Blogs are a fantastic resource for marketing professionals seeking to expand their horizons and discover new perspectives on marketing. The great thing about blogs is that each communicates the unique insights of its author. Blogs are often a better resource than books for staying on the cutting edge of marketing strategies and technologies as new ventures are launched every day; and many blogs provide day to day coverage of innovations in modern technology and social media. This is a list of the top 30 marketing blogs of the year 2012. These blogs are some of the most influential resources in marketing.
General
1. Drew’s Marketing Minute is a resource for those seeking to up their game when it comes to building meaningful relationships with their customer base. Drew seeks to communicate marketing truths through stories and examples from the real world.
Highlight: Making the Most of Conferences
2. Top Rank Blog features articles from innovative, respected writers in the marketing field. The site offers a wide variety of marketing commentary from many different perspectives.
Highlight: Content Marketing Tips You can Bank On
3. Seth Godin’s Blog is chock full of articles on any number of topics, from marketing techniques to how to succeed in the industry. Seth Godin is the author of fourteen bestselling books and founder of numerous businesses, the most recent of which is Squidoo.
Highlight: Communication is a Path, Not an Event
4. PSFK is the collaborative blog of PSFK Labs, an innovation consultancy. The blog is able to offer insights into many areas of the marketing field thanks to its large and varied number of contributors. PSFK offers commentary on news and current events, and innovative branding and other strategies being pursued by some of the biggest companies in the world.
Highlight: Why Retail is Like Publishing
5. MarketingExperiments is a blog devoted to innovation in marketing through experimentation. The blog’s researchers boast the largest collection of optimization related experiments available. Marketing Experiments distributes their findings for free through the blog and The MarketingExperiments Journal.
Highlight: Pay Per Click Optimization: Tips From Peers on Regional Differences
6. Geoff Livingston’s Blog is the blog of public speaker, strategist, and consultant Geoff Livingston. He has a passion for non-profits but in addition to working with many start-ups, small businesses and non-profit organizations, he has also worked with some of the most powerful Fortune 500 companies in the world.
Highlight: You Can’t Quantify Potential Influence
Social Media Marketing
7. Brian Solis’ Blog primarily features content dealing with research and studies in social media. Brian Solis is a principal analyst at the Altimeter Group, a marketing and research advisory firm.
Highlight: The Five Pillars of New Media Strategy: There is No Box
8. Dan Zarrella is a social media scientist. His blog focuses on the numbers behind social media. Dan has been published in nearly every major business magazine including Fast Company, Forbes, and The Financial Times.
Highlight: How to Get More Likes, Comments, and Shares on Facebook
9. Scott Monty’s Blog features the musings of Scott Monty on social media and digital marketing. Forbes considers him one of the ten most influential social media marketing professionals in the business.
Highlight: Time for Real Introspection on Real Time Marketing
10. Neville Hobson is a social media afficianado and tech enthusiast whose blog is focused on presenting his thoughts regarding social media marketing. Neville uses his blog to track and talk about emerging trends in new media, and the ways society is changing regarding the consumption of information.
Highlight: Can Google Hangouts Replace Press Conferences?
11. Jeff Bullas is a social media marketing consultant and his blog covers marketing strategies for all the major players in the industry including: Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Youtube. The blog discusses multiple marketing strategies to be used within these settings including SEO, Content Marketing, and Inbound Marketing.
Highlight: 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Twitter
12. Social Media Makes a Difference focuses primarily on Facebook marketing strategy, though much of the advice can be applied on other platforms. The blog delves more deeply into Facebook specific strategy than any other blog on this list, making it the go-to source for those that need to up their Facebook game.
Highlight: Power Editor: An Alternative to Facebook Promoted Posts
Public Relations
13. Spin Sucks serves as a public relations and marketing professional development resource. The goal of the blog is to eliminate as much destructive spin from the field as possible and refocus industry professionals on more positive and constructive techniques.
Highlight: Six Benefits of Interview-style Blog Posts
14. PR in Your Pajamas PR in Your Pajamas is a light-hearted take on the PR industry, particularly its past and future evolution in the digital age.
