Entrepreneur Blog » Wall Street Journal

The Top 50 Leadership Blogs Of 2010

Evan Carmichael — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:28:18 +0000

We may not all be natural born leaders, but the power to become one is within each of us. And in order for us to take our companies from being just good to great, we need to learn how to unleash that power. The 50 bloggers below are here to help you do just that. They are the best in their field, offering people their insights into how to build the skills you need to take yourself, and all those under your responsibility, to the top! Check out the Top 50 Leadership Blogs for 2010 below and get started today.

Leadership at Work

Seth Godin, Seth's Blog

1) Seth’s Blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ – Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. His latest book, Purple Cow, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. It’s all about how companies can transform themselves by becoming remarkable. Read his tips here.

2) Daniel Pink
http://www.danpink.com/- Daniel H. Pink is the author of four provocative books about the changing world of work — including the New York Times bestsellers, A Whole New Mind and Drive. Visit his blog to understand more about human motivation and high performance.

3) Execupundit

http://www.execupundit.com/- Michael Wade, a partner with Sanders Wade Rodarte Consulting Inc., knows the challenges faced by individuals at all levels of the workplace. He has been helping organizations with sensitive management issues for over 30 years and continues to coach executives, managers, and employees on how they can get from “very good” to “extraordinary.”

4) Three Star Leadership Blog

http://blog.threestarleadership.com/ – If you are a boss at any level, this blog will give you insight, information, and pointers to resources to do a better job and live a better life.

5) Michael Lee Stallard

http://www.michaelleestallard.com/ – Michael Lee Stallard is one of the world’s leading experts on what rational and emotional connections increase employee engagement and strategic alignment to boost productivity, innovation and organizational performance. To get his insights on leadership and employee engagement, check out his blog.

6) All Things Workplace

http://www.allthingsworkplace.com/- “Teaching Smart People Practical Ways To Become Extraordinary!” Steve’s phone rings when it’s time to figure out how to make the right things happen – and then make them happen. Find out how on his blog.

7) Simply Lisa

http://www.lisarosendahl.com/ – Lisa Rosendahl is a HR leader with more than 18 years of professional human resources experience. What started out as a way to process thoughts, is quickly developing into a craft as she seeks out opportunities to write (and speak) on leadership, personal growth and human resources.

8) Leading Answers

http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers - In this blog, Mike Griffiths shares his ideas on leadership and agile project management as well as engaging in conversations with readers. Check it out as a useful resource for leadership and agile project management information.

9) Plain Talk Blog

http://eileenmcdargh.com/blog – Since founding McDargh Communications in 1980, Eileen McDargh has helped organizations and individuals transform the life of their business and the business of their life through conversations that matter and connections that count. Get her insights here.

*** Bonus Blog *** N2Growth Blog

http://www.n2growth.com/blog/ – The N2growth blog is authored by Mike Myatt, Top CEO Coach, N2growth’s Chief Strategy Officer, & author of “Leadership Matters…The CEO Survival Manual.” Mr. Myatt posts on CEO leadership, coaching, crisis management, and branding.

Leadership and Vision

Michael Hyatt, Michael Hyatt's Blog

10) Michael Hyatt’s Blog

http://michaelhyatt.com/ – Michael Hyatt is the Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world and the seventh largest trade book publishing company in the U.S. This is his personal blog. It is focused on “intentional leadership.” His philosophy is that if you are going to lead well, you must be thoughtful and purposeful about it.

11) Perry Noble

http://www.perrynoble.com/- Perry Noble, Senior Pastor of NewSpring Church, located in Anderson, SC admits that “these are the writings of a man who is out of his mind.” Enjoy his thoughts on vision, leadership, creativity here.

12) Daniel Decker

http://danieldecker.net/- Daniel Decker is President of Higher Level Group, which works with authors, professional speakers, and organizations to expand their influence. On this blog you’ll primarily find his thoughts on Possibility, Perspective, Influence, Leadership, Publishing, Book Marketing, Marketing and Social Media.

13) Lead Change Group

http://leadchangegroup.com/- The Lead Change Group is committed to instigating a leadership revolution. It encourages, energizes and equips one another to apply character-based leadership to lead change in ourselves, in others, in our communities.

14) The Recovering Leader

http://leadershipunleashed.typepad.com/leadership – This blog offers tips on self-awareness in leadership: resources, reflections, tools, stories, insights, and ideas related to making the world a better place.

Leadership Development

Terry Starbucker, TerryStarbucker.com

15) TerryStarbucker.com

http://www.terrystarbucker.com/- Terry Starbucker spreads “realistic optimism” through a philosophy he calls “Half-Fullism“. He’s been in the business world for over 27 years in various leadership positions, and is a constantly learning student of leadership, and happy to share his ideas, experiences and knowledge through this blog.

