Do you struggle to keep up to date on what’s happening in the digital marketing industry? We don’t blame you if you do. It moves at such a fast pace that it can be difficult to follow along to every algorithm change, updates to the interfaces of marketing platforms, and the latest tactics and strategies that you should be incorporating into your day-to-day role. As more and more marketers pitch their blog posts, eBooks and guides as the “definitive” or “ultimate” resource, it’s becoming harder to determine what’s worth your time, and what is a misleading sales pitch.
At Next Generation, we love nothing more than passing our newfound knowledge onto our candidates and clients. Here are 5 of our favourite blogs that you should consider bookmarking today – thank us later!
1) HUBSPOT (INBOUND MARKETING)
The HubSpot Marketing blog is our go-to resource for everything related to inbound marketing. Whether you want to learn how to start a blog, create a keyword research process for your content strategy, or put into practice tactics that will help you convert more visitors into leads, this blog has you covered. It’s also packed full of information on the latest news and trends in the industry so you’ll never miss a beat about any major algorithmic changes that may be impacting your organic search visibility and traffic.
2) MOZ (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION)
If have an active interest in SEO and haven’t already checked out the weekly Whiteboard Friday videos from Moz, where have you been? Each week, Moz release a short video which focuses on a specific area of SEO, content marketing or strategy to help marketers perform better in their day-to-day roles. Besides these weekly short and snappy videos, they publish regular posts that will help you with understanding technical SEO issues, relationship building, content strategies and keyword research.
3) MARKETING LAND (DIGITAL MARKETING NEWS)
Sometimes you only have a few precious minutes to spare on your DART or bus journey each morning, so if you want a daily update on all aspects of the digital marketing industry, we recommend taking a look at Marketing Land. They cover breaking stories, feature announcements, industry trends and product changes as soon as they happen, so you can’t go far wrong bookmarking this site.
In addition to the editorial news coverage published each day, you will find in-depth features that have been contributed by subject matter aspects which are packed full of practical tips, tactics and strategies to help you perform better in your job.
4) CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE (CONTENT MARKETING)
Are you responsible for maintaining the content strategy for your company? It can often be hard to find articles that advise on the latest industry benchmarks, blogging best practices, consumer research, and what type of content will resonate most with your target audience. The Content Marketing Institute blog is one of our go-to resources for learning how to create and implement a highly effective content strategy that will deliver measurable results.
Each day new articles are added which will walk you through the best tools, productivity tips, reporting structures, and much more. If you haven’t time to read any of their content, you should also check out their podcast which also has invaluable information for all content marketers.
5) SOCIAL MEDIA EXAMINER (SOCIAL MEDIA)
The interfaces for most major Paid Social Ad platforms change on a regular basis. No one would blame you if you had missed an update to the Facebook Ad interface as it changes on a regular basis. So, what can you do to ensure you never miss an important update? Well, one of our favourite resources for all the latest social media news is the Social Media Examiner blog. You can look forward to advice from leading social media experts who regularly share tips, tactics and strategies through case studies, in-depth guides, blog posts and interviews. It’s worth checking back here on a daily basis so you never miss any important updates which may slip past you if you’re knee deep in campaign management during the hours on 9-5.
If you want to keep track of what’s happening in the industry as a whole, rather than follow specific websites, you should take a look at the latest tool from SparkToro – a news aggregation tool for web marketers. As it uses a ranking system with a decay algorithm, it only highlights articles that are ‘hot’ right now, so you can be sure of just seeing content that is timely and of interest to other digital marketers.
