My 30 Blog Course in Entrepreneurship

By Nate Posted in Community
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30 Must Read Blogs For Entrepreneurs

30 Must Read Blogs For Entrepreneurs

Before LaunchRock I was a High School History Teacher for twelve years. Eighteen months later my work life is typical of startups. I do a lot of work in few areas, and a little of everything else. Most of what I know about running a startup I learned the old fashioned way: hard work, great mentorship and trial and error. But I also gave myself a crash course in Entrepreneurship by reading.  A lot.

Here are 30 blogs I read consistently.  They’re well written, informative and actionable. Read these blogs and you’ll have strategies you can use today. Each recommendation includes a description of the value proposition and a link to a good article to start with.  I’ve sorted the blogs into general categories.

  • Tech & Startup News
  • Experienced Entrepreneurs
  • Comprehensive Resources
  • Blogging & Copywriting
  • Marketing & Analytics
  • Social Media
  • Community & Customer Support
  • Design & Conversion
  • SEO

Now dig in!

Tech & Startup News

Successful Woman Gets Attacked For Standing Out Too Much, Again | TechCrunch-2TechCrunch 

TC is pretty hardcore about getting exclusives. As a result a lot of news breaks here. Those looking to know what everyone is –or will be– talking about in the world of technology, startups and venture capital should start here. Making it onto TC is a milestone for any tech venture.

Where to start: Check out their startup coverage.

Must Read Blogs For EntrepreneursPando Daily

Pando strives to be the site-of-record for Silicon Valley. It has a smaller, more intimate vibe than Tech Crunch. It also seems founder, Sarah Lacy, can pull just about any interview she wants. This is the true Valley Insiders’ blog.

Where to start: Lacy’s interview with Steve Blank

must read blogs for entreprenuersNY TIMES Bits Blog

The New York Times has extensive Technology coverage. Coverage of the Tech Industry is aggregated under the Bits Blog title.

Where to start: Facebook News Feed Draws More Criticism

 Experienced Entrepreneurs

Must Read Blogs For EntrepreneursSteve Blank 

Here’s a blog for anyone looking to learn from an entrepreneur who’s been there, done that and had major success.  Steve Blank, author of The Startup Owner’s Manual, is now focused on teaching the science and principals of better entrepreneurship. Everyone else listens to him, you should to.

Where to start: The Customer Development Manifesto

must read blogs for entrepreneursBen’s blog

Ben Horowitz believes CEOs are made, not born. The founding partner of Andreessen Horowitz focuses on teaching Startup founders how to manage their team and become a better CEO.  Bonus: Horowit’z jumpstarts each post with theme-related rap lyrics and accompanying music to pump you up.

Where to start: Making Yourself a CEO

must read blogs for entrepreneursDave McClure

Dave McClure is a founding partner of the 500 Startups accelerator. His blog was recently re-invented, so the backlog exists on his old blog. What you get from McClure is a passionate, unfiltered take on Startup Life. Aka “Geeks. Founders. Startups. The Internet Revolution.”

Where to start: Fear of Flying

must read blogs for entrepreneursAndrew Chen

Andrew Chen is a Silicon Valley blogger focused on mobile/web consumer products. He has a ton to teach you about user growth.  Before becoming an advisor and angel investor at 500 Startups, Chen was director of product marketing at Audience Science. Today that ad network reaches over 380 million uniques.

Where to start: 5 Crucial Stages In Designing Your Viral Loop

Comprehensive Resources (Startup Life & Entreprenuership A-Z)

Screen shot 2013-03-04 at 10.07.53 PMInc.

Inc. covers every aspect of starting and running a successful business. Check out the instructive and inspirational How I Did It video series. In it entrepreneurs share lessons they’ve learned from successes and failures. Inc also covers the nitty gritty of business like how to incorporate. There’s engaging new content daily and a vast and valuable backlog that’s easy to navigate.

Where to start: 7 Habits Of Extraordinary Teams

Entrepreneur

Screen shot 2013-03-05 at 10.24.19 AM Entrepreneur covers much of the same ground as Inc. Where they set themselves apart is with a focus on small online businesses outside the Tech startup realm.

Where to Start: How To Value Your Startup

Venture Hacks

must read blogs for entreprenuers The Angel List blog is a great read for any entrepreneur thinking about taking venture money. Venture Hacks will teach you how to play the venture capital game of by “demystifying the term sheet.”

Where to start: Just Say No: VC terms that can really hurt

Blogging & CopyWriting

must read blogs for entreprenuersCopyBlogger

This is the best introduction to the world of content marketing. Copyblogger teaches you how to create effective online content. Their tips can be applied anywhere you are writing to communicate with customers or leads. Improve your blogging, calls to action, marketing copy, and emails with advice that always has practical applications.

Where to start: Copywriting 101

must read blogs for entrepreneurs ProBlogger

This blog is focused mostly on full-time bloggers. So, you’ll find topics like how to monetize a blog. There’s plenty of lessongs that can be applied by someone running an inbound marketing blog for their startup.

