Our Top 10 Favourite Industry Blogs

Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in the everyday tasks and challenges of your marketing job that you don’t get a chance to keep up with the latest industry literature. But if you really want to make sure your marketing strategy is using the most up to the minute, cutting edge techniques and tools, you need to be setting aside time to make sure you’re in the know.

Here are our top 10 favourite blogs you need to set up Google Alerts for to really set yourself apart from the competition

1.    Hubspot Blog

If you just have time to read one blog, make it Hubspot – and send it to your sales team too. It will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about inbound marketing, and more. It’s appealingly laid out and it even tells you how long each article will take you to read. Impress in your next meeting with 'The Ultimate Dictionary of Marketing Terms You Should Know'. 

2.    Moz Blog

Another marketer’s staple and deservedly so – Moz blog covers inbound marketing and SEO. Read this regularly and you’ll learn how to improve not just your website and search rankings but your brand, social and content efforts too. On ‘Whiteboard Friday’ Moz Blog posts videos going into detail on various elements of SEO, such as 'YouTube SEO: Top Factors To Invest In'. Best of all, you don’t have to be too technical to use these posts to your advantage.

3.    Sleeknote

Sleeknote’s blog focusses on ecommerce, particularly CRO and email marketing. With straightforward ‘how-to’ guides, this is a must for email marketing specialists to ensure you’re up to speed on best practice, personalisation, automation and more. Articles we particularly like included '115 Subject Lines We Couldn’t Help But Click'.

4.    Content Marketing Institute 

It may not look quite as pretty as some of the other blogs on this list, but as you would expect, this authority on content marketing will not only help shape your strategy and give you fresh ideas, it will also keep you up to date on best practice, new research and analysis, and how to keep your SEO team happy. Their most recent article 'Want More Creative Content Ideas?' looks at what rules you should be breaking to succeed.

5.    The Wishpond Blog

This blog covers all things digital marketing for businesses of every size – marketing automation, content, social, SEO, email and CRO all feature. However we think it’s best for small businesses looking for really practical ‘how to’ guides that don’t cost the earth – and in particular this complete guide to 'Online Marketing for Ecommerce Businesses' is a real standout and a must read for marketers and business owners alike. 

6.    Mention

Mention is a social media monitoring tool, and so as you’d expect, their blog focusses on social media and brand engagement. Their articles can easily be put into practice, such as ‘Four Ways to Get Your Colleagues Excited about Employee Advocacy’, and, unlike many blogs in this space, there is a focus on PR as a key part of any digital marketing strategy.

7.    Buffer

The authority on social media, the Buffer blog will ensure you know everything you could ever want to know about social, and lots that you didn’t know you needed to. We like that they have lots of real life case studies, and they’re always looking at the newest trends so you can get involved before your competition do. Why is personalisation the next big thing in social media? You can find out here…

8.     Email Monday     

Run by Dutchman Jordie van Rijn, what he doesn’t know about email marketing doesn’t need knowing, and he shares it all here. As well as regular value laden posts about email marketing – the latest research, insight, stats, platforms and techniques, and everything you ever needed to know about automation, Email Monday releases an annual ‘Future of Email Marketing’ report, which should be on every marketer’s must-read list. 

9.     Marketo

Marketo is an industry leading marketing automation platform and their blog is written by marketers, for marketers. As you would expect, it covers a lot on the topic of marketing automation itself, but is surprisingly varied and we’ve enjoyed articles on everything from brand activation at festivals to an insightful article entitled ‘In The Relationship Era, No One Should Be Marketing To Strangers.’

10.     The Content Marketing Association

Last but not least, how could we not mention our event partners the CMA. The Content Marketing Association (CMA) is the industry association for marketing, publishing, advertising and social agencies. The overarching aim of The Content Marketing Association is to promote the use of content as an effective marketing tool to client marketers and showcase the channels it can be used for. Each week the CMA send their readers an email of interesting articles all about the industry and the movers and shakers. You can sign up here!

So whatever your specialism, we hope that a few Google Alerts to the above blogs will send your ROI stratospheric in 2019!