Original article appeared on Hubspot.
If you’re on the hunt for new voices and perspectives to read in the marketing space, below are eight up-and-coming blogs that the Inbound.org community thinks should get more attention. Check out the blogs below, and be sure to hop back to the Inbound.org thread for even more suggestions (and don’t forget to upvote your favorite ones!).
1) StoryNeedle
Thanks to Inbound.org’s @MaelRoth for recommending StoryNeedle — in a sea of really great content marketing blogs, this one manages to stand out with its strong emphasis on content strategy and good old-fashioned storytelling. Is rich narrative possible in structured content? Is SEO irrelevant? What does JavaScript have to do with your content structure? Michael Andrews takes on all this and more.
2) VioletaNedkova.com
Violeta Nedkova’s blog is as impossible to “put in a box” as the author herself. One day she’ll be talking about the creative process, and the next she’ll be listing useful marketing tools. What you can count on, however, is that whatever she writes will be so interesting that you’ll forget that you were supposed to plan your social media calendar during that half-hour. This blog’s standout feature is how it combines marketing savvy with creativity in multiple media.
3) Jim Gray
The reason to read this minimalist blog can be boiled down into one quote: “You can’t growth hack your way out of a churn problem. All the tricks in the book to load your funnel won’t save you if customers are actively fleeing your product as fast as you can shovel them into the funnel.” Gray’s witty take-no-prisoners approach to discussing growth hacking and inbound marketing is as funny as it is informative.
4) InterGeek
InterGeek has your bread-and-butter SEO and blogging tips, ideal for the harried business owner (or their even more harried assistant) to pick up immediately useful and up-to-date information. But Luke also introduces higher-level hacks like Comment Collection (if you don’t know what this is and how it can bring engaged readers to your blog, read on.)
5) VERO
Email marketing is this blog’s specialty, with topics like “How IKEA Sends Super-Targeted Promotional Emails” and “How to Bridge the Gap Between Education to Activation.” Email marketing is closely connected with blogging and social media, but while there are a number of bloggers covering the last two, really good material on email marketing can be few and far between. Or, at least, it used to be. (Thanks for sharing VERO with us on Inbound.org, @Damienbrz!)
6) RooJoom
RooJoom’s approach to content marketing is refreshingly story-centric, even though it’s still all about optimizing lead generation and sales funnels. Their blog talks about scalable B2B content marketing strategies and using PR, social media, and retargeting to boost content ROI, but what I love about RooJoom is that, at the end of the day, it all comes down to telling great stories. That’s what we all want to read, right? Give us something useful, helpful, and above all, interesting. RooJoom covers all of those bases.
7) The Oktopost Blog
If you’ve been looking for a one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about social media marketing, Oktopost has it covered. For those mystified by social media, this blog is the ideal tutor; and for those who know their way around the social sphere, they can still pick up some new perspectives and a few pointers. They’re well worth following on Twitter, too, @Oktopost.
8) RADIUS
You have to love a blog that’s not afraid to ask the really important questions, like “Why Are B2B Brands So Obsessed with Native Advertising?” On this blog you’ll find more “Whys” than on a road trip with a six-year-old, but you’ll also get some pretty good answers. As Inbound.org’s @ElizavetaNV says, it’s a “nice mix of sales/data/marketing topics.”
Read more on Hubspot.