Highlight: Content Marketing: Pro Tactics for Entrepreneurs
15. PR Blog is a marketing strategy resource that focuses on helping readers leverage new technologies to their fullest potential.
Highlight: 5 Tips for Easier Writing
16. PR-Squared is the blog of Todd Defren, an internationally recognized Social Media and Public Relations innovator. PR-Squared is all about delving into numbers and research to figure out the optimal ways to maximize your use of social networking.
Highlight: Breaking Stuff Without Breaking the Bank
17. The Flack is an analysis blog that looks at emerging trends among a broad range of industries including Politics, Journalism, Entertainment, Technology, and Social Media. The website looks at the actions of major players in these industries and seeks to determine the goals of specific strategies, and whether or not the actions taken to achieve those goals have been effective.
Highlight: Facebook’s Real Audience
18. Journalistics is a blog that looks at the relationship between PR and journalism. The blog examines the success of new media relations tactics and how the landscape of PR evolves on a near daily basis.
Highlight: PR is the MVP of Super Bowl Advertising
Search Engine Optimization
19. Search Engine Land is a collaborative blog devoted to covering up to the minute news regarding search engines. This website deals with everything from changing algorithms, search engine optimization, general search engine news and more.
Highlight: 20 Resources to Add to Your Link Took Arsenal Right Now
20. Portent is all about search engine optimization, from basic articles explaining the philosophy behind SEO, to in-depth examinations of effective SEO strategies.
Highlight: Five Ways SEO is Like the Rolling Stones
21. SEO Book Blog examines the discipline of SEO and its relationship to effective advertising. The blog looks at what makes high quality SEO rare and often times expensive, and gives readers ways to analyze the effectiveness of the SEO strategies that they, or the companies they employ utilize.
Highlight: The Rise of Paywalls
22. Big Oak Blog features both in depth technical articles on SEO, and lighter subjects such as basic ways to improve your SEO effectiveness.
Highlight: 9 Benefits of Guest Blogging for SEO
23. The Daily SEO Blog is a large collaborative blog featuring contributors at every level of the SEO industry. The contributors represent a wide range of experience and platform specialties which ensures that there is something for everybody, and a multitude of perspectives that can be of help to readers of all levels of experience.
Highlight: SEO From a Newb’s Perspective
24. Seer Interactive is a collaborative blog with contributors who write on a wide range of topics within the SEO discipline including: understanding search, breaking into advertising on new platforms, and utilizing the various tools available for search engine optimization.
Highlight: The Positive Negative
Branding
25. Six Pizels of Separation is the blog of Mitch Joel, a digital marketing professional who has been described by Marketing Magazine as the “Rockstar of Digital Marketing.” Mitch’s company (Twist Image) was founded by Mitch and is one of the foremost digital marketing and communications agencies in the business.
Highlight: Hacking the Media (again)
26. Conversation Agent is the blog of Valeria Maltoni, a highly regarded keynote speaker who has consulted with many Fortune 500 companies. She is the senior director of Empathy Lab. Conversation Agent focuses on building brands through the development of meaningful relationships with customers.
Highlight: You Don’t Get an Award for Doing What Everyone Else is Doing
27. Personal Branding is a blog focused on helping professionals market themselves in such a way as to increase their opportunities for advancement in their field through innovative personal branding techniques.
Highlight: How Can You Deal With Clashing Brands?
28. How to Make My Blog is is all about defining your personal brand with your blog. From choosing the right platform, to creating the right layout, this blog has relevant information for bloggers of every level.
Highlight: Give Your Posts a Local Perspective
29. Mario Sanchez Carrion is a blog that features one post at a time. Mario is a marketing director and the blog features notes to himself on various aspects of marketing in general and branding specifically.
Highlight: The Happy Medium
30.The Brand Builder is all about building a strong brand by harnessing your passion, creativity, and common sense to create a brand that is powerful and unique to you.
Highlight: Why it Worked
