It’s difficult to open up a conference to a bunch of advanced users in online marketing but Paddy Moogan, with Distilled, did a fantastic job. He discussed, very quickly, 35 link building tips. But first, he pointed out that link building is not easy. He meant it.

1. Bookbait = ego bait in real life – print a book (on Lulu) with contributors information and provide them a copy; many will tweet, take pictures, post and/or link to you as a result.
2. Embed code within an embed code – use this tool http://dis.tl/mozcon-embed, or create your own custom setup.
3. Photos get links – use Google Alerts to find websites using your photos asking for credit/link and use Google Image reverse search to find sources of your photos.
4. Find guest post opportunities – use the author bio of your competitors and find out where they’re posting competitive links.
5. Put competitors backlinks into Google custom search engine – mine those links.
6. Find more guest post opportunities – Blogdash, Blogger Linkup, and Guestr.com.
7. Offer access to your paywall content (if available) in exchange for links.
8. Find outreach emails quickly – use rapportive for this (I need to do more research on this since I missed most of the discussion from Paddy. Sorry.).
9. Use Buzzstream!
10. Make photos embeddable – create & install a script so an embed box pop-up when someone right-clicks to copy your image for use on their site/profile.
11. Take bloggers to an event – ask them to live blog or write recaps on their blog/profiles
12. Badge bait – take popular/topical badges and perform an image search to find bloggers who will post a badge for free product.
13. Bring offline online – be creative and innovative in your store (or other offline interaction) and tie it to your online actions.
14. Create a local blogger list – build your list offline and take those relationships online.
15. Ask bloggers what content they want from you – create your next infographic by crowdsourcing the ideas so you deliver what your audience wants.
16. Find writers & bloggers on Twitter – “writer for mashable” or “writer for travel”
17. Boomerang – schedule outreach to land in recipients inboxes at more preferred times; also try canned responses.
18. Create personal profile pages – when journalists/bloggers don’t want to link to your commercial site, they’ll often link to the personal profile page of the person who provided a quote or sourced a story.
19. Monitor tweets & look for those with blogs/websites – ask retweeters for links to your great content; they’ve already shared through retweeting.
20. #PRrequest – provide information to those looking for information and become a source; ask for a link back to your profile page (above).
21. Make up fake products eCommerce – Unicorn meat (in a can) can attract a ton of interest, shares, links, press, and so on. It’s a great promotional idea and may even lead product development.
22. Pay your writers to guest blog – find writers and double their pay to guest blog on related blogs. This is a great way to build IP-diverse links quickly.
23. Tweet people at just the right time – use http://dis.tl/mozcon-tweet to lookup a person’s profile for optimal times to reach them.
24. Run or sponsor a local meetup – there are hundreds of local meetups. Participate. Share. Influence.
25. Blogger competition (with a twist) – ask others to write a post and link to you (this is the normal way), then ask for them to nominate five other bloggers to keep your initiative going.
26. Find low-earning affiliates – offer to pay them a guaranteed amount for a guest post on their blog linking back to your products. It’s guaranteed for them!
27. Broken link building – find lists with dead links and reach out to the site owner with your URL as a replacement.
28. Create a Spotify playlist for your niche – find songs about animals, create the playlist, link to it from your blog. As a pet store, this is a great way to add to your community.
29. Incentivise sharing your page – offer a product at a discount (the amount of the discount is decided by how much it’s shared) and you may end up giving away a bunch of product, picking up press, and finding new brand advocates.
30. Getting your customers to link build – ask customers for their blog URL; use that information to target promotions and ask for embeds, links, shares, etc. from their URL.
31. Use Konami code to give discounts – change the code everyday so people have a reason to return.
32. Monitor HARO tweets for keywords – create IFTTT recipes to make outreach easier.
33. Build a good infographic in an hour – prove that design/developer resources can produce results. Use infogr.am for quick IGs.
34. Use Amazon wishlists to find bloggers – send bloggers something from their wishlist while beginning a relationship about what you enjoy most about their blog.
35. Send something physical using Pinterest as your guide for their interests – design a personalized gift box, include your product, and a message. Color matters. Get familiar with each user and truly customize your outreach.

This session went very quickly but I hope I’ve captured enough to get your creative mind working again. There are so many ways to build links and promote your brand. Sometimes you just need a few examples.