16) SteveFarber.com
http://stevefarber.com/- Steve Farber is the president of Extreme Leadership, Incorporated, an organization devoted to the cultivation and development of Extreme Leaders in the business community. Get all his tips on his blog!

17) Unfolding Leadership
http://www.unfoldingleadership.com/blog- Dan Oestreich is a consultant, coach, and trainer. His mission is to be a portal to a better world through the growth, development and healing of leaders. And who is a leader? Any one of us, anyone who makes a conscious and positive contribution to a better world, he says.

18) Survival Leadership
http://survivalleadership.blogspot.com/- Survival Leadership offers leadership development from a leading Executive Coach, who teaches you what you need to know to do just that – survive.

19) Mark Sanborn
http://www.marksanborn.com/blog- Mark Sanborn writes on leadership development, customer service, teambuilding and personal development. Leadership is not power over people but power with people, and he shows you how to achieve this.

20) Self Leadership Coaching Blog
http://selfleadership.com/blog – Andrew Bryant’s Self Leadership International is a world-class provider of coaching, consulting and training solutions with a mission to empower individuals and organizations to realize and actualize their full potential. Learn more on his blog.

21) Great Leadership
http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/- Dan McCarthy has been a practitioner in the field of leadership development for over 20 years. He’s currently the Manager of Leadership and Management Development at a Fortune “Great Place to Work”, “Training Top 125″, and “High Impact Learning” (HILO 80) company. Get his tips here.

22) Leading Questions
http://edbrenegar.typepad.com/leading_questions – Ed Brenegar provides leadership guide services to help people make life and work transitions that result in making a difference that matters. Get your Leading Questions answered here.

23) Samuel Bacharach Blog
http://bacharachblog.com/- The essential questions this blog asks are: “What makes leadership work? What does being proactive mean?” Through wide ranging examples this publication attempts to illustrate that good leaders, good businesses, good politicians, and good artists are all well versed in the skills of execution— everything else is nice, but hardly necessary.

24) Ansen Leadership Development
http://ansenleadership.com/blog/- Barbara Schmitt is an Associate Certified Coach and earned Certifications as a Professional Empowerment Coach and Leadership Development Coach. Get her professional opinions on how to get the career you want here.

25) Leader Business
http://www.leaderbusiness.blogspot.com/- Tom Magness is passionate about the need for leaders to step up – in all walks of life. He also know that not all people understand what it takes to be a leader. Leader Business is a collection of insights on different aspects of leadership. These topics are the result of his 24 years (and counting) in the military and are intended to shine a light on various elements of leadership that collectively he calls the business of leaders.

26) The Enlightened Manager
http://blog.emergenceconsulting.net/- Cheri Baker is the owner of Emergence Consulting, an Organizational Development Consulting firm based near Seattle, WA. She blogs about personal and professional development for leadership.

Leadership News

Peter Mello, Weekly Leader

27) Weekly Leader

http://weeklyleader.net/- Each week Weekly Leader searches the Internet and print world for news about the latest and best practices in leadership and presents summaries filled with links to the original content; you could consider it your Cliff Notes for leadership.

28) RapidBI
http://rapidbi.com/management – Mike Morrison is a learning and development specialist based in London, UK. This blog contains some of the key things he learned or techniques he uses or hears about. Occasionally it will contain overviews of products or views on what is happening in the world of L&D and OD.

29) Cutting-Edge Leadership
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership – Cutting-Edge Leadership offers the best in current leadership research and theory, from cultivating charisma to transforming your organization.

30) Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog
http://coachingtip.blogs.com/coaching_tip – Coach John G. Agno is your own cultural attache; keeping you abreast of what’s effective in leadership. People learn better and are positively motivated when supported by regular coaching, he believes.

31) Sources of Insight
http://sourcesofinsight.com/- Empowering you with skill, Sources of Insight is J.D. Meier’s channel for finding and sharing patterns and practices from the best books, people, and quotes he can find. Help discover your mission and vision.

Communicating Leadership

Jason Seiden, Seiden Leadership

32) Seiden Leadership

http://jasonseiden.com/- Jason Seiden is known personally for his philosophy of “Fail Spectacularly!” and his eponymous blog. He regularly speaks to organizations and the media about how to develop specific communication habits that have been proven to eliminate fear, facilitate decision making, and improve business results.

33) Scott Gould
http://scottgould.me/- Scott Gould is a noted leader on the changing nature of communication who consults and speaks professionally on the subject in addition to his portfolio of endeavours. Get the tips of Scott and his friends on this blog.

34) thoughtLEADERS
http://thoughtleadersllc.blogspot.com/- ThoughtLEADERS offers practical articles on leadership, strategy, career, communications and customer service.

