As an online business owner, I always seek for marketing information. Marketing knowledge and wisdom are essential in helping my business in getting found online, simply due to one reason: No matter how cool our products and services are, they are nothing when we fail to get our target audience know about them.
I visit many, many blogs for marketing tips and advice, but there are some favorites I visit on a regular basis. Here are 10 of them, not in a particular order:
1.Copyblogger
This is really one of the best online marketing resources – bar none. The domain name would lead you to believe the topics are all about writing, but there’s so much more to this site. It’s more of a marketer’s wet dream. With consistent blog posts about getting into the mind of your prospect, website optimization, product creation, content marketing, and much more. The site has links for totally free marketing training manuals, webinars, and a forum.
Chance are good that you’ve heard of Copyblogger before. If not, check it out!
2. B2b Interactive Marketing
Brian Basillico got his start in offline marketing, and is now considered one of the big authorities in online marketing techniques. He wrote the book “It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon Bits” that contains 101 tips about relationship marketing. The blog contains a goldmine of well-rounded posts about online marketing, selling psychology and building long-term relationships with your customers.
For being such an in demand guy, Basillico makes at least one post a week. This a must-have for anyone in the marketing game.
3. Occam’s Razor – Avinash Kaushik
Market Motive mogul Avinash Kaushik’s known for educating online and offline marketers about the power of search engines (he loves Google – don’t we all?), has lectured extensively on Web 2.0, PPC, SEO, social media, and relationship marketing techniques. The blog is pretty streamlined and the number of posts has decreased over the years, as he’s now quite in demand to speak at online marketing conferences. However, there is so much information to occupy yourself with on Occam’s Razor.
4. The Moz Blog
The Moz has a huge team behind it, and has been around long before most of us understood anything about online marketing – specifically SEO. There are tons of current and past posts about the things that matter in today’s online marketing world: content marketing, link development, product creation, analytics, design, optimization, understanding your customer, social, and thinking outside the box.
This is an online marketing-heavy blog, but many of the topics they share translate to offline marketing too.
5. Tim Ferris
In 2008 Ferris was honored with Wired.com’s “Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time” award. The thing that makes this blog so valuable to marketers is because its an all-encompassing guide to bettering yourself, bettering your sales, and living a life worth living. Because Tim is so passionate about learning, he’s constantly meeting marketing whiz’s and business professionals who’ve attained the kind of success that all of us dream of achieving.
If you haven’t read the blog before, give it a once-over and see what you think. Not every post is specifically about marketing, but you’ll quickly see how relevant it is to learning what makes all of us tick.
6. Seth Godin’s Blog
The man who first coined the concept “Permission Marketing” and later wrote a book about it, is one heck of a good story-teller in his typepad blog. If you to subscribe to the thought that “All Marketers are Liars” then you’ll really enjoy the thought-provoking posts made on a regular basis by none other than Godin himself. Every post has a specific point about how to market your products more effectively, with stories woven within stories – this blog is a copywriter’s dream if you want to emulate one of the best, but equally a must for anyone who wants to learn how to reach their customers more effectively.
He’s really big on face-to-face marketing etiquette and you’ll find lots of current and past post-nuggets on this topic. However there’s also lots of info about writing, the psychology of selling, infographic use, social media, and career motivation tips.
7. Digital Marketer
Yet another marketing blog for the professional-minded entrepreneur. The posts are always of extremely high quality, delving into issues that matter to everyone in the digital marketing game. There are a number of well-read contributors, who obviously know what they’re talking about, who tells us about new shifts happening with the digital product industry and about the customers who buy said products.
Topics like product creation, research, blog commenting, maximizing the value of your customer, emotional selling triggers, social media marketing, and so much more is discussed. New posts are made at least twice per week and are the highest of quality.
8. Crazy Egg
The Crazy Egg makes a really well-thought and professional post every day or two. Some of the best minds in the business offer insights into a full range of marketing concepts. Design, copywriting, social, conversion optimization, automation, analytics, email marketing, and offline marketing strategies are discussed in every article.
This is definitely more geared toward online marketing, but there are plenty of posts that apply to those of you who’re the owners of a brick and mortar operations too. Crazy Egg is one of the most well-rounded, professional marketing blogs online right now.
9. Quick Sprout
Neil Patel, founder of Sprout Social, drops regular truth bombs about everything to do with Internet marketing. He talks about everything to do with optimizing your marketing campaigns through social media engagement – everything! He’s got some big guns extolling his virtues too, from Techcrunch to Ben Huh.
Be forewarned that any blogmaster who talks about optimizing traffic (squeezing everything you can out of every visitor) will have numerous pop-up ads for you to navigate through. While the information is solid and engaging, you do need to have your patience in check for the constant distractions you’ll be hit with.
10. PPC Hero
It’s been a few months since they’ve made a post, but the Hanapin marketing team have so much information about Paid Per Click advertising on this blog it isn’t even funny. Anything you want to know about online advertising is covered: Google, Bing, Yahoo, ad creation, optimization, dynamic ads, analytics, integrating data, conversion rates, keywords, copywriting, etc. This is (arguably) the most popular PPC blog online.
I’m sure there are more authoritative marketing blogs than what is listed in this blog post. If your favorite marketing blog is not listed here, please share yours with our readers!