How effective is your social media marketing plan… and before you mentally answer that question, let us ask another one: How do you know?

The "standard" way to measure social media marketing success – at least amongst small and medium-sized business owners – is by seeing what kind of following your company has accumulated. [ tecnocrati code BV44DJ9P2JHH ]

As a friend of Kayak, we'd be honoured if you accept this free gift of an eBook published by our Principal, Randy Milanovic. TODAY ONLY

Findability: Why Search Engine Optimization is Dying + 21 New Rules of Content Marketing for 2013 and Beyond

Get your copy instantly via Kindle right now!
Free link expires late tonight. (Reg. $2.99)

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Get Kindle Version on Amazon.com

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We've reached the point where there truly is an app for almost everything, and yet most businesses aren't making great use of the ones that could actually help them to sell more and develop stronger customer relationships.

In an age where it isn't unusual to have several different apps to help you make a grocery list, manage your calendar, or check flight information, why aren't more business-to-business professionals using their smartphones to amplify online marketing results?

In the past few months, we've shared some of our ideas about social media marketing, along with some tips for turning your Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter profiles into sources of new traffic and sales opportunities. Today, we want to recap some of our best advice for those of you who might have missed it.

Here are a dozen of our favorite social networking tips and strategies:

Just as every celebrity chef has a cookbook on the market (or a dozen cookbooks on the market), KAYAK's founder and president, Randy Milanovic, has just finished a concise e-book – available on Amazon's Kindle store now – with some great content marketing advice.

To celebrate, and to give you a quick taste of how he creates delicious results in his Internet marketing kitchen, we would like to share a dozen quick and easy tips for better articles, blog posts, and social updates.

What is the sound of one keyword clapping? Can Google itself create a site so large that it can't even be indexed? Can any marketer ever step into the same algorithm twice?

These are the kinds of questions that philosophers worry over – or at least that keep those of us involved in search engine optimization up at night – but they may not matter very much going forward. That's because SEO is going away, at least in the way that most of us know it. What's taking its place is something exciting and better, but, like enlightenment, it can't be achieved directly.

In a perfect world, every business would find the perfect web firm that's right for them within minutes, and then the two would go on and on, growing together over the course of several years.

Sadly, that isn't what usually happens.

Predicting the future of anything is always a risky business, and that's especially true when you're trying to read some of the world's brightest minds. Nevertheless...

Looking ahead to what might be next for Google can be worth the effort and frustration, if only because they currently handle more than 8 out of every 10 searches in North America, meaning that there are millions of users that can affect your business in a profound way.

Now that everyone's favorite fake ad man has returned with the Mad Men premiere, business owners around the country will go back to asking themselves why they can't have someone like that guy managing their campaigns. After all, if you had Don Draper's charisma and passion to work with, your marketing results would have to improve… right?

Actually, we don't think so.

Losing weight and getting in shape is a goal for millions of people. But, despite their desire to lead a healthier lifestyle, many find that they aren't able to accomplish those goals by exercising at home, or picking up a few books on fitness and nutrition.

So, when they become really serious about making a change, they typically had to a gym and hire a personal trainer. By working with someone who knows the steps to take – and the mistakes to avoid – they can finally begin to see a bit of progress.