Five Online Marketing Blogs That Don’t Suck

I’m really sick and tired of the so-called ‘leading’ online marketing blogs that don’t seem to be anything more than a combination of Google press releases and links to news stories. There was a time when the most popular online marketing blogs truly deserved their readership; they were written by marketing experts who really explored the strategy and science behind online marketing.

As blogging has gone mainstream, however, the innovators were either pushed out, or simply decided that it was easier to maintain their popularity by spewing out bland repetition multiple times a day than it was to write a few thoughtful pieces a week.

To wit, one of my once-favorite bloggers – John Batelle – was once a ‘must read’ every time he posted anything. Looking at his last four posts this evening, however, I find:

• A Google Press Release quoted verbatim;
• A link to a story about advertising, again mostly a huge quote from another story;
• A one sentence post letting us know that he is travelling;
• A four word post linking to a story about Flickr;

I really wish I could say that this was an anomaly for John, but it’s not – perhaps the strain of publishing a book and starting a company has gotten to him, but this is one of many examples of once outstanding bloggers who have totally jumped the shark.

Trying to stay a little more positive, I thought I’d share a few online marketing blogs that – at least so far – are still reliably good at posting independent, thoughtful, and useful commentary and analysis of the industry. I’d like to think my blog falls into that camp (though I am not including it on the list), and I hope that if you like my blog, you’ll subscribe to these as well – we need to encourage legitimate writers to continue to ply their trade!

Here they are:

• Traffick.com by Andrew Goodman. This guy has been around a long time, and yet he continues to impress me with his insight into search engine marketing.
• Cre8pc on Usability by Kim Krause. Well-written posts on usability.
• ComparisonEngines.com by Brian Smith. Brian has never taken advertising on his site (well, other than promoting his own product, SingleFeed) and really tries to write posts with the veracity of a real-life journalist.
• DMConfidential by “Editor.” The anonymous author of many posts on this site is a true-insider in the world of online lead generation. He (or she, but not really) sees trends months before most.
• SearchMarketingStandard by Andrey Milyan and Boris Mordkovich. In addition to putting out a decent magazine on SEM, these guys are true thinkers about trends in search, and their blogs reflect that.

There are several others I could include on this list – a few of which you’ll find on the blogroll to the right. If you think I missed your’s, let me know and I’ll include it in the next list.