Who is an online resource that you count above all others for the best advice about current online marketing practices? Name one person and explain why they are the best. Also, include a link to their site.
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
1. Moz
Moz is my favorite place to stay current on the latest online marketing practices. Most notably, I love Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday where he discusses specific strategies to help marketers succeed in their respective businesses. If you want to go deeper, Moz also has an extensive Q&A community that is comprised of some of the best minds in Internet marketing.
– Lawrence Watkins, Great Black Speakers
2. HubSpot
Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot coined the term “inbound marketing,” earning the attention of potential customers by creating valuable content instead of interrupting them with ads. Inbound marketing has been shown to create more loyalty and have greater conversion than traditional paid marketing. Shah also co-created Inbound.org, a site which curates the best online marketing content on the Internet.
– Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh Test Prep
3. Marie Forleo
There’s no one better suited to dish out marketing advice than Marie Forleo, and she’s even Oprah approved. Her weekly Marie TV videos are chock-full of brilliant advice on marketing and other topics that affect your business. Her yearly class, “B-School,” is the best 8-week online marketing program you can find.
– Melissa Cassera, Cassera Communications
4. Mixergy Premium Classes
Nothing is better than taking a Mixergy Premium class from someone who has experience in a specific marketing tactic that is up to date and actionable. The most important aspect of these classes is that the practice can be done immediately after the class, and you will see pretty good results from it. I have personally used a few of the classes to grow our business.
5. Heidi Cohen
Heidi Cohen
provides easy-to-understand marketing advice on a wide range of topics, useful for both newbie entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. She has more than 17,000 Twitter followers, so it’s hard to argue with that number.
– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
6. Okdork.com
Noah Kagan was the third employee at Mint and the 30th employee at Facebook. He’s transparent with his practices and has a great site and newsletter at Okdork.com.
– Brett Farmiloe, Digital Marketing Agency
7. Quick Sprout
Neil Patel of Quick Sprout is a master when it comes to online marketing. He understands how to use content to drive the audience and engage them. His new content marketing guide is 45,000 words of win.
– Chuck Longanecker, digital-telepathy
8. Duct Tape Marketing
No one is better than John Jantsch at uncovering the most innovative, cost-effective ways to get the word out about your startup or small business.
– Alexandra Levit, Inspiration at Work
9. Mashable
While it’s not entirely focused on marketing, Mashable has a lot of very good tidbits about online marketing. The way Mashable presents its content is also very easy to consume because it’s in categorized sections and infographic form.
10. Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk is hands down the best resource for anyone looking to understand what’s happening online and, more importantly, what will happen in marketing overall. Whether it’s his blog, Twitter, Facebook or some other resource, Gary is engaging, instructive, helpful and generally not to be missed.
11. Seth Godin
Seth Godin is someone I look to when it comes to drawing out the most pertinent success factors for customer engagement. Godin continually applies common sense marketing rules to complicated digital trends within simple, snackable blog posts that evoke that frequent “outside yourself” thunderbolt that often gets lost when we are stuck in the detail of our day jobs.
12. Stephen Monaco
I follow Stephen Monaco on Twitter. Start with his book “Insightful Knowledge,” then pay attention to the content that he puts out on Twitter. He covers everything from real-time engagement to social strategy.