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The top 10 blogs for small to mid-sized businesses

Ross Dawson, November 2, 2009 12:46 PM US PT

Blog search engine Technorati recently revised its blog ranking algorithms and created categories for the rankings.

The list of the top 10 blogs for small business provides an excellent resource for attendees of our SME Technology Summit in Sydney on 1 December, where there will be deep insights into all of the topics covered by these blogs.

Many of these blogs are for businesses of all sizes, but all of them provide valuable insights for small to mid-sized businesses. Check them out!

1. Online Marketing Blog
http://www.toprankblog.com
sbtech1
Covers digital marketing topics, focusing on social media, online PR and search engine marketing. A broad team of writers brings diverse perspectives to bear.

2. Affiliate X Files
http://www.affiliatexfiles.com
sbtech2
Specializes in affiliate marketing issues, with a wide range of in-depth articles.

3. Social Media Today
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC
sbtech3
Brings together selected blog posts from 60 leading thinkers on social media and Web 2.0.

4. Brian Solis - PR 2.0
http://www.briansolis.com
sbtech4
The first single person blog (with occasional guest posts) is by Brian Solis, leading thinker on the future of marketing and PR. Brian spoke at The Insight Exchange's Future of Influence Summit.

5. Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog
sbtech5
Jeremiah provides extensive research and insights on his blog, to complement his work over the years as a social media practitioner, analyst at Forrester Research, and now partner at Altimeter Group.

6. Altitude Branding
http://altitudebranding.com
sbtech6
Author Amber Naslund is Director of Community for leading social media monitoring platform Radian6, blogging here about elevating brands through social media.

7. BrandSavant
http://brandsavant.com
sbtech7
Tom Webster writes about how to gain insights into brands from the vast amount of data generated by social media.

8. Convince and Convert Blog
http://www.convinceandconvert.com
sbtech8
Jay Baer writes about social media, including tools, tips, interviews and analysis of the emerging landscape.

9. Duct Tape Marketing
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog
sbtech9
Duct Tape Marketing focuses explicitly on small business marketing, not just technology but across all the activities that will build customers and business.

10. VA4Growth
http://va4growth.com/blog
sbtech10
A resource site for social media marketing, run by a company specializing in providing Virtual Assistants.

For the most current insights and trends in the living networks, follow @rossdawson on Twitter!

5 Comments

Stuart French said:

Thanks Ross,

This is a nice list.

It is focused mainly on the external comms/marketing/PR side of social media.

It would be good to see what blogs you recommend for small business looking to use these technologies to transform or overcome internal business, communications and efficiency issues.

As you know many of the big sites out there are for big companies, yet many SMEs today are multi-national, have distributed customers and vendors and suffer similar problems to the large corporates without the multi-million dollar budgets to solve them. Cheap technologies like wikis, Yammer, Skype and delicious to name a few can help bridge gaps between offices. Do you know of blogs researching and reporting on these cases?

Thanks again.

November 4, 2009 3:09 PM

mutuelle said:

Thank you for sharing the list,the topic is great,and I got inspired of the websites, especially while they are ranked well.

November 6, 2009 8:26 AM

2Go Media said:

This is an awesome blog for SEO marketers specially the one on top. I constantly read its contents whenever I have trouble on dealing with google page rankings, In my view all are A+ and very impressive in detailed research an implementation of the contents

November 8, 2009 10:06 PM

Ross Dawson said:

Thanks for your comments.

Note that this ranking is from Technorati using their new (and undisclosed) blog rating algorithm.

A couple of good resources on the collaboration space:
Robin Good's Kolabora:
http://www.kolabora.com/

David Coleman's Collaborate:
http://www.collaborate.com/

I'll do a post on some more when I get a chance.

November 9, 2009 12:09 AM

Frank Fitton said:

Nice list full of some really great sites.

However, I feel one area that is being ignored in the list is the area of people looking to expand their businesses through mergers and acquisitions.

Buying another business is the best way for current business owners to expand. Not only are you growing your own business, but you’re doing it by eliminating some of the competition for dollars. Why totally eliminate when you can just fold them right in?

Anyone interested in the buying of a business should check out http://www.businessbuyeradvocate.com/ . It is a great blog full of must have knowledge for anyone thinking about taking the plunge. It’s frequented by quite a few experts in various aspects of the field that can help you with any questions you might have or perspective you might need.

Buying a business very well could be the most important decision you ever make in your life. You have to make sure you buy the right business the right way.

November 13, 2009 10:49 AM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.