once I was thinking about deleting a lens that was performing well during the high season, but after that it wasn’t as good. I told Margaret Schaut about my plan and she advised me to leave the lens for a while, maybe add some longer-lasting content or at least to wait for another high season. Margaret was absolutely right! The lens is a constant money-earner for me – through both Adsense revenue share and affiliate income.
Glen: What is your own favorite lens and why?
Zuzanna: I like most the one that started my Squidoo career, the lens about my father – Eugeniusz Tytyk (1920-2006) – An Auschwitz Survivor, My Father, My Hero). My father spent 5 years in the Nazi camps, including Auschwitz and he survived that all. I was looking for a way to promote the book my father wrote and found out that Squidoo was perfect for that. In that lens I present very unique family treasures – like pictures of letters my father sent to his mother from the Nazi camps. I also use there a medium that is chosen very rarely by the lensmasters – audio (for excerpts from my father’s book).
Glen: Where do you write the content for your lenses?
Zuzanna: I do it whenever I get an idea and if I have a pencil and a piece of paper handy. Very often it happens when I have to wait for something.
Glen: If you were given a day in the Squidoo HQ office what would you do?
Zuzanna: I would make an office party to celebrate the Squidoo success and to thank the staff for the fantastic work they do!
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