Where to start: Neil Patel’s Guide to Writing Popular Blog Posts

must read blogs for entreprenuersReviewz N Tips

Daniel Sharkov is the 19 year-old blogger behind Reviewz N Tips.  He has a great sense of what someone starting out in Social Media and Blogging wants and needs to know, and how to teach it.  He’s guest posted on the Buffer Blog, a clue to how well he’s respected and how widely read.

Where to Start: Tips For Blog Posts That Grab Attention

Marketing & Analytics 

QuickSprout

must read blogs for entreprenuers Neil Patel, the CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics founder, is kind of a big deal. That’s what the QuickSprout tagline says. When you’ve been ”recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama,” you really can’t quibble with the claim.  Check out the case studies if you need more proof of how good he is at his job.

Where to start: How I Grew TechCrunch’s Traffic by 30% in 60 days.

KISSmetrics

must read blogs for entrepreneurs If you follow @LaunchRock on twitter you’ve probably noticed that we find the KISSmetrics blog very sharable.  We’re not the only ones. Their posts get hundreds, even thousands, of shares. Neil Patel and Hiten Shah masterfully mix best practices, how-tos, infographics, case studies, interviews, and guest posts to make this blog indispensable.

Where to start: A Beginners Guide to Google Analytics 5

must read blogs for entrepreneursDuct Tape Marketing

Easy to digest tips about small business marketing. Resources include the blog, free Ebooks and a small business resource directory.

Where to start: The 5 Small Business Marketing Pillars

Social Media ( Enjoying this post? Please share it.)

must read blogs for entrepreneursHUBSPOT

Hubspot is an internet marketing software giant. They give away huge amounts of free content. Both on their blog and as free E-books. It’s all part of their own inbound marketing campaign. So they sell you but they share a lot of valuable research and tips. The focus is on lead generation and social media marketing.

Where to Start: 14 Unique Types of Content Every Marketer Should Try

must read blogs for entrepreneursSocial Media Examiner

One thing I’ve learned about Social Media, is that it’s always changing. It helps to have someone else keeping you up-to-date. That’s where SME comes in. “Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle,” does the research you don’t have time to do. You can access their findings via the blog and their annual Social Media Marketing Industry Reports.

Where to start: How to Use Hashtags In Your Social Media Marketing

Hootsource

must read blogs for entrepreneurs

In their blog, Hootsuite, mixes editorial coverage of social media culture and weekly reporting on trending twitter topics, with excerpts from their Free White Papers and other content marketing. The marketing feels a little more forward than on most of the other blogs in this list, but there’s a lot of value to be found, even if it comes with a pitch.

Where to start: Instagram best practices for brands

Community & Customer Support

must read blogs for entrepreneursCommunity Centered

UserVoice has a great blog about supporting customers, building community, and establishing great workplace culture. All with the goal of keeping your customers by keeping them happy.

Where to start: Your Top Performing Ad? Your Loyal Customers

must read blogs for entrepreneursB2C | BUSINESS 2 COMMUNITY

B2C reports on news and trends in a wide range of topics from Technology and Business to Social Media and Lifestyle, mixing in advice and best practices for running a business.

Where to start: The 5 Don’ts of Customer Service

HelpScout 

must read blogs for entrepreneurs

Full of great articles on Customer Support, the HelpScout blog also has damn sexy design. Something we’re partial to here at LaunchRock.

Where to start: 15 customer service skills every employee needs.

Buffer Blog

must read blogs for entrepreneurs

The buffer blog sets itself to covering: productivity, life hacks, writing, user experience, customer happiness and business. This blog is followed closely and shared widely by loyal readers who admire the company and it’s product. It’s well researched, insightful and takes an intersting angle on business and life.

Where to start: 5 Customer Experience Metrics Every Successful Company Tracks

Design & Conversion

must read blogs for entrepreneursConversion XL 

Reviews, tips, and expert guest posts on how to make websites that sell. Extremely practical and useful advice about the holy grail of internet business and marketing: designing websites that get visitors to convert. The clean design makes it easy to get at the information.

Where to start: 6 smart ways to capture emails

must read blogs for entrepreneursThe Daily Egg

The CrazyEgg Blog covers conversion optimization, analytics and copywriting tips. It’s easy to find exactly the right content with their Category and their All-time Hits sidebar navigation.

Where to start: The Best Website In The World Do These 6 Things…

must read blogs for entrepreneursCoDrops

The Codrops blog is a great introduction to current web design trends. The look of the web is always evolving. and everyone running an online business should be paying attention to it. Visit this blog for to get ideas, inspiration and learn about design experiments.

Where to start: A Creative Year: Distinctive Web Designs In 2012

must read blogs for entreprenuersOnextrapixel

If you’re running a startup you’re probably doing a little bit of everything. If your job isn’t the actual design and development of your product or website, you’re probably managing it or giving feedback to your team. Follow  trends in web design & dev, get inspiration or dive into the technical tutorials with this site.

