Court's Internet Marketing School - Courtney Tuttle knows his stuff. So does Mark Butler, a contributor. They have a knack for breaking down fairly complex online marketing topics and explaining them pretty simply. And they do what they preach. Everything they're talking about comes from experience.
SEOBook - Aaron Wall charges a minimum of $20k/month for his search engine optimization consulting services. A lot different than HubSpot's $3,000/year fee. I don't know... maybe he knows a little more than we teach our clients. He did "write the book" on SEO. But, I can't imagine paying that much to anyone just for access to their brain. Especially, when his blog is free. You should read it. If you extrapolated the hours he puts into it, you're probably getting $100k worth of free advice every month.
Duct Tape Marketing - John Jansch wrote the book on online marketing for small businesses on a budget. He's built a mini-online-media empire serving small businesses with simple, yet solid, what we like to call "inbound" marketing tips and techniques. He specializes in helping small businesses generate referral business. Since the internet is the greatest word of mouth accelerator ever invented, you should probably tune into to learn how to leverage the web to increase your business's most important marketing channel.
Web Ink Now - David Meerman Scott's blog. David authored "The New Rules of PR & Marketing". His take on marketing is best said in his wikipedia entry: "He says that the rules of marketing and PR on the Web are completely different. Instead of buying or begging your way in, Scott says anybody can 'publish their way in' using the tools of social media such as, blogs, podcasts, online news releases, online video, viral marketing, and online media."
Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal covers industry news about online reputation management, SEO, SEM and "blogging for business". Following the news makers in the online marketing industry can be completely addictive. There's a lot of news and you could literally spend all day keeping track of it. Andy brings the stuff that's important while providing analysis of marketing trends.
Seth Godin - You call yourself an online marketer and you don't read Seth Godin's blog? What's wrong with you? Seth literally birthed permission marketing, and coined "being remarkable" as a marketing term - which really paved the way for the way we think about "inbound marketing".
Lip Sticking - Marketing to Women Online - 5 great female marketers blogging about how to market to women. If you market your product or service to women, you should quickly add these marketing gurus to your feedreader.
GroundSwell - GroundSwell is a new book by genius Forrester analysts, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Through Forrester, they have access to the data about how people are using social media sites. As we learned from the amazing attendance at this week's social media webinar, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to engage in social media to promote their businesses. Social media sites are where your next customer is hanging out. And your next one. And your next one. You should be there too.
Small Business Trends - Simple no-nonsense advice for small business owners and marketing professionals from accomplished internet entrepreneur and small business owner, Anita Campbell.
ProBlogger - Darren Rowse writes about how to be a "pro blogger" or make money/generate income from blogging. I don't really read it for that. I read it because he's also a master at leveraging blogs to drive traffic, something all businesses should be doing, no matter what they're "pros" at.
Noah Brier - Of all the people I know, Noah is probably the deepest marketing/branding thinker who also really gets [and does] online marketing, online advertising, blogging, social media, etc. Big brands really pay attention to him too. If you aspire to be successful online, you should read Noah.
CopyBlogger - If there's one thing we pound into our clients head, it's "content, content, content". To win on the internet, you need to produce it regularly and it needs to be good. CopyBlogger blogs about how content is critical to succeed at leveraging social media to grow your blog's readership... and your business's revenue.
Common Craft - If you're trying to figure out how to use video to communicate to your market, you should probably hire Lee & Sachi LeFever to help you. If you can't afford them, you should learn by reading from their blog. If you're not using a feedreader to read blogs yet, you have to watch probably the most viral how to video ever made. Lee and Sachi are poster children for how to leverage unintended viral marketing to start and build a very good lifestyle business.
B2B Lead Generation Blog - Did you know that 1/2 of the small businesses in the US are businesses that sell to other businesses? Brian Carroll talks about how to leverage the web to generate leads for the complex b2b sale.
PR Squared - Todd Defren invented the Social Media Press Release. If you're doing Public Relations and want to bring your PR skills into the NOW, you should probably read Todd's blog.
What other online marketing blogs should we all be reading? Leave your suggestions with a link and 'why we should be reading them' in the comments.