46 Must-Read Articles for Entrepreneurs and Marketers
- Updated on: 2017-10-06
- Read original article here
Do you remember the time when you wanted to learn something and you had to visit school or library?
And needless to say, I’m grateful for that.
Whatever you want to learn, you just have to open an Internet browser, go to Google and type in what you are looking for.
You can learn almost everything you want.
I’ve started to notice a big change in the content people write on their blogs and magazines.
There are a bunch of articles that should be ebooks or even books.
These guides are amazing ways to get in-depth information about nearly any topic you can think of.
But the more content, the more you can get overwhelmed.
It is not simply possible to consume all the content you find.
Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of these great and free ultimate guides for entrepreneurs and marketers in one place for you.
The point isn’t to keep up with all of them, just pick the one you need right now.
Bookmark the page and come back later for more whenever you need to learn something specific.
PS.If you know a tutorial or ultimate guide that should be listed as well, let me know in the comment section and I’ll include it.
Neil Patel, founder of QuickSprout, KissMetrics, CrazyEgg, and Neilpatel.com is a legend.
He has written a bunch of ultimate guides on QuickSprout and almost every article on NeilPatel.com is an ultimate guide – you should check out for yourself.
This complete guide to building your blog audience will teach you everything about growing an online community, loyal readership, types of blog posts to market and much more..
Especially the chapter about repurposing content for additional traffic is what I enjoy the most.
Dave Gerhardt from Drift.com shows you how to get started with your blog from scratch. With very little experience, those guys grew their blog traffic from 198 visitors to 27,369 visitors in a few short months.
They will tell you what to do, what not to do, how much content you should be producing on a consistent basis, what is the balance between quality and quantity of the content.
You will learn how to use niche communities to promote your brand new content to people who want to read it with a case study from Inbound.org.
Not sure how to get your content in front of influencers? This case study will show you how to write simple cold-emails to influencers and get results.
Launching your blog the same way as an online course or product is brilliant idea.
Whether you are launching a blog or just relaunching the old one, you should have a marketing strategy in place.
Benji Hyam from GrowAndConvert teaches you what formula to follow to get results right of the bat.
After a few years of blogging, Buffer’s blog is getting around 1.5 million visits every single month. Outstanding number.
In this post, they teach you 3-step system they have used to get to this point.
You will learn how to decide what type of content your audience crave for, how to come up with a lot of unique blog post ideas and how to execute on them.
They will show you five different strategies how to get exposure for your content as well.
Another excellent case study by Tylar Hakes. Scale organic traffic from zero to 100,000 Visitors per month is brutal.
Tyler shares the exact framework he used for this amazing achievement.
He focuses on three different content marketing strategies, evergreen content, viral content and link-building content.
He also explains what he would do differently today, there are a lot of great lessons, check it out.
Guys from GrowAndConvert surveyed their audience and found out that 75.6% of B2B companies get less than 300 visitors on their new articles.
After they have seen the results of the survey, they decided to do a challenge and show everyone that it’s not a rocket science to get much more traffic to every piece of content they publish.
I guess you have read about tens, maybe hundreds of different strategies how to promote your website and get traffic.
They show you strategies that absolutely everyone can implement immediately.
Defitenily worth your time, go and check for yourself.
Sujan Patel helped to grow more than 10 blogs to 100,000 unique visitors per month.
Obviously, there’s a lot we can learn from Sujan. This long-form article shows you three different stages of growth.
How to get your first 10k visitors, how to grow from 10k to 50k and from 50k to 100,000 visitors per month.
He covers everything from defining your ideal audience, how to validate your topic, what content to write, where to promote the content, how to grow your email database and much more..
Starting from zero is hard. It’s like a pain in the ass. You’ve heard about hundreds of marketing strategies, Facebook marketing, Google ads, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogger outreach, SEO, etc.. but you can’t use all of them.
You have to prioritize… But how do you decide where to put your effort first?
Sagi Shrieber teaches you the very basics you must follow in order to build a community around your topic right of the bat.
Especially the way he explains how to define your audience is top-notch, and it’s definitely worth your time.
After that, he will show you how to easily and affordably start a weekly newsletter and get your first subscribers.
