Digital marketing insights.

Social engagement isn’t just a buzzword we use at KAYAK; it’s the key to generating one-on-one connections with influential people (and vice versa). So it’s not hard to understand why we’re big fans of anything that makes the process of keeping in touch with your best contacts and commenting on or alongside their ideas a little bit easier.

Danny Brown's recent decision to provide a newsletter subscription for his blog readers changed the way readers engaged with him. In this special guest post, he shares the results of that change in approach.

Can there be there a worse idea for your business than engaging in a traditional ad agency media buy? Typically, agencies buy space or air time in bulk (with client money), then either resell it to their clients at a higher rate, or, they set up an account to auto debit the client, and take a commission (20% is not uncommon) on the spend in addition to billing for creative work and consulting.

I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Bryan Kramer last week to discuss his take on B2B, B2C, and his favourite, H2H (human to human). Bryan is the CEO of Pure Matter, an award-winning global digital agency based in Silicon Valley. He’s a social strategist and author of the acclaimed book Human to Human: #H2H.

Recently, I shared a strikingly simple but elegant concept I picked up from Social Shake-Up in Atlanta, Human-to-Human or (H2H) communication from Bryan Kramer. Today, I’d like to give you another that really stuck out in my mind: showing beats telling.

Sometimes, you come across a marketing concept so simple and effective you wonder why everyone didn’t think of it ages and ages ago. I know I’m certainly not the only person who’s gotten that impression from Bryan Kramer, who spoke at Social Shake-Up in Atlanta.

The Collaborative Economy – a keynote at Social Shake-Up with Jeremiah Owyang – left an unexpected impression on me that’s had me thinking for weeks.

How often do you think about the reading level of the men and women who read your web pages, blog posts, and downloadable offers?

As anyone who has been following my Twitter feed recently would have observed, I attended the Social Shake-Up event (hosted by SocialMediaToday) in Atlanta. I was prepared to come back and write a few posts about what I’d learned, but instead I want to start by giving a few thoughts about the conference itself.

The idea behind sales funnels has been with us for quite a while, and there isn't any big mystery about the way they're supposed to work: You create offers (like downloadable content) to get prospects interested, and then present successive offers and communications to engage them further.

Guest blogging – on the right blogs – can be a powerful way to reach a new audience, gain new readers, and network within your market or industry.

In the few years since Amazon first rolled out its Kindle publishing program, the book industry has been spinning on its head. Suddenly, it became convenient and affordable for writers to share their works, whether they were industry specialists (like me), first-time novelists, or even established writers and publishers. Think of these as your ultimate premium content offer.

The power of Twitter is that, as a platform, there is so much to be found - new connections, weird facts, and business opportunities abound. It's important to know what to listen to.

Will blogs soon go the way of wooly mammoths and bell-bottomed jeans? Some online marketing leaders certainly think so. In fact, many of them are giving up their blogs already, taking their content, fans, and inspirations to Google+ and other social venues.

Should you do the same?

Before we answer that question, let's take a quick look at a case for and against giving up your blog.

As a rule of thumb, having more content in more places is a very good thing for marketers. At the very least, it gets your content in front of more eyes. At the same time, we all recognize that there are only so many hours in a day, and so many great ideas to pursue. That makes choosing the right channels for your articles incredibly important.