It seems like anyone who wants to be anyone is keeping a blog these days. For businessmen in particular, it’s a vital step towards positioning yourself as a thought leader, but that also means that there are a lot of blogs on the market – and many of them are drier than others.
After all, just because you’re writing about business topics, it doesn’t mean that you have to be boring. In fact, the best bloggers in the game are able to use their personal lives and popular culture to explain key concepts, using storytelling instead of simply sharing information.
It’s a difficult balance to get right, and it’s also true that there’s such a thing as too much information. Still, mixing it up a little helps to keep your readers entertained, as these two business bloggers are quick to demonstrate.
James Altucher
Altucher is an interesting character with a quirky haircut and an unusual history. As well as being an entrepreneur and an angel investor, Altucher has also achieved the rank of chess master and encouraged countless people to quit the jobs they hate and to start living their lives the way they want to.
He does this by tapping into his own experience. After all, he’s started 20 companies, and only 17 of them failed – which is actually a surprisingly high success rate. But it’s what he’s learned along the way that made it all worthwhile, and he shares that with you in his articles for the Wall Street Journal and in his bestselling non-fiction book, Choose Yourself.
One of the best things about Altucher’s blog is the fact that he mixes insights from his personal life with life advice in his long-running series of blog posts, covering topics as diverse as the ABCs of Bitcoin, the 9 Rules of Health to Make it to 99 and 20 Books Every Teenager Should Read. You’re sure to find something to pique your interest.
Find out more about James Altucher.
OnStartups
OnStartups is the brainchild of Dharmesh Shah, the CTO and co-founder of HubSpot, the posterchild for the content marketing industry. Shah knows a thing or two – after all, it was taken to a successful $100 million IPO within ten years of its inception. He even blogs about much of the behind-the-scenes work at the company, which gives his readers a fascinating insight into his way of doing business.
Unfortunately, Shah doesn’t update the site as often as he used to, but there’s still a great deal of value to be had from looking through his older posts. Once you’ve caught up with them all, you can always link up with him on social networks to see what he’s up to at the moment.
If all that’s not enough for you and you need some more material to keep you going, be sure to check out Shah’s book, Inbound Marketing. Co-written with Brian Halligan, his cofounder at Hubspot, this non-fiction masterpiece is basically a rallying cry for content marketers across the globe.
Find out more about OnStartups.
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.