Social media marketing is, undoubtedly, an ever-changing medium. Whether it’s keeping abreast of new developments in social media, such as new social media features or new algorithms, or whether it’s educating yourself on new social media strategies and emerging statistics and data, digital marketers and business owners need to constantly keep up to date and educate themselves.
And the best way to do this? By reading the best blogs and news sources, religiously.
In this blog post, I’m going to share five social media blogs that you need to know about in 2019.
Tip: Get an RSS reader like Feedly to subscribe to multiple social media and digital marketing blogs so that you can easily check them whenever you have a spare moment – all you need is either your smartphone, tablet or laptop/desktop computer to read the latest articles.
Social Media Examiner
Social Media Examiner is one of the best known and popular social media marketing blogs in the world and for good reason: their content always provides value.
With articles from social media experts like Michael Stelzner and Lisa D. Jenkins – as well as a collection of other social media specialists who contribute regularly – beginners and experts alike can learn all about social media marketing strategies.
As a beginner, you can use Social Media Examiner to learn with step-by-step instructions how to leverage social media marketing and how to use various social networks to your advantage.
As an experienced marketer, you can use their blog to learn new strategies and improve on your knowledge.
And for both beginners and experienced users, you can check Social Media Examiner for information on the latest features and developments you need to know about, as well as for keeping up to date on the latest findings in social media marketing (relevant research and statistics) and the best social media marketing tools that you need to know about.
Frequency: They usually publish about an article a day, forsaking weekends.
Social Media Today
Another top social media marketing blog that should be bookmarked is Social Media Today; this immensely popular blog is an impressive library of social media marketing content, whether it’s news or tips.
The blog relies on a huge network of regular contributors who post content on any and all social media topics you can think of.
One of the biggest reasons why it’s such a great source of social media marketing content is that they’re constantly reporting on the latest news and developments in social media so that you can stay abreast of the latest features, algorithms and releases that you need to know about when planning your social media strategy.
Furthermore, you also get other useful content, such as tips from top social media experts, listicles with useful social media marketing tools that can help you implement your strategy more effectively and opinion articles from specialists and experienced marketers.
Frequency: They usually update with new content several times a day, every day.
Convince and Convert
Convince and Convert is a content marketing blog – and one the most popular ones of its kind – but it also hosts some of the best content on social media marketing. Written by founder Jay Baer and other top social media experts, their social media marketing blog offers new content regularly, with a focus on value: how to guides, useful tips, case studies, opinion pieces and useful tools.
While beginners can certainly learn a lot from this blog, it’s better-suited to those who have some experience with social media marketing already; there aren’t as many articles written specifically for beginners – their articles are usually about very specific topics that require some existing knowledge and experience with social media, such as how to create an influencer marketing agreement that protects you and how to leverage different psychology strategies as part of your social media campaigns and strategies.
Frequency: While on the main blog you get several articles a week, social media articles usually come at least weekly, although he frequency does oscillate.
Social Media Lab, by Agorapulse
The Social Media Lab is a social media marketing blog powered by social media management tool Agorapulse that’s all about case studies and experiments.
The premise is simple: every month, they invest $15k of their profits into creating various interesting experiments for all major social networks. In most cases, they look at popular and lesser-known social media strategies, as well as social media myths and rumours and test them for an extended period of time in order to find out whether they actually work or not.
You can browse through their experiments easily by selecting the social network you’re interested in (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter) or whether you’re interested in organic versus paid strategies.
There is quite a bit to learn from these experiments; not just finding out which strategies work and which don’t, but also understanding how to create such types of tests (if you want to try experimenting by yourself), as well as discovering new strategies that you might not know about.
To give you a few examples of the type of experiments that you can find on the platform, you can learn whether using emojis to your tweets actually helps improve your impressions and engagement, whether Facebook has a problem with 3rd party scheduling apps and whether it’s worth investing in Twitter Promote or not – among many others.
Plus, if you prefer listening to podcasts, you can also listen to their experiments and findings via iTunes, Google Play and other popular podcasting platforms.
Frequency: They usually post new content weekly, or a few times a month.
Socially Sorted
Socially Sorted is social media expert’s Donna Moritz’s creation, a social media marketing blog that has been named 3 years in a row one of top 10 social media blogs by Social Media Examiner.
Most of the articles on the blog are written by Donna Moritz herself, although there are occasional contributors who bring their own knowledge to the table. As for what type of content you can find on Socially Sorted, the focus is on visual platforms and content (such as Instagram and Pinterest), although any social media marketer/business can get valuable content even if they don’t use the 2 platforms.
Read it to learn about different tools that you can use as part of your social media content strategy, to learn how to create amazing social media content and to download useful resources such as social media holiday calendars, among others. Plus, while there might be a bigger focus on the visual aspect, there is plenty of content on other topics relevant to marketers who use other mediums (blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and so on).
Frequency: She usually publishes one article a week.
Conclusion
Digital marketing in general – and social media in particular – requires constant learning and self-development. It’s not just about keeping up to date with news such changes to the Facebook algorithm or new forms of social media content, but also about knowing what tools you should use, what strategies perform best and what digital marketing trends you need to know about.
Ideally, subscribe to several top social media marketing blogs and read them regularly – knowledge is one of the best tools you have at your disposal to help you grow and evolve.
