What IM blogs do you follow?

Callum Short

Callum Short

Founder @ Beambox.com
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There is a ton of IM blogs out there but they are so saturated with bullshit that it makes finding the quality blogs a mission.

Anyone have any recommendations on some quality IM blogs I can follow/read?

Thanks :smile:
 
Quicksprout, Kissmetrics, SmartPassiveIncome, Content Marketing Institute, Social Triggers, and The Content Strategist.
 
Almost don't follow any , anymore. They are all about selling you shitty products. Or spam the shit out your inbox.
I think after a certain point, your own research and following a small group of forums is all you need.
 
Backlinko, Authority Hackers, Conversion XL, Video Fruit, Niche Pursuits and No Hat Digital.
 
c4yrslf12 said:
I definitely expected to see ViperChill here, not going to lie.
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Yes I follow Viperchill considering my userid but he has stopped posting frequently lately, must be busy with his client business. But Viperchill's blog along with SMart Passive Income was how I got started with IM.
 
jacobking.com - released pretty good Scrapebox guide recently if anyone is interested.
charlesngo.com - More of his productivity stuff.
bluehatseo.com - it's a timeless classic.
wickedfire.com/enlightened-members/ - a golden section.
 
I've given up following people.

I have followed people for over 20 years online, different people at different times.

When you stop following and take back that time and start doing and going with your "gut" instincts, magical things truly start happening to you.
 
eliquid said:
I've given up following people.

I have followed people for over 20 years online, different people at different times.

When you stop following and take back that time and start doing and going with your "gut" instincts, magical things truly start happening to you.
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Have to disagree, in marketing and SEO especially nothing is fixed and things are constantly interchanging. Because of that, the greatest asset you can have is perspective. The ability to understand what people are doing, what's working and what's being saturated. Following people and allowing them to do the 'hard work' will allow you to increase that perspective and take in way more than you'd be able to trying everything yourself.
 
@Callum Short
The problem is that when you're following people, you're always going to be behind them...

What @eliquid is saying, I think, is that you're much better to go and figure stuff out on your own at a certain point, once you've got the fundamentals down, because by the time any new methods make the rounds on the blogs there's been people who figured it out on their own a year or two earlier and it's much better to be that person than to be hopping on the bandwagon much later. Plus obviously the fact that some people blogging about IM don't practice what they preach whatsoever.

If you're always playing catch-up you'll never get ahead of the game.

That being said there are some great recommendations here for blogs :smile: haha
 
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@MetaData is correct -

A key part of what I think you missed Callum is I've been in this game almost 20 years. Do you really think I am going to miss out on anything by reducing my reading from 5 blogs to 0? My gut instinct forgets more in a day than most people can learn when it comes to marketing online. Truly I tell you, I am not trying to be egotistically about this at all when I say that. Once you gain a gut instinct about anything in life, you just will know what I mean.

Other than that, when you are in the trenches day in and day out and ranking shit with your gut and your own experiences, you propel yourself far further than anyone else in this field, especially those that only read and "wait" for news.

Look at the guys at the forefront of GSA, or those at the edge of PBNs and SERP CTR manipulation, or those that were pioneers of mass spam links like forums and blog comments ( which I was at the forefront of myself at Wickedfire back in the day ). Look at my own story with Facebook ads even. Look at SERPWoo and the information it can pump out to people...

Those guys cleaned the floor with the ones that simply just read stuff on other blogs, by then the party was over when it was talked about in forums or blogs.

You might be able to point out other areas besides these where it is good, but honestly I can almost predict when I Google algo is going to roll out before anyone can write about it on a blog and report on it.. and that advantage gives me time to circumvent it before it hits me.

My last point is this, how do you know what you are reading is even accurate? If I had went with what people wrote about years ago, I would still think "mobile is the next big thing" or that "big data is the next big thing", but in reality it has been the "next big thing" for over 6 years now and people have been banking on it to the point that to jump in it now is rather hard for new people. Just because someone wrote about it, doesn't mean its correct or factual, even if Moz, SEL, or any other name.

