You want to grow your business. You want new and innovative ideas. You want to become a leader in your industry. Following blogs is a great way to pick up tips and information to take your company to the next level. But which ones do you follow?  Your inbox can only handle so much! You only want relevant marketing and expertise, offering new ideas and ways to increase your business that will leave you inspired and ready for more.

If you’re confused about which to read, it’s no surprise. Check out these statistics by Hosting Facts. 4 million blog posts are published every day and 5 billion Google searches are made every day.

Fear not, we’ve compiled a list of our favourite 19 business blogs. These are ideal no matter what industry you are in, and they’ll help you add more value to your business. 

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1. Copyblogger

Copyblogger blog

You know as a business owner it’s important to have a blog. Even if you employ an in-house or freelance copywriter to draft your blog posts, knowing how to create great copy is important. It helps you generate new blog topics, improve blog quality, and tailor messages to your customers.

Copyblogger started in 2006, and their mission is to teach people how to create great online content. What started as a one person blog has turned into a digital commerce company, Rainmaker Digital. Sign up for a free account, and each week you will receive SEO, social media, blogging, and email marketing tips.

2. Bplans

Bplans blog

This blog is geared toward starting up new businesses, but it’s articles are great for any business that needs or wants to grow quickly. The founder, Tim Berry, blogs about business plans and how to expand business growth. Besides the blog feature, Bplans provides several free templates for business needs from pitching to fundraising for new projects. Sign up for a weekly email newsletter for these topics and more.

3. I Will Teach You to Be Rich

I Will Teach You to be Rich blog

This blog is written by Ramit Sathi, a New York Times bestseller. Sathi attended Stanford University and studied psychology and human behavior. When he started reading books about making money, he felt the tips were irrelevant in today’s society, so he created his own no-nonsense easy-to read book that made the New York Times list.

The same conversational voice carries through to his blog. You’ll get interviews, case studies, and his personal experiences, sure to breathe new life into your business.

4. Neil Patel Blog

Neil Patel blog

Neil Patel is a digital marketer and analytics guru. His specialties are search engine optimization, internet marketing, conversion optimization, and growth hacking. He is the Founder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar. Patel also wrote a marketing 101 course called Digital Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide, which walks you through the basics all the way up to advanced skills for digital marketers.

Patel’s approach is super conversational. He has a unique talent for taking complex topics and simplifying them so they are easy to digest, whether you are a novice or seasoned marketing pro.

5. Wistia Blog

Wistia blog

Wistia specializes in video and inbound marketing. If you are a marketer, you know videos are great teaching tools, perfect for new product launches, and can go viral. Therefore, you know videos are important to your marketing plan, but you may not know of new trends or the mechanics behind great videos. This is where the Wistia blog comes in.

Their blog educates businesses on the benefits, importance, and best ways to incorporate video into your marketing mix. Plus, you’ll learn tips and tricks from inside the industry.

6. Moz Blog

Moz blog

Moz was started in 2004 as an SEO consulting company who launched the first Pro app in 2007. Their co-founder, Rand Fishkin, also runs a great blog packed with SEO information.

Fishkin is well recognized as a market influencer. His blog is super interactive and generates lots of comments. Read through his articles and also spend time on the comments. You’ll learn from the topics, but also from the readers about basic as well as advanced SEO concepts such as E-E-A-T and YMYL Plus, if you struggle with getting blog feedback, read Moz’s to see how he elicits and gets regular feedback. You’ll get the best industry experts advice, research, how-to’s, and insights.

7. Hubspot

HubSpot blog

Hubspot is the brainchild of former MIT graduate students who met in 2004. In their business ventures, they noticed more and more customers tuning out. Plus, they noticed these customers were not responding to the more traditional marketing approaches: direct mail, cold calls, etc. Through all this research, the Hubspot team realized customers want to be helped by having their problems solved.

They started Hubspot as a way to help people and to bring a more human touch to the sales process. Their blog continues this same theme by giving you examples of how to market using a fresh approach that works. This blog is great no matter what your business. They cover inbound basics, sales, product information, and more.

8. Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner blog

Social Media Examiner is the world’s largest social media marketing resource. Its goal is to help businesses use social media to win over customers, drive traffic, generate awareness, and, most importantly, increase sales. Blog articles range from expert interviews, the latest industry research, and tips to improve your company’s social media presence.

9. Seth Godin Blog

Seth Godin blog

Seth Godin is the author of 18 best-selling books. He writes about marketing, leadership, and how to change everything. In 2013 Godin was inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame.

If your business has hit a standstill or you feel it’s time to shift gears, follow this blog.

10. Hubstaff Blog

Hubstaff blog

Ok, we’re a little biased with this one. But here at Hubstaff Blog HQ our passion is finding ways to inspire and inform small- and medium-sized business owners to track, plan and grow their businesses to the next level of success. Get it in your inbox by signing up here.

