Power Promotion with Zimbio and Squid Utils
Ok my Deckhands and Swabbies, it’s time to get down to business. Today The Captain is going to share a great promotional tool with you.
Promoting your lens can be one of the most challenging aspects of Lesmastering.
Many people tell you to make sure and ping all the blog services and submit to Del.icio.us and Digg.
I have tried this a few times and have seen pretty much zero traffic from these methods.
Why Pinging and Social Bookmarking don’t work that well.
The simple fact is that Squidoo lenses are designed to provide very targeted information. If someone is not looking for the information you have than it’s not likely that they will enjoy your lens, much less buy someting.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could submit your lenses to a place where pre-targeted visitors will view it? You can, Here’s how….
- Head on over to Squid Utils and log in using your lensmaster ID.
- Click on ‘Lensmaster RSS Feeds‘
- Right Click on the link to your Lensmaster Lenses RSS feed. It should look something like this: http://squidutils.com/lensmaster/loyalis/lenses.rss
- Click ‘Copy Link Location‘
- Paste this link into a notepad or Word document so you have it handy.
- Head over to Zimbio and sign up for an account. (What’s Zimbio? Learn more about it here..)
- When you set up your account, it allows you to add a blog. Copy and Paste the feed address of your lenses as the blog address.
- Zimbio will automagically search through your feed (all of your lenses) and add ones to appropriate Wikizines automatically.
- Add any that aren’t automatically filed away can be manually added by clicking on ‘My Dashboard -> My Articles -> My Queue’.
- Check back every few days and see if any more lenses have been pulled into Zimbio to be added to appropriate groups.
Why using Zimbio is good
- This whole process shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to do.
- You instantly get a high PR backlink for all of your lenses you submit.
- Zimbio gets over a million pageviews a month
- People that read the teaser for your lens will want to click through to your lens. These users are already interested in your topic.
- These interested users are targeted traffic which is much more valuable than plain old no-targeted traffic.
-The Captain

October 1st, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Hey there,
Thanks for the tips. Some really nice ideas. I’ve added this site to my blog and wikizine. Would definitely be up for swapping guest posts at any stage and will link in on my next post.
Mel
October 1st, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Hey Captain, Great ideas, thanks. I don’t know how recent this post is, but I’ve never heard of Zimbio, but will head over and do as you’ve suggested.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Thanks for the tips, Im giving it a try and will see how it works.
btw. Zimbio does not automatically get you a high PR link, PR is calculated for individual pages so even if the site’s homepage has a high PR the inner pages we are getting links from are low PR.
October 8th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Very cool! I just set it up, will keep fooling with it in a bit. My nice lenses need some traffic love!
October 13th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
hey i tried to add rss feed just like you said and it does not work,zimbio just keeps saying they can not get any feeds from the link,please help!!
October 13th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Don’t add the SquidUtils feed as an ‘RSS feed’ . You want to add it as a blog. Set up a new blog in Zimbio and use the feed address as your blog. It should work then.
The Captain
October 14th, 2007 at 5:11 am
This rocks – thanks so much!!!
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:07 pm
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November 12th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Thanks for this post! I hadn’t heard of Zimbio either (I just found out about Squidoo this past July), and now I’m wondering how many other cool sites I don’t know about. Looking forward to reading more of this blog!
November 13th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
DUDE!
I’ve been using Zimbo but had NO IDEA about SquidUtils!!
I’ve been looking for a really easy way to get all my RSS feeds for my lens and did one or two manually but gave up.
NICE!!
Thanks!
November 13th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
[...] to easily promote ALL of your Squidoo Lenses at one shot. I’ve clipped out 5 of the steps. Visit here to get the rest of the article and [...]
November 28th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Hi,
Just added the feeds from suqiutils, but on zimbio, it just shows 3 lines of each lens? Is this the case? Or should it show more than that?
Regards
November 28th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
This is some really great information!5stars Not sure how I found this site but it’s great.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Followed your instructions and found it really easy to do. Thanks so much for the tip.
December 16th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
[...] has recently done a total facelift on Squid Utils. We first talked about using Squid Utils and Zimbio to quickly promote all of your lenses as RSS feeds. Now, some new features have been added, [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
thanks for the great tips cap’n. there’s now a zimbio module on my add your profile lens as well as a link to your zimbio lens.
February 16th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Excellent tip, thank you, the more links the better.
February 16th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
C, I haev about 50 lenses but only about half of them were pciked up by zimbio??
February 16th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Anyone know how to change an article from one wikizine to another? Zimbio auto did a few of my lenses and I don’t think they’re in the right category. But how do I move them to a more appropriate one?
March 8th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Hey, great advice! I just submitted mine today and am looking forward to the results. Thanks for sharing!
March 13th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Capn’ You rock! Thank you for your generosity and willingness to share these priceless tips. Wish much success and many happy returns!
March 25th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Great advice here captain. One of my lens is even at the top of it’s category. Will definitely be checking on the traffic from these sources. you’re the bomb!
coluden
April 1st, 2008 at 1:16 am
ok… I’m not sure I’ve got this right, but I followed the steps and added my feed… learning by the minute, thank you!
April 6th, 2008 at 11:14 am
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April 16th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Thanks so much for this tip, Captain! I was already using Zimbio for other articles and to promote my other blogs — this is great!!
April 25th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Thank you, Thank you! This site is great and I had no idea it even existed. I really appreciate all the tips and info.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:21 am
great tips captain! i’m surely will do it.
keep up the good work
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the tips.I will set up an account right now.
June 1st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Thanks for this Captain, I had not heard of Zimbio before this. I’m wondering, does using an RSS feed to another site run the risk of having your own site viewed as “duplicate content†by Google?
Best regards,
Rob
July 11th, 2008 at 5:21 am
I think I got my Zimbio set up with my feed. Now. Do I put the badge on my lensography? or even on my blog?
July 16th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Hi Captain,
Thanks for turning me on to Zimbio months ago. I talk about Zimbio in my lens promotion lens and point a link towards this post for more details on how to utilize Zimbio for lens promotion.
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:18 am
Hi Capitain!
I would like to ask help.
I have questions:
Is it possible to move from one wikizine to other when I have created my own topic?
How can I join free articles to my wikizine.
Thanks
October 31st, 2008 at 5:35 am
Hi Captain,
Thank you for your useful post. I now join Zimbio and study more about wikizine.
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Thank you for great tips!
January 25th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I just wonder if this information is still working? Its more than a year old now and i guess Zimbio have added nowfollow as most others?
January 25th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Yep, this still works.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Hey Cap’n!
Worked like a charm. Few were picked up automatically right away. Should I go ahead and manually add, y’think, or wait a day or two for Zimbio to add them in?
March 10th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Thank you! I kept hearing about zimbio but just couldn’t get a grasp on what it was, much less what it was supposed to do for *me*! This very clear explanation was a big help!
May 17th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Hey Caption thanks for the cool tip. Never heard of Zimbio nor did I know about Squid utils. I am new to Squidoo. It onlt took a few mins as you said.
Posted my Squidoo page and it didn’t find a wikizine to fit so I clicked on the browse button and found the perfect one and seletec it. Really simple.
We’ll see how it goes.
thanks
November 12th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Thanks for your sharing. I just got some backlinks from Zimbio. But not many effects to blog traffic, maybe it’s on progress.