In this guide, Sarah from Sumo.me covers the exact steps to take to get 10,000 visitors on a brand new website without any connections or social media following.
She will show you how to set up your web for success right off the bat.
How to set a realistic traffic goal, marketing plan, how to get your first visitors, how to host a viral giveaway, etc..
Only stuff that works and it’s easy to implement even for absolute beginners.
This is the ultimate guide to Content marketing strategy by Tyler Hykes, once again.
His description of the guide: This guide is meant to be a complete resource on how to create an effective content marketing strategy.
Because of its ubiquitous nature, we can’t cover every single angle associated with content marketing. But we can help you understand the fundamental frameworks of what goes into creating a strategy that works.
In addition, we’ll provide links to dozens of relevant and useful resources that go in-depth on each topic.
Before you start writing blog posts, take the time to put together a content marketing strategy that makes sense, scales with your business, and will help you achieve your ultimate business goals.
If you have a blog, you know it. You should be publishing at least once a week. That’s 52 articles per year.
But do you? Most of the people don’t. It’s not because they can’t write a great piece of content, but because they have no plan in place.
Sarah with guys from Sumo.com analyzed most trafficked content and put together ten most effective type of blog post that gets results, always.
Read it, study it, come up with a plan and start executing on it. I’ve already used three of them and all works more than great!
One of the most common questions I’ve got is what is Affiliate marketing and how to make it work for my business.
Guess what, here’s the answer. Leanne Regalla published on SmartBlogger.com The Ultimate guide to affiliate marketing.
Inside you will find what is Affiliate marketing, why it’s great strategy whether you are just starting out or you are an experienced marketer.
How to sell affiliate products the right way, without selling your soul, which affiliate products to promote, where to find them, and much more.
The free guide includes more info than a bunch of paid courses on Affiliate marketing, give it a shot.
In this case study Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko and SEO that works, teaches you how to relaunch your old, outdated and under-performing content to bring you loads of shares, traffic, and subscribers.
He shows you how to identify the right under-performing blog post to edit, how to improve that piece of content and how to republish.
When Brian used this technique, the results were mind-blowing, if you have a lot of articles that are not getting any traction anymore, try this strategy.
Ranking on Google can means thousands of visitors to your site every month.
But it’s not always easy even for long tail keywords whereas ranking tough keywords can sound almost impossible.
In this ultimate guide, he will show you how to find the topic and keyword, how to create content that gets links, how to do on-site SEO, how to write a better headline, etc…
Especially the part where Dmitry shows how to find targets for content promotion is excellent and easy to implement.
The difference between domain authority 30 and 35 can be a difference between getting thousands of visitors to your website.
Domain authority is a big part of SEO and you should focus on this metric.
Neil Patel put together top-notch guide on how to boost your domain authority in weeks, not months.
I will keep this description short.
This is the most comprehensive Link building tutorial you will ever need.
It covers everything from basic to advanced strategies you can use regardless what your level of expertise is.
If you have been following me for a while, you know I am a big fan of Social Media and getting decent results from Twitter and especially Instagram.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, they all have one thing in common.
They changed their algorithms way often than we, marketers, wish.
The only way to stay on the top and know what works every time is to try new strategies as often as possible.
Guys from Buffer have tried seven experiments that grew their traffic by 241% in a few short months. Let’s replicate what they have done.
This is the ultimate guide to Pinterest Marketing. That means even if you have no idea what Pinterest is, Ana Gotter is going to walk you through the basic steps you need to follow to get started on Pinterest.
Just to name a few things that she will show you:
No other Social media network changes their algorithms as often as Facebook.
After all, they are the most popular one with most users, so I get it.
But if you want to stay ahead of your competition and get consistent results, it’s crucial to adapt your marketing strategy.
It’s very simple, the more people engaged with your Facebook posts, the better the reach of your next posts.
But how do we get better page engagement? Social Media Examiner shows us 26 tips you can start using right now.
Twitter is my #2 best source of targeted traffic for my blog. I’ve been using Twitter for a while, you get x times better results even if you have only a few hundreds of followers.
Tami Brehse has written a case study how she’d grown her blog traffic by almost 50% just using Twitter, within a few short weeks.
