We all can come up with fun, new ways to market our products or services, but at the end of the day it all comes down to content. Content marketing is what really sells. The well-written content is what truly attracts new customers.

Joe Pulizzi has been a long-time contributor to the Lonely Marketer community so when I saw his site, Junta42, come out with an incredible list of blogs that focus on content marketing, I knew I had to write about the effort. The Junta42 Top Blogs has a little something for everyone and is a very well put-together, comprehensive list of some of the top marketing blogs around.

Here are the top 42 (and yes, that is the Lonely Marketer proudly sitting at #33):

1. Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis
2. web ink now
3. Conversation Agent
4. Marketing Interactions
5. Buzz Marketing for Technology
6. ContentMarketingToday
7. Copyblogger
8. Web Strategy by Jeremiah
9. Daily Fix
10. Influential Marketing Blog
11. Logic + Emotion
12. CK’s blog
13. Rexblog
14. BeTuitive
15. Consumer Generated Media
16. Diva Marketing Blog
17. The Origin of Brands
18. The Viral Garden
19. What’s Next
20. Bernaise Source
21. Drew’s Marketing Minute
22. Made to Stick
23. Writing White Papers
24. Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog
25. Writing on the Web
26. Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020
27. AttentionMax
28. Brand Autopsy
29. Branding & Marketing
30. Eat Media Blog
31. Passion2Publish
32. Think Tank – King Fish Media
33. The Lonely Marketer
34. Custom Publishing Council Blog
35. ExperienceCurve
36. Marketing Whims
37. Seth’s Blog
38. THINKing
39. Inspire Action
40. Pandemic Blog
41. Relevant and Valued
42. The A-Ha! Blog

I’ve actually found some great new blogs in here that I didn’t know about before which is why these lists are so fun!

I found myself recently in the position of backfilling a position that I held as a small business Marketing Manager. Not only was I overly picky about selecting candidates to interview, but I found myself amazed at the amount of experience for which I was looking. Today’s small business Marketing Manager position has evolved into so much.

This is not your large company marketing group. We don’t have a group for web marketing, a group for developing sales campaigns and related marketing tools, a group for print advertising, and on and on. I found myself looking for someone that has a little experience in alot of things rather than someone that was specialized in one area of marketing.

Now, if you are specialized don’t freak out about what I’m writing. Larger companies, agencies, and self-employed marketing professionals are all excellent locations for someone that has specialized. I’m writing from the small business perspective and what I need in that role. Here are some of the major elements of experience for which I was looking:

• Content Writing: I wanted someone that had exhibited writing experience. That could be white papers, application notes, web content, ad copy, etc. Marketing starts with content!

• An Understanding of SEM/SEO: I was not looking for someone that had proven experience optimizing a website. What I did want is someone who understood the concept and why optimizing web pages and paid search campaigns for search engines was so important in today’s marketing mix. If they mentioned anything to do with keywords, they made it to the next round. Interesting note - one of the candidates was touting his Google Adwords experience so I turned my monitor around, handing him the keyboard and asked him to show my top performing ad group. He had no clue how to find that most basic element.

• Lead Generation: I was betting I wouldn’t get this experience, but I actually did. I was happy to have candidates in for interviews that had displayed experience in lead generation campaigns. The best candidates talked about “Qualified” leads.

• Exposure to Social Media: Oddly, this was tough to find. Maybe it’s because I’m so connected with social media that I expected to see more experience with some aspect of the communication medium. No one I interviewed had direct experience (I’ll be curious to see what two years down the road brings). But, the candidates that displayed and articulated the importance of social media in the marketing mix proved to me they were current. I will say that each of my final round candidates did invite me to hook up on LinkedIn. Very nice touch.

• Sales Campaign Experience: It was important to me that the candidate had some experience in working with sales on sales campaigns.

• Market Research: Everyone seemed to have this. But, many could not spell out the steps they took in their research.

• Creativity: I needed some display of “out of the box” thinking. Something that would lead me to believe the candidate could lead us in new directions and challenge me in my thinking.

• Ability to Learn: I’m not crazy – I didn’t expect to find every characteristic I listed above. But, I wanted the candidate to have some of the experience and proven track record for learning “on-the-job” and quickly.

I found the whole process very interesting. I never took a step back before to really put down on paper the experience that I thought the small business marketing manager should have. It’s a fun and exciting juggling act that at times can be stressful and at times be immensely gratifying.