Suddenly it’s Wednesday again (don’t you love long weekends?), which means it’s time for another Wednesday Round-Up! My book-marked posts of the week:

The wizard of the web. Just as Dorothy and Co. wanted to believe in the magic of Oz, I often find myself marveling at the magic of Google. Type in one word,and, in less than a second, you have hundreds of results. Seems like magic, doesn’t it? It may be brilliant, but it’s not magic. In “Take 5 Minutes to Understand How Google Search Works,” Newt Barrett uses an infographic to reveal exactly what goes on behind the screen when you Google something. As fun as it is to believe it’s magic, when you are relying on Google to cooperate with your SEO efforts and get more visitors to your site, it helps to actually know how it works.

Don’t play dumb. In his post “Betting on smarter (or betting on dumber),” Seth Godin reminds us that customers always smarten up eventually. So instead of holding out on them, he says to give them all the details up front – before someone else does. His point is worth considering. Rather than frantically (and fruitlessly) trying to stop the never-ending flow of information that reaches customers via the internet, companies should channel this flow so that they are seen as the (brilliant) source.

Mad Men and social media marketing. TV advertising was the epitome of glamor in its day.  In his Mashable post “How Social Media Has Radically Altered Advertising,” Hank Wasiak insists that social media should be stealing this spotlight. As I discussed in a post a couple of weeks ago, we have to face our fears of social media and stop resisting its revolutionary effect on business. Wasiak embraces this revolution and gives insight into how to take full advantage of social media in the marketing world.

Ethos is where it’s at. According to Brian Clark, the most important element of convincing writing is the ethos behind it: the character of the writer. In his post “The Force that Powers Content (And 3 Ways to Intensify It),” Clark discusses how showing your character as a writer can help you produce better, more persuasive content. For those who farm out their content, his post serves as a reminder of why it so important to put some real thought into hiring good writers.

Rocket science. I couldn’t help thinking of ideaLaunch when I read Mark Roberge’s HubSpot post “How to Turn a  Brilliant Idea into Big  Business.” His post, like ideaLaunch’s name, reminds us that even the best ideas fizzle when they just sit idly. They have to be launched. And you know, maybe it is a bit like rocket science. Getting the world to recognize your idea takes hard work, thought, strategy. Roberge collected insights from some of today’s most successful business owners on the science of launching a brilliant idea.

Marcella Vieraitis is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments. WriterAccess is powered by ideaLaunch, a full service content marketing agency serving hundreds of clients and thousands of writers since 2000.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Round Ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.