Inc.com’s list of 19 must-read blogs
There are more than 130 million blogs on the World Wide Web today, and 1.5 million more are created each week, according to the blog tracking service Technorati. It is unknown how many of these are tainted by shameless self-promotion, mindless ranting, and other nonsense — but you can bet the figure is extremely high. So Inc. scoured the Internet, tabbed through Twitter, and asked the smartest people we know to help us come up with a list of bloggers who, if you pay attention, can help reshape your perspective. Here’s what we found. (Source: 19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now – Inc.com
In late 2009, Inc.com scoured the Web and came up with a list of 19 of the smartest business bloggers whose advice just might help you run a better company.
Ethan Zuckerman
A senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center, he’s also the blogger with the best worldview.
Penelope Trunk
The Brazen Careerist is the voice of the new guard.
Guy Kawasaki – How to Change the World
The ubiquitous Garage Ventures founder is also the Web’s ultimate realist; Kawasaki, who also runs a Web start-up called Alltop, is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist who has written nine books, most recently The Reality Check.
Jason Fried – Signal vs. Noise
This Chicago software entrepreneur offers the most interesting rants and raves. Fried, whose Chicago-based company created the popular collaboration program Basecamp, distinguishes himself from most bloggers by being suspicious of buzzwords, hoopla, and trends that have yet to turn into sustainable businesses. For more on Fried, see The Way I Work.
Mark Cuban: Blog Maverick
The bigmouth you gotta love. How has Mark Cuban greeted the economic crisis? With the Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan, of course. Earlier this year, Cuban asked entrepreneurs to post business plans on his website. It resulted in more than 2,000 comments, and Cuban eventually invested in four companies. Although Cuban’s blog is marked by a sense of bluster, it can also be candid, smart, and inspiring.
Matt Mullenweg
The blogger’s blogger. Seven years ago, at age 18, Mullenweg started a blog for fun. He has blogged ever since, and along the way, he created one of the world’s largest blogging platforms.WordPress powers 14 million blogs, including many on this list.
Charlene Li – Altimeter Group
The wonk you gotta love. Li, whose Groundswell is a great primer on using social media to connect with your customers, is a former analyst for Forrester Research. That means she is comfortable with stats, buzzwords, and long papers on corporate strategy. But as the founder of her own consulting firm and a longtime blogger, she is also a practitioner, which means she knows not only what is supposed to work but also what actually does.
Howard Lindzon: Trends – Find them, ride them and get off! Stocks, ventures and civilization; the CEO of StockTwits is also the best antidote there is to CNBC.
Jason Calacanis
The guide for tough times. Calacanis was one of the first entrepreneurs to turn blog writing into a business. He co-founded Weblogs — the publisher of Engadget, Autoblog, and Joystiq — in 2003 and sold it to AOL for a reported $25 million in 2005. More recently, he has chronicled the travails of his search start-up, Mahalo, in a series of essays that he publishes in his e-mail newsletter and on his blog.
Tim Ferriss
Want to work less and accomplish more? This productivity guru can help. He parlayed his experience running a modest online sports-nutrition business into The 4-Hour Workweek, a wildly successful book about how not to work hard. The book made Ferriss a hero to productivity junkies for its radical prescriptions — it recommended ignoring most e-mails, for instance — but part of its appeal was how seriously its author takes fun. On his blog, Ferriss drops wisdom on how to overcome self-doubt, how to become a better power lifter, and how to make sure that your life of leisure will survive the collapse of the U.S. economy.
Rashmi Sinha
Thoughts about people, technology and running a company; the founder and CEO of SlideShare offers a view from the weeds. Sinha is a serial entrepreneur whose current company, SlideShare, allows people to share their PowerPointpresentations and other documents online. Her blog is worth reading as a chronicle of a company in the making and because, as a woman running a venture capital — backed technology start-up, Sinha writes from an unusual perspective.
