My Top 5 Marketing Reads

Today I thought I would share my top 5 marketing blogs that I recommend to anyone that I coach, mentor or train. A good marketer is always in the loop of that is happening in the industry and ways in which they can change their processes as the marketing world evolves. So here we go…

Social Media Today

For me Social Media Today is my top read. As my focus is Social Media Marketing it is important for me to know what’s happening across it. Plus their blog is easy to navigate, I can read their top reads, read by topic or scoll down their feed for recent updates.

What I love is that their excerpts give you a short version of the post so you don’t have to read the post itself unless you want to. The posts themselves are detailed and engaging meaning I fully understand what the post is about in a way that I can immediately convey the information to other people.

Smart Insights

A good marketer is only as good as the strategies they come up with. To help make the most of my strategies I read the Smart Insights blog. Launched by two leading marketing experts, this blog is all about the strategy and theory side of the marketing world.

Smart Insights also have a easy to navigate blog, I can view the most recent posts, popular posts and by topic. The only downside is that their excerpts aren’t a quick snapshot of information instead they are the first paragraph(s) of the post itself, so you have to read the full post to get the information that you need. That said the posts themselves are very detailed and provide the information I need.

Search Engine Roundtable

SE Roundtable is my top source for Search Engine Optimisation related news. To be honest I rarely visit this blog due to their email newsletter giving me all the information that I need to get by. Like Social Media Today this blog has snapshot excerpts which give you the basic information so you can still be updated on what is going on without spending a lot of time reading the post itself.

What I love about their posts is that the team show their interactions with Google etc so you know the information comes directly from the source. What’s more, they do a daily recap post where you can see all the daily updates in one place including links to other blogs sharing similar information.

Later’s Blog

If you need help understanding Instagram, Later’s blog is the one to visit. I use the Later scheduler software and started to read their blog last year. Their blog is full of how-tos, expert guides and of course instagram updates (they have also started doing posts about other social channels).

Their excerpts are like that of Smart Insights in that they are the first couple of sentences from the post itself. What I love about their posts is that some have a table of contents so that I can go directly to the section of the page I want to know most about. Their posts also use examples direct from instagram and is just nice to read.

Hubspot’s Blog

The Hubspot Blog is the one I use less often of all the blogs on this list. That’s not to say that it is bad, in fact it’s a great blog to read. For me, however, it doesn’t always have posts that relate to what I do every day. They cover all things marketing, sales, websites and customer service so it can be a while before they do a piece that is relevant to me.

What I love about Hubspot’s blog is that they provide a read time so I know how long it it will take me to read the post.It should be noted that Hubspot don’t give an excerpt of their posts however, they do give you editor picks so you can read what the team recommend.

Have you read any of these blogs? Do you have your own top reads? Let me know!

Alternatively get in touch to see how I can help you get started in marketing.