As soon as I started my career I learned that my academic knowledge wouldn’t take me far. Things move too fast nowadays. What was applicable and best-practice in marketing yesterday is already out of date today and a detrimental practice tomorrow. So how do you stay up to date and make sure you’re taking part in the important trends while avoiding the bullshit? Blogs!
Blogs are the new thought leaders of today’s world. So without further ado, I want to name my personal 5 most important blogs to follow for marketing and business knowledge. You better bookmark these now, subscribe to their newsletter and follow them closely. I guarantee, if you do so you’ll not only learn something new each day but stay on top of your marketing game.
Inbound.org is not necessarily a blog, but rather a curation of the best marketing blog articles around the web. And if they say a curation of the best, they mean it. I’ve found some of the most interesting articles here and their algorithm will show you articles on the topics you are interested in, from social media to PPC. Besides blog articles there’s discussions to follow and community questions to chime in on. You could even pose your own question to the community.
Chances are that if you’re googling something marketing related you’ll end up on the Hubspot Marketing Blog at one point. And with good reason. This blog is one of the most comprehensive blogs out there and will never fail to feed you important information. Besides that they have tons of free resources and templates for you to download and use. Subscribe now. Seriously! It’s so very much worth it. Oh, and as a side note their events are very much worth it too! On another side note, their blog and free resources are the best example of how to acquire leads through content marketing.
Wordstream is one of the largest PPC agencies out there and while you might expect their blog to then revolve only around that topic this blog covers everything: From leadership to promoting a bestseller book. Of course, they also extensively give great insight into PPC marketing but the other stuff is just as valuable.
Jeff Bulas is a guy who was unemployed and saw an opportunity in social media and blogging. Out of that opportunity comes an award winning blog. Jeff’s articles were featured on Forbes, Inc., The Huffington Post and the New York Times. If I had one sentence to describe what his blog was about I would say “winning at digital marketing”.
“The Shopify blog?” you may ask wide-eyed. And I will answer: “Yes, the Shopify blog”. Besides supporting thousands of e-commerce businesses in their day-to-day business… hold on, scratch supporting. Make that enabling. They run a kick-ass blog that not only revolves around tips and tricks for e-commerce, but for running a business in general. From social media strategy to handling your taxes, there’s something for everyone.
Bonus: As a bonus I want to let you know about some other blogs that focus mainly on specific topics. They’re all great and definitely worth a read, if not a subscription.
Moz started as an SEO consulting company and has now morphed into an SEO superhouse offering agency services, apps and other software. They are probably best known for their browser extension, which lets you see websites SEO ranking and other very, very useful SEO info. If you are interested in getting your website or blog in front of eyeballs, you need to read their articles.
Buffer is a social media management tool that lets you schedule out and manage your posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram. While Buffer is not my favorite social media management tool (SproutSocial is) they have a really good blog that revolves around anything social media.
If you haven’t heard of Neil Patel yet, I would be pretty surprised. The co-founder of renown e-commerce sites/tools such as Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics has become a dear advisor to companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom on growing their revenue. His blog is full of tips, strategies and other helpful content that will help you grow your site traffic, revenue and business overall.
Although mention is also a social media management tool it focuses on “listening” to what’s going on in the social media world and where your brand might be mentioned (as the name says). Their blog also revolves around anything social media and has great articles.
If you are running an e-commerce business (and which business is not an e-commerce business nowadays?) then you definitely want to have this blog on your regular reading list. From increasing conversion to branding, A Better Lemonade Stand, which describes itself as an online e-commerce incubator, will keep you up to date on being successful in the online business world.
Let me know what your favorite business blogs are and which articles you especially enjoy! :)