This article was originally published on 12/10/2015 and has been revised for accuracy and for freshness.
Digital marketing is an incredibly huge industry. In fact, Forrester Research estimated that digital marketing spending would grow to over $103 billion by 2019. Since the industry is growing at such a break-neck pace, staying updated on the latest digital marketing strategies, best practices, and other educational materials will be incredibly hard.
For that exact reason, I’ve put together a short list of digital marketing blogs and websites to bookmark in order to stay balanced on the constantly growing industry.
HubSpot
There’s a reason why HubSpot is on the top of this list. One of today’s most popular inbound marketing platforms, HubSpot was one of the first advocates of the inbound methodology.
Founders Dharmesh Shah & Brian Halligan created a multi-faceted platform that businesses could use for website creation, email sending, social media posting, and so much more. In almost 10 years the company has amassed quite the following, with over 300,000 blog subscribers and for good reason. HubSpot regularly produces some of the best blog articles from the inbound experts. If I’m ever stuck on a digital marketing issue, or if I need to look into a new digital marketing trend, the first place I go to is HubSpot's blog.
Resources from HubSpot that you might find valuable:
- A Beginner's Guide to Applying Content Marketing to your Business
- The 2018 SEO Training Course: Building Sustainable Traffic for Business Growth
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a great resource to track what's happening in the wide world of social media. Which makes sense, as they're one of the best social media management tools out there.
Their software is used by companies across the world to better understand and manage their social media presence. As such, they're constantly blogging about news regarding social media and how social media strategies are affected. They break down successful campaigns, provide insights into recent changes and developments
Because they have educational blog posts, and because I prefer to start my day covering social media for all my clients, I like to start some days with a cup of coffee while browsing recent articles on Hootsuite's blog.
Here are a few of my favorite articles from Hootsuite:
- Does Social Media Impact SEO? We Ran an Experiment to Find Out
- How the Facebook Algorithm Works and How to Make it Work for You
Kissmetrics
As the name implies, Kissmetrics is data-driven. They provide awareness as to what drives results. Simply put, they know what is working and what isn’t. I don’t use Kissmetrics as a resource as much as I should, but when I find an educational blog article I typically take notes that I refer back to quite often. In addition to the valuable notes I have from Kissmetrics, they regularly produce high-quality educational pieces of content.
In fact, Kissmetrics has so many webinars, marketing guides, and other resources, you could spend multiple days going through it all.
Resources from Kissmetrics that you might find valuable:
-
Landing Pages Are Overrated. Here’s Why and What You Should Do Instead
- How Long Should I Run My A/B Test?
Moz
Search Engine Optimization, or optimizing websites to better work with search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, is essential. There is no way to sneak around Google anymore. Marketers have to spend the time generating true keywords, creating pillar pages and supporting cluster articles, as well as understanding Google’s search algorithm. To do that, you can utilize Moz. This SEO and digital marketing company has proven to be one of the best tools around to get to the bottom of optimizing search strategies. Moz was instrumental for me in understanding basic SEO, and I’m sure I’m not the only one!
Resources from Moz that you might find valuable:
- Zero-Result SERPs: Welcome to the Future We Should've Known Was Coming
- 8 Common Website Mistakes Revealed Via Content Audits
MarketingProfs
The best way to describe MarketingProfs, in my opinion, is to think of HubSpot and Kissmetrics combining. The data-driven company is not only collecting insightful analytics, but they produce some of the most shared content, they host one of the most attended B2B marketing events, and have over 600,000 members.
Visitors to MarketingProfs can read blog articles, watch marketing tutorials, download guides, and even enroll in a MarketingProfs University class that gives marketers a chance to learn how to make the most of their marketing efforts. There's all kinds of helpful content across a wide variety of digital markeitng topics
Resources from MarketingProfs that you might find valuable:
Unbounce
The industry leaders in landing pages, Unbounce helps marketers convert more leads for their campaigns. They do so by offering advice on landing page copywriting, design, and even offer incredible landing page templates (not for free, of course).
I keep Unbounce bookmarked because agency life is incredibly busy and requires a lot of higher-level thinking. I don’t always have the mental bandwidth or the time to analyze each and every one of my clients landing pages. At the click of one bookmark, I can look for efficiencies and landing page tips and implement them where necessary.
Resources from Unbounce that you might find valuable:
- Stop Making These Common Mistakes with Your Website Popups (Includes Examples and Quick Fixes)
- Is Content Marketing a Waste of Time and Money? Data and Lessons Learned from 20 posts in 30 days
Copy Hackers
Last on the list, Copy Hackers has taught me a lot about the words I use in my marketing. I chose this site as my last bookmarkable website for two main reasons. One, I have been able to save quite a bit of time using writing formulas on creative pieces. And two, the writing done by Copy Hackers is a model for marketers. Reading these posts guarantee takeaways, and from reading them, I grow as a creative marketer. I hope my writing and my creative juices can someday be as good as the Copy Hackers team.
Resources from CopyHackers that you might find valuable:
- How to write an epic blog post
- These are the 16 painful lessons I learned writing 10,211 headlines in 100 days
Now, since I’m biased for Revenue River, I absolutely think we deserve an honorable mention to be on this list. We’re a full-service digital marketing company comprised of a team of certified digital marketing experts. We help our clients in many facets of their digital marketing efforts from landing page strategies to webinar hosting, to design. If you’d like to reach out to see if we can help your digital marketing efforts, please contact us.
Don’t agree with my selection? Comment below with your top digital marketing website!