Engagement marketing is serious stuff. Deadly serious.

You often hear me talking in earnest tones about engaging with a customer’s passions and values. And you probably can’t name the last joke you heard with an ROI-related punchline.

But don’t rule out engaging with humor. Everybody likes to laugh. In fact, humor kills. Humor engages. (And yes, humor turns those darned frowns upside down.)

It’s a lesson well learned by hotelsbycity.net, who built the BedJump.com blog site.

How does it engage? It runs pictures of hotel guests soaring above their hotel mattresses.

Brilliant. Cheap. Effective. And wholly engaging.

Sure, it might seem a little less funny when you’ve got the room next to a bed jumper looking to make the blog, but there’s no doubting its efficiency on the engagement marketing front.

The blog ranks around 91,000 on Technorati, so it’s no sleeper.

Clearly, humor works.

Dying is Easy. Comedy is Hard.

Humor is engaging. Well, good humor is engaging. If you’re trying to engage with humor, better make sure you’re actually being funny.

Believe me (and I say this from grim personal experience), if you’re not, your audience will let you know. Immediately.

Still, BedJump.com doesn’t lean on anyone’s comedic talents. As long as the pictures keep flowing in, it’s funny. Brilliant even.

It’s engagement marketing at some of its humorous best. HotelsByCity.net is laughing all the way to the bank.

Technorati Tags: engagement, marketing, humor, bed jumping, hotelsbycity