Top Content Marketing Blogs to Start 2011

This morning I received a pleasant surprise email from the folks at Junta42 with congratulations to Brian Solis, Brian Clark, David Meerman Scott, Jay Baer and TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog on making the top of the first Junta42 Top Content Marketing Blogs list in 2011. It is more than a little humbling to be included amongst such talented and respected industry veterans.

Joe Pulizzi runs Junta42 and is the first person (that I know of) to really popularize the notion of “content marketing”. In that regard Joe and his team really walk the talk: He also runs the Content Marketing Institute, Chief Content Officer magazine and the upcoming Content Marketing World conference. The blogs and writers that make the Junta42 list also “walk the talk” with content marketing and serve as a great example for those that want to better understand how content fits within the marketing mix.

The Junta42 list has been published since 2007 and the top 42 scores (thanks to Janet Robbins) are calculated from a pool of over 400 blogs using a combination of:

1) Relevance to Content Marketing
2) How much the blog adds to the Content Marketing conversation
3) Google Page Rank
4) blog consistency
5) previous ranking

Thanks to a great blogging team, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has made the number one spot on this list 3 times.  This is the 10th edition of the Junta42 list and 2011 marks the 10 year anniversary for my agency, TopRank Online Marketing.

If you look at our tag cloud (the tab in the right column), it’s easy to see why we are included in this list, since we’ve been focused on content creation, optimization and promotion for quite a while. In fact, before Joe started promoting the idea of “content marketing” I used to say we focused on “editorial marketing” when explaining TopRank since our Online Marketing consulting practice emphasizes earned and owned media vs. advertising.

Here’s the full list of 41 Content Marketing Blogs. Congratulations to all and more so, thank you for your contributions.

1 TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog
2 PR 2.0 (Brian Solis)
3 Web Ink Now
4 Convince and Convert
5 Copyblogger
6 Social Media Examiner
7 Grow
8 Influential Marketing Blog
9 Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
10 Conversation Agent
11 Marketing Experiments
12 Jeff Korhan
13 Sparksheet
14 ReelSEO
15 Post Advertising
16 Conversation Marketing
17 Marketing Interactions
18 Mack Collier
19 FASTforward Blog
20 Ducttape Marketing
21 Logic+Emotion
22 B2B [email protected] Blog
23 The Search Agents
24 eMedia Vitals
25 Social Media Explorer
26 No man is an iland
27 B2B Bloggers
28 Freelance Copywriters Blog 
29 Simple Marketing Blog
30 Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis
31 Digital Marketing Blog
32 Windmill Networking
33 big star content
34 Drew’s Marketing Minute
35 Campaign Monitor
36 Vertical Measures
37 Web Analytics World
38 White Paper Pundit
39 Vertical Leap
40 IdeaLaunch
41 Site Booster
 

This excellent collection of blogs covers a  range of topics from general Internet Marketing to Social Media to Search and of course – specifically Content Marketing.  Of course I’d like to continue addressing the curiosities about content and online marketing for our readers and would love your continued feedback.  What content marketing topics would you like to see us cover more here on Online Marketing Blog?

If you’re hungry for more practical and in-person tips on the topic, I’ll be giving two presentations on the intersection of Content Marketing and SEO in San Diego and London:

Feb 10, 2011
SES Accelerator – San Diego
“Content Marketing Strategy”

Feb 22, 2011
SES London
“Content Marketing Optimisation”

I hope you can make one of them because I’ve added more case studies and tips. I will also be giving away a Content Marketing ebook with which can really give you a jumpstart on incorporating better SEO with your Content Planning. If you’re a SEO practitioner, it will give you practical insights into developing a content plan within traditional SEO strategies. I hope to see you there and congrats again to the blogs on the Junta42 list.