Twitter is completely different than any other Social media and there are totally different rules and strategies you should apply.
Tami’s experiment gives you a framework to use to grow your online audience exponentially.
This guide, written by Jimmy Daly, will show you:
And much more…
Facebook remains the most popular Social Network ever, with 1,5 billion monthly readers.
When it comes to getting traffic for your website, blog, e-commerce, or sales page – Facebook is one of the best sources you can use.
Sarah Peterson has written a detailed guide on getting traffic from Facebook.
Quora is a Q&A community. And, it allows the community to ask and answer questions. When you have something to ask, raise a question and send A2A to the suggested people to get an answer. … Answer the questions when you can.
The potential of Quora is excellent, if you provide a lot of value, help other people with their questions, be helpful as possible, you can drive a bunch of very targeted people to your website every day.
Sean Bestor published a very detailed and actionable step by step guide to Quora marketing teaches you how to turn your knowledge to thousands of leads from Quora in a few short months.
And if it is not enough, trythis article published on SmartBlogger.com from Imran Esmail, his results from Quora are outstanding…
Pinterest may be the most overlooked Social media site ever.
One thing I notice about all other Social Media network, Pinterest focuses more on broadcasting than building a relationship with your followers.
It is much easier to set it up and forget about it. I’ve read a lot of case studies and finally found the time to start working on my Pinterest marketing strategy.
Kevan Lee from Buffer shares not only all strategies they tried on Pinterest, but he explains what works and what doesn’t. Easy to follow instructions.
If you are looking for Pinterest Specialist, google Melyssa Griffin and Sarah Morgan.
LinkedIn for entrepreneurs and business owners is like Facebook or Instagram for Kim Kardashians.
We all should be there, have an optimized profile, receiving tons of job opportunities and business opportunities.
But do we? Most of us don’t.
Josh Fechter shares the exact strategies that helped him get over 25 million views on LinkedIn and 26,000 followers in four months.
When I heard about Cody Lister for the first time, I was so impressed by the knowledge he was sharing.
Almost every piece of content he produces on Marketdot.com is long-form, step by step, and highly actionable.
In this article, he’s guiding us through the process how to get loads of shares and referral traffic for every piece of content you produce.
I’ve used a few of those strategies to promote my guide on Instagram marketing and already got more than 1,200 social shares.
I have read a lot of stuff from people who thought that they have a great idea for an online course.
They have spent months, even years preparing content for that online course and when the time comes, they launched.
Unfortunately, the results most of the time were terrible. Few sales or zero sales.. People get discouraged and quit.
That’s the reason why a lot of experts says you have to validate your idea before you start creating content for your course.
Bryan Harris has done an amazing job. he validates his idea and earned more than $10,000 preselling his product ‘The Vault’ before he built it.
He has written step by step case study (It’s the most comprehensive post I’ve ever seen) showing you every step of the way what he did and how you can replicate his success.
If you read only one article from this post, this is the one you must!
Whether you want to sell online courses, services, coaching or physical products – you need a website.
To make things simple for you, I have put together a step by step guide on how to set up a website in 20 minutes without any technical knowledge or paying for it.
If you are like me, you love case studies. Real numbers and metrics from real people showing you exactly how they achieve the desired result.
This epic list includes case studies on content marketing, inbound marketing, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube marketing… Email marketing, SEO, SEM and much more, literally more than 130 step by step case studies.
Thank you, Dave, for putting together such an awesome list.
Digital marketing is anything you do online to grab attention and drive people to your website.
This hands-on guide will show you the 5 strategies that work.
Whether your business is currently making $0/y or $1mm/y, this guide will help you to set up the right strategy.
This extreme post includes almost 400 different tools for entrepreneurs and business owners.
You will find the best tools on:
We’ve already covered how to come up with a blog post idea, we covered all the strategies you can use to promote your content and get exposure, but what is the right formula to follow for writing blog posts that get read by potential visitors?
Liz Longacre created a comprehensive guide on this topic and published it on SmartBlogger.com
She shows you how to write a headline that gets attention every time.
How to structure your introduction to get your readers to go through the entire article.