Paul Graham
Y Combinator’s founder on the view from on high. “I tried blogging once,” says Graham, “but a blog post is too short and quick for me.” Instead, he spends weeks crafting long essays and posts them on his website. His writing — informed by experience helping to start more than 140 companies through his seed fund, Y Combinator — deals mostly with the ins and outs of getting started.
Seth Godin
The master of pithiness. One of the world’s most popular bloggers, Godin is a master of the thought-provoking one-liner, the grand pronouncement, and the deeply contemplative paragraph. His subject matter is online marketing, but he transcends the genre by writing like a human being — he frequently talks about love, trust, and happiness. Also, for a guy who knows a ton about search-engine optimization, he’s very funny.
Fred Wilson
A venture capitalist on the art of the deal. “The venture business used to be a club — a little mystical and not well understood,” says Wilson, who started blogging in 2003. Since then, he has led a vanguard of VC bloggers who have brought transparency to that rarefied world. He writes honestly about deal terms, rates of return, and disputes with founders.
I am a VC. I have been since 1986. I help people start and build technology companies. I do it in NYC, which isn’t the easiest place to build technology companies, but it’s getting better.
Tim O’Reilly
The founder of O’Reilly Media offers the best glimpse of the future. O’Reilly, whose company produces technology books and events, has been at the forefront of nearly every major development in computers over the past three decades. His company created the first commercial website, and it helped pioneer the ideas of open-source software, social media, and the do-it-yourself movement. One of the next big things as far as O’Reilly is concerned? Something called Gov 2.0
Michael Arrington
TechCrunch‘s founder offers the clearest view of the mood in Silicon Valley. TechCrunch is required reading in Silicon Valley, but Arrington’s posts are relevant to entrepreneurs everywhere. Since starting TechCrunch as a home-based hobby, he has grown it into a 20-person company that has spinoff websites in the United Kingdom, France, andJapan. Like any good blogger, Arrington loves a controversy and is most entertaining when he decides to pick a fight with the outside world.
Dave Winer: Scripting
An entrepreneur who is also the voice of experience. Winer is a software entrepreneur and creator of RSS, the technology that allows people to skim lots of blogs in a short amount of time. He also maintains one of the oldest and longest-running blogs. He started DaveNet, an e-mail newsletter, in 1994, and began his online journal,Scripting News, in 1997, years before blogs were called that.
Anonymous Banker
In the realm of business, the Web’s most shameless agitator. “There is a part of me that feels like a traitor,” writes the mystery blogger who has worked as business banker at large lenders for the past two decades. “[But] in addition to being a banker, I am also a citizen of the United States.” As the media and politicians have portrayed the recession as a problem confined to large financial institutions, Anonymous Banker has become a lonely (but loud) defender of small companies.
Craig Newmark
The founder of Craigslist consistently presents the most unconventional views about business and technology. Newmark, whose company publishes one of the largest websites in the world, has never seemed particularly interested in running his business or even in making money. But that’s exactly what makes him interesting. Today, Newmark spends much of his time answering customer service e-mails at Craigslist and the rest speaking and blogging about other ways in which social media can change the world.
Other top business blogs
Brian Solis
Defining the convergence of media and influence; Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, publishing, and culture. His current book, Engage, is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to build and measure success in the social web.
Ben Casnocha
A blog about entrepreneurship, books, current affairs, intellectual life
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Drew McLellan’s a 25+ year marketing agency veteran who lives for creating “a ha” moments for his clients, clients’ customers, peers and audiences across the land. Sadly, for his daughter, he attempts to do the same thing at home… Drew’s favorite tools for creating these moments are vivid story telling, Italian heritage inspired hand gestures and the occasional tipping of a sacred cow.
Neuromarketing: Where Brain Science and Marketing Meet
Neuromarketing is the place to talk about using brain science in Marketing and Sales. We cover both breaking news about relevant brain research as well as “big picture” topics like ethical dilemmas posed by cutting-edge technology… Neuromarketing is published and authored by Roger Dooley, president of Dooley Direct, LLC. Dooley is a consultant and entrepreneur who combines knowledge of emerging phenomena like neuromarketing and social networking with decades of hands-on marketing experience. He helps companies understand the implications of new technologies and techniques, and guides them in the implementation of practical strategies to adapt to them.
