Monday, March 30, 2009

Using Squidoo to Brand YOU and Get Found



One of the most powerful tools I use to create my brand online and to get the expose I need is Squidoo. If you've not heard of Squidoo or are unfamiliar with what exactly it is, let me give you a quick explanation.

Squidoo comes from the minds of one of the greatest marketing minds around today and a clear leader in online marketer, Seth Godin. Seth Godin is one of the few Internet marketers that has branched out to create a presence in the offline marketing world as well. In fact, you are sure to find many of his popular books in just about any bookstore.

The premise of Squidoo is the idea that everyone is an expert on something. It makes no difference what it is, chances are that you are also an expert on something. Gardening, crafts, baking, making a P-B and J sandwich. It does not matter. Your an expert.
Squidoo is the combination of a small one page blog and a community of average people that are also experts on something. With Squidoo, you can write a page, called a Lens, on just about any subject. At the same time, in the community of itself, you can meet, share, comment on and vote for other people's lenses as well.

I think of it like a big craft fair of IDEAS.

With the basic idea of Squidoo in mind, there is a very powerful business application behind Squidoo as well. If you lean how to apply the basics of good site building and marketing.

You see, the new Internet, called web2.0 is driven by ideas. People sharing ideas and connecting through ideas. Once you begin to understand that, you will begin to understand the new generation of the Internet, web2.0 and attraction marketing.

The real power is also in the fact that since the new generation of the Internet being driven by ideas and sharing ideas. The major search engines like Google feed off of these sites that share and focus on ideas. That's why blogs and sites do so well on the search engines.

From my own example, years ago when I began Internet marketing and affiliate marketing. It took hours of work to create a website and then put in all the steps to insure it ranked well in the search engines. Ranking well on the search engines is very important because even with the most attractive site, if people can't find you, none of that matters one bit.

Even after I created a site and then optimized it for the search engines, known as "search engine optimization" or SEO, I would still need to submit my site to the search engines and then wait weeks to find out how well I ranked to even know if I did a good job. If I didn't do it right, I would need to go back into my site and edit it and try all over again. Let's just say this took a long time. I had success, but it was a huge investment of time.

Today, using Squidoo, I can build a targeted information lens in one evening and see search engine results in less then 2 weeks. In fact at the writing of this post, one of my lenses is #1 on Google and another is #3. Any idea how much exposure being #1, #3 or anywhere in the top 10 can give you?

Why is that important to a networker? Well my goal as a networker is to have the people most interested in my product or business looking at my information. This is so totally different than prospecting to a warm list or to strangers at the mall that they cannot even be compared. When you talk to a co-worker or give your "elevator pitch" to a waiter at your favorite resaurant, how targeted is that?

You might be saying that talking to the waiter at the restaurant is targeted because, what person waiting tables wouldn't what the freedom of owning their own business? That's quite an assumption. As far as you know, that waiter in your favorite restaurant is very happy doing what he's doing. Are you assuming he hates his job or has a crappy job? Shame on you for judging him.

Instead, look at online or search engine marketing. If I sell shoe laces green shoelaces, for example. How targeted would someone be if they found my site because they went online and searched for "green shoelaces". Pretty targeted, would you agree. Now lets say my site, blog or Squidoo page that gave information about my green shoelaces was the #1 site listed on the search engine. How about in the top 5 sites?

If someone goes online and searches for the exact thing I'm selling, how targeted is that? How pre-qualified is that? It's spot on targeted marketing.

So, for that reason, Squidoo is a very powerful marketing tool you can use and the amazing part....it's free. Here is my honest suggestion for you. Learn how to use Squidoo and begin connecting with the people looking for what you have to offer and leave that poor waiter alone. When you start leaving him huge tips, he will want to look at your business.

Click This Link to Discover the Squidoo Profits and learn how to get Squidoo working for you.

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