Squidoo is an excellent and free way to promote yourself as an author, as well as the books that you’ve written. Create by Seth Godin in 2005, Squidoo is a social community that allows users to build lenses, or single online pages, to showcase a particular subject. Squidoo is like having a one-page website that will share images, links and other details on just about anything that you can think that’s worth promoting. 

Getting started is easy. Sign-up for a free account and you’re off to the races. Squidoo recognizes that the majority of its audience aren’t tech-savvy and a simple content management system has been implemented to walk you through the ‘lens’ set-up process. If you’re new to the community, it might be in your best interest to take a look at other lenses to get a sense on how they’re used and built. This will make it easier to determine how to create our own. 

So, what’s the point of having a Squidoo lens? First, Google loves Squidoo and values it as a highly credible source of content and information. This means that even if your personal website is buried somewhere on page 25 of the Google search engine results pages, you still have an opportunity to nab a piece of the limelight via Squidoo. Most lenses appear in the top 10 of Google searches and that’s a great thing for those of us who are just starting out. 

You can build a Squidoo lens for each one of your books and even for yourself and then link them altogether for a collection of lenses that are all about your body of work and expertise. Pretty snazzy. Many authors feature downloadable ebooks, upcoming book signings, future speaking events and other details about where they’ll be and what they’re doing. You can even use your lens to help drive traffic back to your blog and website. 

There are plenty of Squidoo resources available to help you get things going. The best sources tend to be from the Squidoo lensmasters themselves. Explore and enjoy.