Social media has probably been around since the beginning of mankind. In fact we have evidence that social media has been around for at least 40,000 years. Watch the video below and discover how social media was used 40,000 years ago. Join us at  Social Traffic Espionage as we guide  you through the history of social media and give you a glimpse of the its future.

If you have enjoyed this blog post leave us a comment. Better still if you like the post and the video share it with your friends

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Behind the scenes we have been involved in an awesome project. We had the privilege of interviewing 12 Social Media Experts; the movers and shakers in Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, YouTube, LinkedIn, Forums, Podcasting, Social Bookmarking, Blogging, MySpace, StumbleUpon and more!

Interested? Watch the video and stay tuned…

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Social Traffic Espionage  recently had the opportunity to talk to Ross Goldberg about Squidoo and he described a Squidoo lens as a blog on crack – the search engines love them. So if you are serious about using Social Media, you can’t afford to ignore Squidoo.

Making a Squidoo lens is easy. Simply go to www.Squidoo.com  and join the community. Once you have joined Squidoo, you are given the option of making a lens using  an automated wizard. Most beginners chose this option whilst more advanced users usually choose to create their lens using a simple template. You don’t have to create all the content for your lens at once you can add, modify, optimise or maintain your lens at anytime.

What should your Squidoo lens contain or look like? How do you build a popular lens? These are great questions and we have included  7 useful guidelines below that should help you get started.

 1. One Lens,  One Specific Topic
Squidoo lenses are more efficient generating Social Traffic if their content is specific to what the visitor is searching for. For instance instead of a making a cat training lens, make one on training cats to shake hands.

2. Focus on Content – Useful, Appealing, Engaging, Concise and Unique
Build a lens that is full of useful content that is appealing, engaging, concise and unique. Your good content is what will bring your visitors and make them keep coming back. Provide excellent content that is infused with your passion, personality and knowledge of the subject. Your goal should be to become a trusted resource in your subject area. If you are not sure about what to include visit SquidU to learn how to make the best lens you can.

3. Write A Killer Bio
By now you know the drill. Social Media is all about creating relationships. So it’s important that your bio and picture represent you. Make sure you include a photo and a link back to your blog or any other sites you might have. Tell your visitors a little about yourself  let them get to know you.

4. Keywords and Tags
Write a keyword optimized introduction because a snippet of this shows up in the search engine results. Use tags to denote the lens topic. This also helps visitors from other lenses or related topics to find you and link to you. Linking of course will help boost your lens rank and relevance in the search engines

5. Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words
Include pictures to convey your message to your visitors. It’s easy to upload pictures to the modules, so don’t skip this step. Remember you want to develop a relationship with your visitors. Make your visitors experience enjoyable so that they will return to your Squidoo lens or share it with their friends. So include some pictures enhance their experience – you won’t regret it. Repeat visits and sharing the site with friends is a sure way to get viral social traffic

6. Squidoo Is Not An Island
Use good quality external links to other Squidoo lenses and outside resources. Provide a brief description of each link. The links you include in your Squidoo lens are important and one part of optimising your Squidoo lens for SEO.

7. Modules
Include a nice variety of modules to vary your site’s content. The youtube.com module is great because of the constant flow of new videos. There are so many great modules, and adding new modules is a great way to update your lens.

Squidoo like any Social Media Network does require you to learn the basics. But you don’t have to go far for assistance the Squidoo website and the Squidoo community are right there, on hand ready to give advice and guidence.

We hope that this post has given you a few Squidoo basics that you can apply to your Social Media activities.  If you have enjoyed this blog post feel free to leave a comment and share it with others.

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You know what its  like you build your blog, website, and squidoo lens,  you have a great product  that you are sure people will buy.  BUT you can’t  get any of  the FREE Social  Traffic that everybody tells you is out there.  You have heard the statistics,  facebook 200  million, youtube 80 million. Why aren’t you getting FREE Social Traffic… everybody else is!  Here are 6  great traffic tips that should get you started

1. Don’t just sign up to a Social Media Site , YOU need to participate
You can’t expect to get your share of  the Social Traffic market if you are not participating in Social Media Sites.  Yes,  we know that there are lots and lots of Social Media sites, but you don’t need to join all of them at once. Start with baby steps join one or two of the Social Media Sites, you can always join others later.  Most importantly don’t just sign up and consider that the jobs done, you need to participate not just stand on the sidelines.  How do you participate? That’s easy, join discussions, offer information, include links to useful tools or sites, tips, reply to people who make contact with you. 

2.  Look At Me! Look At Me! Be your own PR machine.
Don’t be shy, there are a number of ways that you can promote you and your business. We have listed just a few to get you thinking

• add your blog, website or squidoo lens url to  your social media sites profiles
•  include an RSS feed
•  include social bookmarking buttons on your blog or website 
•  add an “e-mail this” and “share” tab at the bottom of blog posts
•  add  your blog, website, squidoo lens  address to your e-mail signature
•  submit articles which have links to  your  blog or  website

3. Grab Peoples Attention
Does your blog, website or squidoo lens have neverending  blocks of  text,  text and more text…BORING!  C’Mon this is 2009, we have the tecnology. Make use of  video, podcasts, slide shows and other multimedia to create dynamic content. Don’t be boring

4. Link s
It is crucial that you include links,  links and more links.  You should link to other parts of your blog or website and externally to other peoples  blogs or sites.  Don’t forget about backlinking. Its OK to  ask other blogs to link back to you  and  to add your website to their blog rolls.  Submiiting your blog  to one or more blog  directories is a good idea.

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