Where to start: Designing Website To Increase Traffic and Conversion

must read blogs for entrepreneurs52 Weeks of UX

At the time of this posting, this blog was on week 51 of 52.  So there is an incredible amount of content here on what User Experience (UX) is, why UX matters, and how to design a great User Experience.

Where to Start: Week 1: The First Rule of UX

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

must read blogs for entrepreneursSEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL

A blog with contributions from many SEO professionals. SEJ Covers SEO relevant news, Social and SEO with frequent tool tips and reviews. There’s also a section on Link building. Links are the holy grail of SEO. SEJ focuses on building quality links aka “White Hat” SEO as opposed to spam linking, aka “Black Hat.”

Where to start: How Search Works

must read blogs for entrepreneursSEOBOOK

The free SEO tool Rank Checker from SEOBook is great. They also have an informative blog on SEO techniques and tool tips.  The posts in this blog are kind of wonky and technical. If you’re a serious SEO geek you’ll love it. If so you probably already know about it. There’s plenty to get out of it for the rest of us too.

Where to start: Keyword Research Strategies

There you have it, 30 blogs to make yourself a better entreprenuer and help your startup succeed.

Have blogs you think should have made this list? Share them in the comments.

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About Nate

Nate Munger is the Director of Customer Satisfaction at LaunchRock where he heads Customer Support, Community, and Social Media. Follow him @NateLRock.
  • http://www.ivanmelvin.com/ Ivan Lim

    Nice one Nate!

    Big fan of Andrew Chen’s stuff… worth mentioning the SEOMoz blog as well. Lots of great SEO content and insights into inbound traffic. They also have a nice user generated blog called YOUMoz, lots of great learnings ;)

    • NateMunger

      Yep, that was probably #31 :)

  • http://twitter.com/LotAldarwish Charlotte Aldarwish

    This is a fabulous list. I didn’t know about a number of them, like 52 weeks of UX and Duct tape marketing and am really happy you pointed them out as they are wonderful resources.

    If you could only pick one as the most important must read blog, which would it be?

    • NateMunger

      KISSmetrics. I learn something from every post.

  • http://twitter.com/YSmallBusiness Yahoo Small Business

    Interesting list but to be honest I had hoped for less obvious choices – in fact I wouldn’t call some of these blogs at all. I could (and will) pitch my site http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor and our own blog http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/blogs/profit-minded/

    I’ll link to this today in a blog post though…. ;-)

    • NateMunger

      Great! To me the distinction of what a blog is or is not, is 1. a bit blurry and 2. not all that important – it’s the learning that matters to me and this post.

      I’ll be sure to check out your site. Thank you for sharing it and thank you for sharing this post!

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  • http://winstonq.com/ D W Fuego

    Good article. I found it very helpful. Thank you.

    • NateMunger

      You’re welcome, thank you for the compliment :)

  • http://www.richardbankertwebdesign.com Richard Bankert

    That’s a great list, there’s a couple on there that are new to me that I look forward to reading.

    • NateMunger

      Richard,

      Glad I was able to introduce you to a few new ones :)

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  • http://fanchimp.com/ Nicoletta

    Thank you Nate for this list, I already follow some of those blogs and they’re great.

    • NateMunger

      You’re welcome Nicoletta, I realized a lot of people in the entrepreneur and startup communities would know many of these blogs already. But, 18 months ago, I had not heard of any of them, so this list is really intended to be an introduction for someone in the same position as I was then. Glad you think I made some good choices :)

  • http://www.businessmoneytoday.com/ Phanio

    That is quite the list. But, more then just reading other blogs – I really like what YOU stated in the beginnig of this post – “I do a lot of work in few areas, and a little of everything else. Most of what I know about running a startup I learned the old fashioned way: hard work, great mentorship and trial and error.” That, in my opinion, is the key to any business success. First, hard work. You cannot find success by being lazy. Second, trail and error. Clearly, if something is not working, tweek it and try again until it does work and then continue to improve it. That is entreprenuership in a nutshell. Great opening to this post – if you read nothing else – read that bit!

    • NateMunger

      Phanio, thank you so much. I agree, and think the little bit of personal story I included to give context to this list is the reason it’s been more compelling to people than just a useful list.

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  • Juliette ALBIAC

    Thank you for the list!

    • NateMunger

      You’re very welcome, thank you for checking it out!

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  • http://twitter.com/JeremyABarker Jeremy A Barker

    http://www.JeremyABarker.com Great Tips for Entrepreneurs!

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  • thea

    I can recommend http://billysbilling.com/blog/Startup-Valuation-What-Is-Your-Business-Worth :)
    Great for entrepreneurs and small businesses owers :)

  • Jordan Behan

    Thank you for including our HootSuite blog on this list. As you pointed out, we’re not shy about including calls to action, because they work!

    • NateMunger

      You’re right Jordan. Everyone know that inbound content marketing is about giving great information, show your expertise and sell more. Thanks for sharing so much great content :)

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