If you run a small business, you MUST read the following:
The Cluetrain Manifesto
A simple yet genius take on what's wrong with traditional marketing.
"Getting Real" by 37 Signals
Originally presented as a "smaller, faster, better way to
build software, the lessons learned from this work is invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.
Essays by Paul Graham
Founder of Y Combinator and a renaissance man. Our favorites:
"How Not to Die" "Startups
in 13 Sentences" "Be Relentlessly Resourceful"
Startup School 2008
Video of Startup School '08. Speakers include: Mike Arrington, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos and Paul Graham.
Tools
Bizshark
Gives you information on businesses and websites, including traffic and analytics information.
archive.org
See any website's homepage as it is seen throughout history. A digital library of websites.
Google Webmaster Account
Important site and pretty intuitive, even for beginners. You should be using it.
Google Analytics (GA)
Google Analytics: easy to install, free and gives you robust analytics on traffic, sources, etc.
Blogs we read:
Marketing
Guy Kawasaki
Fomer Apple product evangelist, current venture capitalist, and a "simple is better" business
genius.
Seth Godin
He generates an endless supply of business common sense and wisdom. Almost every day, he makes us think.
Search Engine Optimization
SEOMoz Daily Blog
Quality company, quality leadership, quality blog updated daily with great SEO/marketing/business stuff.
Matt Cutts
One of the biggest dorks you will ever, ever see, but he's the anti-spam czar at Google so you better pay attention (we're kidding about the
dork comment...kinda).
Matt Cutt's does an informative site review on YouTube.
www.stuntdubl.com
Todd Malicoat's very good SEO blog. When we read his
Search Engine Manifesto, we knew we had met a brother.
www.alltop.com
Great blog search engine. Type in your desired search term and it will produce some good stuff
for you.
Web Strategist Blog
by Jeremiah Owyang. Great insights on social media.
Google Developer's Channel
YouTube site from Google for developers.
Google Webmaster Channel
Google's Webmaster YouTube video channel.