Digital marketing insights.

To make the most of your marketing efforts for 2016, you'll want to focus your efforts on your very best prospects – the ones who are most likely to do business with you soon, and keep buying from you well into the future. Gain insights into what your prospects are looking for with this free tool from the people at KAYAK.

Your blog is the centrepiece of a well constructed content and lead-generation strategy. But making the most of yours involves more than dashing off the occasional article and posting it online. True content marketing success requires focus, consistency, and an eye towards what’s really important for your audience.

Somewhere around a decade ago, I was enjoying one of my regular coffee chats with my elderly uncle Wally. He's an exceptional fine artist who has spent 70-plus years painting some of the most incredibly detailed wilderness scenes you'll ever encounter. We generally talked about family, art, business, and people as well.

Last week, Rand Fishkin of Moz released a study by BuzzSumo revealing the engagement data on 757k blog posts. Of those less than 10% actually received links and most received very few views. If you’ve received either, you are one of the lucky few, and it’s likely your content was pretty darn good.

Recently, we had the chance to work with a new client who had a large, user-driven website containing over 8 million different pages. The content was unique and focused, and as a result the client was attracting thousands of visits from searchers every month. In order to monetize that traffic, they had installed Google’s AdSense tool, earning a few cents for each click generated through the ads (earning thousands of dollars per month).

Earlier this summer, I took one of the major printed directory companies (or what’s left of them) to task for ripping clients off via generic, expensive, and ineffective pay-per-click advertising. It's not that PPC doesn’t have any value, but it was the ineffective way in which it was sold and delivered and how costs are artifically inflated by those big companies.

Is your credibility as a marketer making it harder for you to keep up with the latest jokes and memes? Does it ever feel like too many people are responding to your offers, forcing you to process new sales and service clients when you’d rather be napping?

Most of us, as consumers, have reached a point of digital saturation. Information and offers are everywhere, but credible, trustworthy resources seem more scarce than ever. We’re past the point of being skeptical – we actively distrust those we don’t know or have very good reason to believe.

Online reputation is a big subject that’s only getting bigger. We have already seen in the last few years that having lots of positive reviews and feedback around your business can encourage business… and that, conversely, even a single bad review can damage it (big time).

Often, the hardest part of launching a new website or getting a marketing plan off the ground involves getting content from different members of the team or organization. Having multiple perspectives and ideas is helpful, but it can also turn something that seems simple into a herding exercise.

There is an interesting dichotomy floating around on the Internet. On the one hand, the web (and social media specifically) is supposed to be fostering creativity and individual expression. On the other hand, the partisan and anonymous nature of the Internet is fuelling a stronger and stronger herd mentality. A distance that causes people to act as they were wearing a mask.

Spend enough time learning about search optimization, and you’ll undoubtedly run into strong opinions about “white hat” versus “black hat” tactics. Marketers argue (often very privately) all the time about which work best, or are even ethical to use.

Recently, I had the chance to participate in a Google On Air Hangout hosted by LinkedIn fellow Greg Cooper on the topic of LinkedIn Publishing platform Pulse and, specifically, what marketers can do to make the most of it as a blogging platform. On the call with me were LinkedIn heavyweights Marc Miller and Paul Shapiro.

At a time when social engagement is becoming more crucial than ever before, at every business level, automated social posting and updating tools are increasingly responsible for the posts you see on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +. And even though it’s all being done in the name of “convenience,” I would argue that these types of interactions aren’t convenient, helpful, or meaningful to anyone. More often than not, they’re just a waste of time.

With graduation season upon us, the team at Kayak can look back on the past few years with a great deal of pride. We might not be donning robes, handing out diplomas, or giving commencement speeches, but we have trained a lot of business people in the practice of "being social" on social media.