35) KR Connect
http://krconnect.blogspot.com/- Kevin Roberts is the New York-based CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi – one of the world’s leading creative organizations – and part of Publicis Groupe, the world’s fourth largest communications group. Check out his blog, which covers his thoughts on innovation, leadership, learning, value, and more.

Leading a Team

Mark Harbeke, Winning Workplaces

36) Winning Workplaces

http://blog.winningworkplaces.org/blog/winning-workplaces – Too often, the information and resources needed to create a high-performance workplace are out of reach for all but the largest organizations. Winning Workplaces’ goal is to provide small and midsize employers with proven, practical, and affordable people practices.

37) Managing Communities
http://www.managingcommunities.com/- Patrick O’Keefe is the founder of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He has been managing online communities since 2000 and is the author of “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online social spaces. He blogs about online community at ManagingCommunities.com.

38) Team Fusion
http://www.teamfusion.net/index.php/site/Blog – Marjorie Treu is CEO of Team Fusion, LLC, a company dedicated to empowering managers with the tools to create and live their leadership legacy. Create your own legacy today!

Leadership and Management

John Hunter, Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog

39) Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog

http://management.curiouscatblog.net/- This blog is focused on Deming’s ideas, lean manufacturing (lean thinking), six sigma, customer focus, systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) and innovation. You could get lost here for hours. The one benefit if you did, you should come out as a smarter cat!

40) Agile Management
http://www.noop.nl/- Jurgen Appelo is a writer, speaker, trainer, entrepreneur, illustrator, developer, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, leader, freethinker, and… Dutch guy. Since 2008 Jurgen has written a popular blog at www.noop.nl, which deals with development management, software engineering, business improvement, personal development, and complexity theory.

41) Managing Leadership
http://managingleadership.com/blog- Jim Stroup is a management consultant specializing in organizational leadership. He consults widely and writes on this subject, as well as other related organizational and management topics. Visit his blog to learn how to Manage Leadership.

42) Ask A Manager
http://www.askamanager.org – Alison Green believes the whole point of managing is to get things done. Everything else follows from there. Follow her three-year old blog here.

43) The Tom Peters Weblog

http://www.tompeters.com/ – Tom, who is widely credited with almost single-handedly “inventing” the “management guru industry,” now billions of dollars in size, writes, reflects, and then presents about 50 seminars each year. His blog offers management consulting and leadership training development advice.

44) Management Skills Blog

http://www.managementblog.org/ – Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. This blog is that part of the conversation he can share.

45) Management Craft

http://www.managementcraft.typepad.com/- Lisa Haneberg thinks of management and leadership as a craft – a practice that we hone and develop over time. Learn her for tips for enabling business effectiveness and alignment.

46) CEO Blog: Time Leadership

http://www.jimestill.com/- Time Leadership is Jim Estill’s philosophies on Leadership and Time Management. He calls it CEO Blog – Time Leadership because of his keen interest in time. He has authored a Time Leadership Audio CD, book and eBook; “How to use the Secrets of Leadership for Time Management”. Get his tips here.

Niche Leadership

47) Women’s Leadership Blog

http://blog.futurewomenleaders.net/- The Women’s Leadership Blog is hosted by Future Women Leaders. The goal of the blog is to share resources, tips, and advice from our organization and other organizations and companies promoting our mission of inspiring women to become leaders in their personal and professional lives.

48) Women in the LEAD

http://globaldialoguecenter.blogs.com/women – This blog is all about bringing together women from around the world to teach them new skills, build leadership, share ideas and more.

49) Management by Baseball
http://cmdr-scott.blogspot.com/- What do Hall of Fame baseball managers like Connie Mack & John McGraw have in common with today’s business leaders? Why are baseball managers like Tony LaRussa & Ozzie Guillén better role models for management than corporate heroes like Jack Welch, Ken Lay & Bill Gates? Management consultant and ex-baseball reporter Jeff Angus shows you almost everything you need to know about management you can learn from baseball.

50) Women’s Leadership Exchange Blog
http://www.womensleadershipexchange.com/blog.php- Women’s Leadership Exchange (WLE) is a social entrepreneurship organization founded by and for successful businesswomen. Recognizing the unique challenges facing women in business, the WLE blog that helps them fill the information gap and provides a venue for building connections that will facilitate their success in business and in life.

Grab the Badge

5 Questions With 2 SEO Experts – SEO University

Evan Carmichael — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:31:24 +0000

For those of you who follow search engine news you’ll know that the biggest events that cover the industry are the Search Engine Strategies conferences. Being based in Toronto I was able to attend SES Toronto last year and am pleased to be able to attend again this year. It’s one of those must-attend events where you get to hear from the top experts in the industry, be able to directly ask them questions, and get valuable advice to help you grow your business.