All Things Workplace – Steve Roesler
The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur – Mike Michalowicz
“Never started a company before? Struggling with little or no cash? Have no experience, no baseline to judge your progress against? Thank God! You’ve got a shot at making this work.” So says Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, a business book that is so uniquely useful, so raw and entertaining, it reads like the brainchild of Steve Jobs and Chris Rock… Whether you’re just starting out or have been at this for years, Mike’s “get real” approach to business is a much needed swift kick in the pants. In this book, you’ll discover:
- Why a business plan is a total waste of your time
- Why fulfilling your own needs is the first and last order of business
- Which three sheets of paper you need to successfully launch, manage and grow your business
- How to get started in business with little or no money
- The one little change to make with your income statement that will make your profits grow fast
- How to find and exploit resources that no one else knows about
- How to stop procrastinating and take action NOW!
A Clear Eye – Tom Asacker: Marketplace Ideas that Open New Doors
Tom Asacker has been teaching and inspiring organizations and entrepreneurs for over 20 years. World-class brands including Procter & Gamble, UPS, and G.E. have called on Tom, a renowned speaker and strategic advisor to shake up their audience, fill them with ideas and charge them with inspiration.
David B. Wolfe’s Ageless Marketing – Internet Marketing Agency for the 50+ Markets
tripwire magazine
Web professionals have to master many skills and technologies to create the modern, effective web applications that clients demand these days. It can be hard to stay at the top in the web field – it’s a never-ending task! … If you’re a web designer or developer, welcome to tripwire magazine – a weblog that aims to offer you useful information, tools, tips and tutorials to make your life easier. Explore this site for articles about everything from fonts to Photoshop, CSS, jQuery, web design, graphics, typography, advertising, SEO and much much more.
Artbizblog – for the business of being an artist – Alyson B. Stanfield
I began consulting with artists informally 18 years ago as part of my position as a museum curator. When I left museums, my old artist-friends continued coming to me for help and advice. Everyone wanted an agent! …The neat thing is that almost everything I teach artists to do, I’m doing myself for my business. See? The art business isn’t so different from the rest of the world. We all need to know how to promote ourselves and our businesses—online and off. To that end, I keep up with marketing, business, and artworld goings-on. And I started this blog in 2004 so I could understand blogging an help my clients better understand WHY they needed a blog and WHAT to do with it.
Resources: The top business blogs, sites
Top 15 Most Popular Business Websites | December 2011 – ebiz MBA: eBusiness Knowledgebase
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/business-websites
10 Top Business Blogs and Why They Are Successful – Social Media Examiner
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-top-business-blogs-and-why-they-are-successful/
Top 20 Small Business Blogs and Entrepreneurship Websites – YFS Entrepreneur
http://yfsentrepreneur.com/2011/11/03/top-20-small-business-blogs-and-entrepreneurship-websites/
19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now – Inc.com
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/19-blogs-you-should-bookmark-right-now.html
Best Business Blogs 2011 – Strategist News
http://strategistnews.com/best-business-blogs.php
This is our third year publishing this ranking. The business blogs field is getting more competitive than ever! Seth Godin continues to dominate the business blogosphere, while Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble still rule… we will only include standalone blogs of individuals; we’ve excluded all companies, newspapers, brands and groups because we want to celebrate the individual writers – not corporations. We do not want to be influenced by business models or advertising to skew the results. We just want to rank the best writing, period.
Best SMB Marketing Blogs: The Definitive List of Small Business Marketing Blogs – DIYSEO
http://blog.diyseo.com/2011/03/best-small-business-marketing-blogs/
Financial blogs
The 25 Best Financial Blogs
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2057116_2057343_2057278,00.html
This list was started on Thursday, December 15, 2011