Everyone writing for Hubstaff lives and breaths our platforms every single day.

Hubstaff offers time tracking and agile project management solutions (Hubstaff Tasks) for teams of all sizes and industries. The Hubstaff Tasks software works as a web app, tasks can be arranged into visual boards, weekly sprints and much more. It’s free for teams of up to 5 people. Every article you’ll read on our blog is planned from start to finish on Hubstaff Tasks.

While we’re doing all that planning, we keep track of our time with Hubstaff. It lets team members track time spent on tasks, either as a web app, a browser extension, mobile app or a time tracker app for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Once time is tracked, you can create invoices, pay employees, see in-depth reporting, and much more. Over 10,000 remote teams use Hubstaff daily.

And it’s how we all get paid, so we’re pretty fond of it.


Looking for more tips on management and productivity?

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Small Business Trends

Small Business Trends, as the name suggests, is an online publication for small business owners and entrepreneurs. It’s also geared toward the people that work for these companies like contractors and freelancers.

Their blog provides breaking news and advice. Articles come from a professional editorial staff, as well as 400 experts who provide insights, successes, and failures.

12. MarketingProfs

MarketingProfs

MarketingProfs is the one-stop shop for all things marketing. This blog is great whether you are an individual marketer or a marketing team. Articles will give you marketing tools, training, strategies, articles, online seminars, discussion forums, and more.

13. Contently Blog

Contently blog

Contently helps others create great content by providing technology and vetting creative talent like journalists, photographers, designers, and more. Contently was recently named one of Inc Magazine’s 100 fastest-growing private companies and received an ASJA award for investigative reporting.

Follow their blog The Content Strategist, and you’ll learn all things content and social media related. Plus, they give you real world examples of the strategy behind actual marketing campaigns. You’ll benefit from this blog whether you are a B2B company,  involved in e-commerce, or even a freelancer. Specifically for freelancers, there is a special blog section dedicated to remote workers and how to grow business.

14. Shopify Blog

Shopify blog

Shopify has a huge collection of business-centered resources that can be accessed for free. You can read about success stories, business ideas, and growth tips. Shopify also has a free training course for building businesses that you can check out if you want to take things a step further.

Shopify covers a wide range of business topics such as social media marketing and strategies used by founders to grow their own businesses. Their blog is certainly worth a look if you’re looking for fresh business ideas, or are just searching for good reads.

15. Buffer Resources

Buffer resources

Buffer saves companies time on managing their social media interactions. You can schedule posts, track post performance, and manage all social media from one central system.

Follow their blog and you’ll learn more about the world of social media and blogging.

16. Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Center

Intuit QuickBooks is accounting software that allows users to track expenses, pay employees and more. They maintain an article database called the Small Business Center designed to help small businesses in their operational efforts.

Their three featured categories are Starting Up, Money and Hiring & HR, but they also provide articles on marketing, innovation, product and technology.

Their database of articles contains useful and relevant information about taxes, compliance, pricing strategy, business planning, recruiting, management and HR regulations, among others.

Visit this small business blog if you have questions or concerns about finance and funding, managing employees or making sure you don’t overlook any regulations.

17. Social Triggers Blog

Social Triggers blog

Social Triggers ties psychology to marketing in order to explore ways to gain traffic and sales. Writer Derek Halpern bridges the gap between science and business to help entrepreneurs and executives become master marketers, persuaders and salesmen.

Halpern blogs about proven strategies and tactics while making psychological research and business case studies, accessible and understandable.

Read the Social Triggers blog for proven tactics that you can apply to your business or life. This is a great site to visit often because of the easily digestible and diverse forms of content.

18. Richard Branson’s Blog

Richard Branson's blog

Richard Branson is the founder of Virgin Group, which holds more than 200 companies in more than 30 countries today. The Virgin Group includes a train company, luxury game preserve, mobile phone company, Virgin Atlantic and more.

Richard Branson’s blog is full of insights from a successful business owner who has had his share of exceptional fails and stellar comebacks. Follow this blog to read the musings and ideas of a modern thought leader.

19. Fast Company

Fast Company

Fast Company is an online magazine that covers topics around business, technology, and design. The website features a wide collection of articles about the latest news in the digital world and business-centered advice, and is definitely worth regular visits.

Whether you’re running a startup or an already-established business, Fast Company has hundreds of resources that will help you out. You can subscribe to their newsletter for free to stay updated on the latest trends.

What blogs do you follow?

There are some great blogs out there today, and new ones are popping up all the time. We’ve selected the ones that we think all business owners should follow to help grow your business and keep ahead of your industry.

You can also check out our selection of best podcasts for entrepreneurs.

Do you follow any of these blogs? If not, what are your go-to sites for business inspo? Let us know in the comments.

This post was originally published in August 2017. It was updated by the Hubstaff Blog Team in November 2019. 

Category: Business Growth