This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog.
Having a list of go-to blogs can be a great source of information and inspiration.
In our case, the blogs and websites we visit most often provide some amazing articles with in-depth insights, tips, and strategies that help inform our social media sharing. Likewise, the amazing content gives us something to aim for and ideas for what to cover next.
We’ve shared a bit about favorite blogs for content marketing and blogs for advanced marketing.
Now it’s time to ask you: What are your favorite blogs and websites?
We posed this question in our end-of-year survey to Buffer blog readers, and I was amazed at the breadth of responses. You all read some really wonderful blogs! And I’m really happy to share the list here in hopes that maybe some new go-to blogs might surface for you.
Your 50 Favorite Blogs on Marketing, Social Media, and More
Adding up the full list of responses, there were over 250 blogs that were mentioned, covering everything from digital marketing to lifehacking to inspiration. You all read some really awesome stuff!
I did my best to narrow down the list to those blogs that were mentioned most often and the ones that might be most relevant to the Buffer blog audience as a whole. If you’re interested in all 250 specific responses, feel free to grab them from this spreadsheet.
(HT: Jon Collins and Inside Intercom for the inspiration for this article.)
Social Media Marketing blogs
We loved seeing so many great social media blogs mentioned in the survey. These blogs cover a wide range of content types, aimed at a wide audience—beginners to experts and everyone in between. Here were the social media blogs that were mentioned most often.
4. Post Planner
6. Sprout Social Insights (pictured above)
8. Razor Social
9. Mari Smith (if interested, you can learn more of Mari’s story from our interview with her!)
10. Rebekah Radice
Plus a couple under-the-radar choices:
r/socialmedia – This subreddit has tons of interesting questions and answers about all things social media. Not only can you ask your own question here, you can also see which topics are being mentioned most often by the Reddit community—great validation for future articles or just to learn what people are talking about!
Boom Social – Kim Garst’s blog focuses on social media tips for small business owners and covers some really actionable topics that you might not see elsewhere—her post on how to use Twitter lists is a great resource.
View these great blogs in Feedly, and subscribe in one click.
Writing & Content Marketing
You chose a great number of awesome writing blogs, some that cover the words themselves and some that cover the strategies and tips for successful online content. Here are your top choices.
11. Copyblogger
12. The Writer’s Room (a Medium publication)
13. Content Marketing Institute
14. CoSchedule
15. Fizzle’s Sparkline blog (pictured above)
16. Contently’s Content Strategist blog
20. Copy Hackers
Plus a couple under-the-radar choices:
Grammar Girl – Mignon Fogarty shares tips on some of the most common grammar questions that writers face, things like “affect vs. effect” and “i.e. versus e.g.” She also hosts a grammar podcast.
Blog Tyrant – Ramsay’s tips on blogging are designed to help you turn blogging into a source of income and eventually even a career.
View these great blogs in Feedly, and subscribe in one click.
Inbound Marketing
This category covers all sorts of digital marketing sites whose content can include social, blogging, SEO, design, and any other tool in a marketer’s toolbox.
21. HubSpot
22. Moz
23. Quick Sprout
24. Marketo
25. Marketing Profs
26. OK Dork (pictured above)
27. Unbounce
28. {Grow}
29. Marketing Land
30. Social Triggers
Plus a few under-the-radar choices:
LKR Social Media – Laura Roeder’s social media and business blog contains the tips and strategies that she’s personally used to grow her consulting business and launch new products. The posts are super actionable and interesting, and her email newsletter and resources are a great introduction.
Video Fruit – Bryan Harris’s blog is full of ways to grow your business with video. His articles cover video along with other growth skills like writing, content, email, and more.
View these great blogs in Feedly, and subscribe in one click.
Company blogs
There’s likely to be a lot of crossover in the topics from these company blogs and the topics in the above lists. Company blogs exist in support of a product (kind of like the Buffer blog supports Buffer). Here were some of your favorites.
31. KISSmetrics
32. Groove
33. Help Scout
34. Wistia
35. SumAll
36. Inside Intercom (pictured above)
37. Shopify blog
Plus a few under-the-radar choices:
Refinery29 Intelligence – The Refinery29 website covers emerging fashion trends. Their Intelligence blog shares the details of how their marketing works. Past articles have included deep dives into analytics and strategies, with highly transparent sharing.
Swiss Miss – The blog for the Swiss Miss design studio, run by Tina Roth Eisenberg who founded TeuxDeux, Tattly, and others, covers all sorts of interesting topics and categories on productivity, inspiration, marketing, content, writing, and more.
View these great blogs in Feedly, and subscribe in one click.
Productivity, Lifehacking, and Inspiration
So many people named blogs in the productivity/lifehacking or inspiration topics, which are some of our favorites, too. While these are a bit off from the social media focus of the Buffer blog, we think there’s a lot of value and interesting stuff to be found at these cool places.
38. Lifehacker
40. Farnam Street
41. Brain Pickings (pictured above)
42. James Clear
43. Zen Habits
44. 99U
45. Michael Hyatt
Plus a few under-the-radar choices:
Smart Passive Income – Pat Flynn shares his best tips on how to build an online business (and earn passive income). Lots of great marketing/productivity articles, how-to tutorials, and more.
Stanford Behavior Lab – Yes, this is a link for the actual laboratory at Stanford that studies human behavior. The publications stemming from Stanford’s research are all available here.
View these great blogs in Feedly, and subscribe in one click.
Thought leaders
Some of the big names in digital marketing arrived there with great blogs to back them up. You may recognize most (if not all) of the names in the list here. They’re all great ones to get to know.
46. Seth Godin
47. Jeff Bullas
48. Chris Brogan
49. Gary Vaynerchuk
50. Marie Forleo (pictured above)
View these great blogs in Feedly, and subscribe in one click.
Miscellaneous
Major news sites –
- Mashable
- Inc
- Fast Company
- Entrepreneur
- TechCrunch
- The Next Web
- Ad Age
- The Verge
- Quartz
- Daring Fireball
- Pacific Standard
- Ad Week
- Digiday
General Marketing –
Email –
Design –
WordPress –
What can you do with these blogs?
It was an absolute pleasure to see all the great blogs that the Buffer blog audience knows and loves. I got a handful of new ones to follow from browsing the list. I hope you found some intriguing ones also!
What to do with this wealth of new blog options?
- Subscribe to updates via Feedly. You can follow along with every new post by adding the RSS feed to Feedly. There are some neat Feedly integrations that can help with moving articles from Feedly directly into Pocket, Buffer, or your favorite business tool.
- Add a site to Buffer Feeds. Those on the Awesome or Business plan have 15 slots for Feeds per profile. You can add one of these sites to your Feeds and quickly add new or favorite articles from the feed straight to your Buffer queue, without ever leaving the dashboard.
Thanks so much for sharing your inspiration here with us! I’d love to hear if any other blogs we might not have mentioned. I’ll look forward to your thoughts in the comments!
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