Puppy's Picks - 08/6/08

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by Jennifer Laycock

I scan a few hundred feeds and read dozens of articles a day so you don't have to. From the difference between building links and building content to principles of influence to a quick and easy keyword research tip, check out a roundup of five posts I classify as "must-read" for the day.

Lee Odden looks at the difference between building links and attracting links in a post over at Top Rank Blog. Lee throws in a bit of history on how and why link building came about and asks if we aren't finally getting to the point with integrated marketing where link building is more about content creation than link placement. It's a good question, but just as search engine optimization will never "go away," but rather will blend into best practice marketing, link placement will likely do the same.

If you're a fan of keyword research tools and consumer insight tools, you'll want to play with Google's latest offering. Barry Schwartz offers a nice overview of the new Google Insights for Search tool at Search Engine Land, complete with screen shots and sample searches. I played around with it a bit myself today and can see quite a bit of practical use for it.

Since we're on the topic of keyword research, Karon Thackston has a quick post over at Marketing Words reminding us of the need to run a search for ambiguous keywords to see what search results get served up. Sometimes a phrase we take one way is more likely to get taken another way. She gives a great example in her post for this.

Earlier today I gave a webinar with the teams from Market Motive and Search Engine Strategies on Viral Marketing. Any time I speak on viral marketing or social media, I feel like I spend a lot of time reminding people of the need to understand what makes people tick and to help them learn how to better communicate with their customers. That's why I liked the "6 Universal Principles of Influence" post over at the fuelNet blog today. These are simple, common sense factors that any business or business person can put to work to increase their ability to spread their message.

Last month I wrote a fairly critical review of the Lenovo Voices of the Summer Games project. I've been keeping an eye on the campaign as it moves forward and it's been nice to see some of the changes they've made and some of the new aspects being introduced. Today on his blog, Rohit announced he and Ogilvy team mate Kaitlyn will be partnering with bloggers to produce some blog content, photos and interviews from Beijing. They'll be bringing us stories on Olympic marketing, Olympic PR and hopefully some athlete interviews and spectator insight as well. If you want to take part or simply follow along, check out A Beijing Experiment.

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