MarketingSherpa's 10 Best Blogs for 2005

Congratulations to MarketingSherpa's 2005 Best Blog winners, and thanks to the 2,065 tough judges who carefully evaluated 52-nominated blogs to pick them:

Best individual's blog on the general topic of marketing and advertising

Awarded to: Seth Godin's Blog
http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/blog.html

Honorable Mention: Adrants
http://www.adrants.com

Editor's Note: Both these Blogs won last year, albiet in reversed positions. In a world where the average Blog lifetime is something like six months, we're impressed and inspired by two bloggers producing award-winning work year after year. So many bloggers start red-hot and then quickly run out of steam. Seth Godin and Steve Hall beat the odds and we salute them!

Best group weblog on the general topic of marketing and advertising

Winner: MarketingVOX
http://www.marketingvox.com

Honorable Mention (Tie):
Marketing Genius http://marketinggenius.blogspot.com
Church of the Customer http://www.churchofthecustomer.com

Editor's Note: Congrats to Tig Tillinghast of MarketingVox who has kept the editorial quality high while going through business model and management changes. MarketingVox is one of the few completely self-sustaining Blogs we know of. And, we've heard Tig's expanding his formula to new industry niches shortly, including a blog for defense industry news.

Best PR-topic blog

Winner: Media Guerrilla
http://mmanuel.typepad.com/media guerrilla

Honorable Mention: Strategic Public Relations
http://www.prblog.typepad.com

Editor's Note: Even if you're not into PR, definitely check out Mike Manuel's Media Guerrilla Blog to see one of our fave Blogger self-photos. If you're going to post a photo of yourself on your Blog -- which is a great idea -- this is one to be inspired by. Also, the writing and hotlinks rock. Mike deserved this award win.

Best B-to-B marketing-topic blog

Winner: Guerrilla Consulting
http://guerrillaconsulting.typepad.com

Honorable Mention: B-to-B Lead Generation Blog
http://blog.startwithalead.com/

Editor's Note: If you're in the consulting business (or you daydream about leaving your corporate job for a freelancing someday), check out this year's B-to-B category winner for genuinely useful advice and links on how to score clients.

By the way, we hear a new hardcover book is coming out soon by the author of the Honorable Mention Blog in this category, proving a blog can lead to fame in more ways than one.

Best blog on small business marketing

Winner: Duct Tape Marketing
http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php

Honorable Mention: Small Business Trends
http://www.smallbusinesses.blogspot.com

Editor's Note: Wow! Duct Tape Marketing won hands-down for the second-year running, gaining more votes than any other blog in any category in the entire contest.   Most bloggers can only dream of such a huge and passionate fan base.

Best blog on online marketing

Winner: Chris Baggott's Best Practices in Email
http://exacttarget.typepad.com/chrisbaggott

Honorable Mention: Charlotte Li's Blog
http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/

Editor's Note: As a leader at a fast-growing technology company, Chris has an insane travel schedule. Kudos to him for keeping this effort up for 18 months now. If you're trying to convince a C-level exec at your organization to start a Blog, and they say, 'I'm too busy", taunt them with Chris' example.

Blogs on Search Marketing

Winner: Search Engine Roundtable
http://www.seroundtable.com

Honorable Mention: Brad Fallon
http://www.bradfallon.com

Editor's Notes: We adore the unusual editorial tactic for the winning Blog in this category -- instead of linking to news sites, the authors comment on and link to the very best new threads on search marketing on discussion boards all over the Web. So, it's a true insiders-insider blog, and a reflection of what people are realy talking about (vs what the media thinks.)   

Best Blog on Niche Marketing

Winners (tie):
Ypulse - Media for the Next Generation
http://www.ypulse.com/

WonderBranding - Marketing to Women
http://michelemiller.blogs.com/marketing to women

Honorable Mention:
Lipsticking- Smart marketing to women online
http://windsormedia.blogs.com/lipsticking

Editor's Note: All three of these blogs are not only useful for advice on their topics, but also worth watching if you plan to launch a Blog to promote yourself as a niche marketing consultant. (P.S. Whoa, get ready for neon-pink and orange when you visit Ypulse.)

Best non-English-Language Blog

Winner: MarketingFacts (completely in Dutch)
http://www.mediafact.nl/weblog.php

Honorable mention: Media Culpa (in Swedish with some English)
http://www.kullin.net/

Editor's Note: We only wish we could read them for ourselves. Many thanks to the European MarketingSherpa readers who evaluated these blogs for us.

Top readers' choice write-in vote

Winner: Easy Bake Weblogs
http://easybakeweblogs.com

Honorable Mention: Collateral Damage (CMO Magazine)
http://www.cmomagazine.com/blog view.html?ID=401

Editor's Note: Fascinating that these two winners, both with more than 50 write-in votes in a category that generated more than 500 nominations, represent the two ends of the online media spectrum.

Easy Bake is by a self-publishing entrepreneur, who hopes you'll like his Blog so much you'll buy his also-self-published book. Collateral Damage is by a professional journalist who was asked to write a Blog as part of her editorial duties at CMO Magazine which is published by the gargantuan trade magazine company IDG.