You have to be ahead of the curve in marketing online, not behind it ( which is what reading blogs does ).
 
eliquid said:
@MetaData is correct -

A key part of what I think you missed Callum is I've been in this game almost 20 years. Do you really think I am going to miss out on anything by reducing my reading from 5 blogs to 0? My gut instinct forgets more in a day than most people can learn when it comes to marketing online. Truly I tell you, I am not trying to be egotistically about this at all when I say that. Once you gain a gut instinct about anything in life, you just will know what I mean.

Other than that, when you are in the trenches day in and day out and ranking shit with your gut and your own experiences, you propel yourself far further than anyone else in this field, especially those that only read and "wait" for news.

Look at the guys at the forefront of GSA, or those at the edge of PBNs and SERP CTR manipulation, or those that were pioneers of mass spam links like forums and blog comments ( which I was at the forefront of myself at Wickedfire back in the day ). Look at my own story with Facebook ads even. Look at SERPWoo and the information it can pump out to people...

Those guys cleaned the floor with the ones that simply just read stuff on other blogs, by then the party was over when it was talked about in forums or blogs.

You might be able to point out other areas besides these where it is good, but honestly I can almost predict when I Google algo is going to roll out before anyone can write about it on a blog and report on it.. and that advantage gives me time to circumvent it before it hits me.

My last point is this, how do you know what you are reading is even accurate? If I had went with what people wrote about years ago, I would still think "mobile is the next big thing" or that "big data is the next big thing", but in reality it has been the "next big thing" for over 6 years now and people have been banking on it to the point that to jump in it now is rather hard for new people. Just because someone wrote about it, doesn't mean its correct or factual, even if Moz, SEL, or any other name.

You have to be ahead of the curve in marketing online, not behind it ( which is what reading blogs does ).
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Thanks for the great response. Is it fair to say that for a beginner reading these blogs can be an initial benefit in giving you an initial feel for the industry which could later assist that gut instinct in being more accurate? I find that in whatever I'm learning, the more I know, the more creative I can be and the more opportunities I have to expand and branch off on ideas.
 
I would add Seth Godin's blog to the list. He posts brief, to-the-point articles which touch on, I guess, whatever he's feeling on the specific day.
His way of forcing you to be in the mind of your customer has definitely helped me create products/content which actually help the damn people.
 
@Callum Short Yeah that's fair to say, it really depends on the blog and the topic though. Recognize that a lot of people blogging about IM have an agenda beyond helping you get better at it.
 
Here's something I said on Trickle Cheddar at one point concerning this very topic:

If whatever they are telling you worked or still worked, they’d keep their collective mouths shut and scale to the moon. Bloggers are literal years behind. Which brings us to the next point.

2) They are the 4th generation to hear about the method. You are 5th.

You aren’t balls deep into this world yet, so let me explain. Here’s the flow of information in the internet marketing world: Innovation -> Skype -> Forums -> Bloggers -> You.

By the time YOU have heard of a method, it’s toast and the search engine is about to pull the plug on it with some algorithmic filter or footprint finder.
​
That's why I don't follow SEO bloggers. But I do have an RSS feed chock full of marketing and design and coding and other topics that are actually helpful. If you want to succeed at SEO these days, all you need to do is learn on-page SEO and then just do real marketing. Far better off studying online marketing techniques than off-page SEO techniques.
 
I'm not following any blog directly but I read inbound.org and growthhackers.com, best stuffs are always there.
 
Just because I haven't seen it posted yet, http://boostblogtraffic.com/ is another good one.

For those saying you shouldn't follow blogs because they aren't the first to develop strategies and techniques, I disagree.

Sure, for some, spending your time reading blogs may have a poor return on your time investment, but for those beginners/intermediates, it's an easily digestable way to learn.

You need to catch up to a degree by learning from others before you can innovate.

There may be better ways to learn (chats, certain forums), but those aren't always easy to gain access to.

..My $0.02
 
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