“Although bigger isn’t always better, the biggest social media site is the right place to start. And at 104.1 million unique visitors, Facebook reaches a lot more segments than just college kids these days.”

I’m also fortunate enough to have been able to connect with two of the experts who will be presenting at SES Toronto this year. I asked them about what factors they see as being important for website owners in the year ahead. The two interviewees were Greg Jarboe and Amanda Watlington. Here is a little more about them:

Greg Jarboe

Greg Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm, public relations agency and video production company. Founded in 2003, SEO-PR has won a Golden Ruler Award from the Institute for Public Relations and PR News, and was a finalist for SES Awards in three categories: Best Social Media Marketing Campaign, Best Business-to-Business Search Marketing Campaign, and Best Integration of Search with Other Media.

“Over the past year, the change in the search engine world that’s had the biggest impact on my business has been the recognition that the #2 search engine isn’t Yahoo! It’s YouTube.”

Amanda Watlington

Amanda Watlington is owner of Searching for Profit, a search marketing consultancy focusing on the interaction of the consumer with businesses, using search engines, RSS, blogs, podcasting, or other new media to deliver their messages. An industry thought leader and an internationally-recognized speaker, Amanda has led sessions on search marketing, web strategy, and social media at Search Engine Strategies, Webmaster World, Ad:tech, and DMA. She shares her views of where search marketing is headed on her blog, Blogs and Feeds, and as a blogger for Search Engine Watch.

I asked them both the same questions – here are their answers:

1) What are you 3 favorite tools website owners should know about that you would consider “hidden gems”?

The first hidden gem is Wordstream. It’s a new keyword tool for taking long keyword lists for search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns and putting them in buckets that are segmented intelligently. Another hidden gem is Radian6. It’s an automated solution to monitor and analyze a variety of social media, including blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The third tool has been around for a while, but it’s unfortunately a hidden gem: Yahoo! Site Explorer. It allows you to explore all the pages indexed by Yahoo! Search and find pages that link to that site or any page.

2) In your opinion, how important is it for website owners to reduce their page load time and do you recommend they enable gzip compression?

I do think reducing page load time is important. Gzip is a popular data compression program. It’s main advantage is much better compression. However, gzip 1.2.4 may crash when an input file is over 1200 characters. (info on gzip compression here: http://www.gzip.org/)

3) LinkedIn, Twitter,YouTube, Digg, or Facebook? If website owners could only pick one to invest their time into, which would you pick and why?

I could say it depends on your target market, but that would be dodging the question. Or, I could say YouTube, because I’ve just finished writing a book entitled, YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day, but that would be self-serving. So, I’ll say Facebook. Why? According to Compete, Facebook had 104.1 million unique visitors in April 2009, YouTube had 77.8 million, Digg had 37.8 million, Twitter had 19.4 million, and LinkedIn had 12.1 million. Although bigger isn’t always better, the biggest social media site is the right place to start. And at 104.1 million unique visitors, Facebook reaches a lot more segments than just college kids these days. Plus, with more than 52,000 Facebook apps, there are countless ways to connect with social networks of friends and family.

4) What change in the search engine world over the past year has had the biggest impact on your business?

Over the past year, the change in the search engine world that’s had the biggest impact on my business has been the recognition that the #2 search engine isn’t Yahoo! It’s YouTube. According to comScore qSearch, there were 9.8 billion expanded search queries in the U.S. during April 2009 on Google, 3.2 billion on YouTube, and 3.1 billion on Yahoo! That’s game changing. We’ve also found that video content can generate more links and higher rankings than text content. In fact, The Technorati Attention Index for May 14, 2009, shows the top site with the highest number of blogs linking to it in the past 30 days was YouTube with 60,644, followed by The New York Times with 17,374, guardian.co.uk with 8,039, The Wall Street Journal with 7,513, and The Washington Post with 6,891. What does this mean to search engine marketers? You are more likely to see a YouTube video in the top results pages than a news story, blog post, or website page. That’s a change with a big impact.

5) Which session (apart from yours) are you most looking forward to at SES Toronto and why?

I’m looking forward to the keynote by Emanuel Rosen. I’ve read his book, “The Anatomy of Buzz,” and can’t wait to hear about his latest book, “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited.” As for one of the conference sessions, I’m looking forward to “How to Speak Geek: Working Collaboratively with Your IT Department to Get Things Done.” Why can’t we all just get along?

1) What are you 3 favorite tools website owners should know about that you would consider “hidden gems”?

There are lots of tools that a website owner should know about. I personally advocate trying a large number of tools and then determining which suits the individual’s workflow best. