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There’s no right or wrong answer, but I thought I’d talk about what I used to do and what I do now. I always love getting comments, it’s all very well seeing your visitor numbers go up, but getting a comment makes you realize that people actually did visit your lens and it’s not just numbers on your stats screen. When I first started on Squidoo everytime I got a comment I would look at that person and visit one of their lenses to leave a comment and a rating. Invariably the person would visit another of my lenses and we’d go backwards and forwards.
I found that this commenting was taking up far too much of my time (trust me, I procrastinate quite enough without something else doing it for me!!). Why was it taking up so much of my time? I would try and think of something original, so that people would realize that I had actually read their lens and it would take me forever. Then I would also sometimes realize that I had nothing interesting to add to the comments so would end up just putting ‘great lens’ or something similar (this is after wasting my time trying to think of something!).
What do I do now? Well I still visit people who leave me comments and I read a lens of theirs and rate it, sometimes leaving comments sometimes not. Basically I’ve given myself permission to just rate and leave if I want to. These days I’ll often read several of a lensmaster’s lenses because I don’t waste time trying to think of what to write on just one. I leave ‘karma’ to take care of getting visits as opposed to a comment circle with the same people. I’ve found time to ‘discover’ lenses that I probably wouldn’t have got to if I hadn’t adopted this approach.
Now don’t get me wrong I do still leave an odd ‘great lens’ and this is especially if the person has made a comment somewhere that they weren’t sure about something or if I’ve visited a number of their lenses without commenting. Now that Google is indexing the guestbooks I’m trying to add comments that contain keywords to help the lensmaster rank better in Google……having said that sometimes I just start writing because the lens has stirred up something in me and I don’t care about the keywords :)
I’d be interested to know what everyone else thinks and how often you’d visit and rate a lens compared to how often you leave a comment.
Whilst we’re on the subject of visiting lenses I believe that if you want to succeed on Squidoo you do need to visit lenses on a regular basis. I spend some time 5 days a week just reading lenses – I’ve often found I’ve forgotten to rate because I’ve followed their links and have got totally absorbed, but now I open the links in separate windows so that I can still rate the original!
Seeing how other people have used modules is a great idea – I didn’t know that you could put a picture inside a Blackbox module until I saw it on someone else’s lens.
Anyway I’m busy chasing my tail today, I’ve added another tie to Zazzle and my tie lens and I’m busy trying to get another couple of lenses completed. I’ve just realized that it’s actually going to turn into at least another 3 possibly more because otherwise it will be too big! I’ll keep you posted once I get it sorted and give you a run down as to what I did. It’s Friday here in Australia so have a great weekend wherever you are in the world.
I have been reading all of these and marveling at all the information that is contained between the lines as well as the actual words. What a great resource for other lensmasters.
ReplyDeleteI used to comment on every lens that I visited from the comments on mine, but when I notice no reciprocity I don't continue to do so. That said, I have visited more than 5000 lenses and only recently gave myself permission to just Star the lens and not comment in cases of multiple visits to the same lensmaster. Some people just make all great lenses and I run out of things to say.
Thank you Heather.
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