She will tell you tips and tricks on how to deliver your advice that people can’t ignore it and much more…
Webinars can be a great tool to connect with your audience and sell your products.
Mariah Coz, founder of Femtrepreneur.com published step by step guide on how to host your first webinar.
She goes deep into the process of creating high value and high converting webinar.
She covers how to prepare your webinar, promotes the webinar, how to pitch on your webinar and what to do when your webinar is over.
When you want to learn how to deliver amazing webinars, Maria is your go-to girl.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Whether you’re getting traffic from Social media, SEO, or Google ads – you need to know what works and what don’t.
Google analytics should be part of every website. But setting it up correctly can be tricky.
There are a bunch of options you can use that you never think of, and this comprehensive guide will show you how to do it step by step.
The right words can be the difference between selling hundreds of products and between selling just a few of them(or none of them).
Whether you are writing a marketing copy for your sales page, social media updates, PPC, or email newsletter, if it does not resonate with your audience, they will not click on the link, update or ad and they will obviously not buy your product.
That’s why it is extremely important to focus on conversion copywriting.
Everytime I press ‘publish’ on my blog, I immediately start working on content promotion.
I have a checklist including more than 15 steps that take me days to implement… But not every strategy is successful.
Jacob McMillen from conversionsciences.com was doing the same thing.
But one day, he decided to focus on the outcome that each implemented strategy was resulted in.
And put together detailed case study about this experiment.
The results speak for themselves. Most of the strategies didn’t work, but he found a few gems through this experiment, see for yourself!
Getting the first 100 email subscribers is the hardest part. Overcome objections and start taking action.
To make the process as simple as possible, I have written about two simple strategies, suited for beginners, to get you first (or next) hundred email subscribers.
Everyone can do it, no extra knowledge is needed. Just try it and trust the system.
Ash Read put together step by step guide on How to grow your email list by 1,000 people in 30 days.
He shows you detailed plan what to do every day to achieve this goal.
Just to name a few strategies he covers:
Whether you are selling the online course, coaching on e-commerce product – you should have in place some kind of email sequence.
There are many types of email sequences and Alex covers almost all of them in detail.
To convert your website visitors into email subscribers, you need a lead magnet.
If you ever struggled with finding the right idea for your lead magnet, this ultimate list post from copymonk will help.
They covered almost all possible options for lead magnets.
And trust me, there are much more choices than just, ebooks, checklists or cheatsheets.
Getting email subscribers is one thing, but to get click, share and buy from your subscribers is completely a different thing
This sales email manual by Sean Bestor will teach you how to write emails that convert.
He covers the 6 Types of Sales Emails Everyone Writes in detail.
Robbie Richards covers five list building strategies that help you get more visitors, email subscribers, and revenue.
All strategies are explained step by step.
Guys from sumo.com analyzed more than 100,000 optins and put together a case study that contains the definite guide on content upgrades.
Do you think if you should offer a cheatsheet, spreadsheet, email course, video course or whatever as a content upgrade?
Go throughout the post and find out what are the most converting tips of content upgrades and how to replicate them for yourself.
Alex Turnbull shares the exact strategy Goovehq.com used to get more than one thousand email subscribers from a single blog post.
But the most interesting part is, that he’s showing us detailed plan how they built relationships with famous influencers before they press publish.
Most of them commented on the article and shared it as well, brilliant, very actionable article.
Have you heard about Josh Earl? No? He hosted mostly the moc successful giveaway I’ve ever seen.
Nearly 200,000 email subscribers in just 11 days.
He has written step by step case study on how he made it happen on Pat Flynn’s blog, Smart Passive Income.
You will find there a lot of great ideas how to make your next giveaway viral and successful.
Building relationships and connecting with influencers is crucial in today’s world where is over 2 million blog posts are published daily.
Whether you want to promote blog, video or an email course, influencers can help you in a way you can’t imagine.
I remember when Neil Patel shared my article about free things for entrepreneurs and startups. More than 40 retweets in a few hours and hundreds of visitors to my blog from just one tweet on Twitter.
Anyway, there is a lot of mistakes people make when connecting with influencers and this ultimate guide from Zak Mustapha will cover the ultimate plan for you to follow.
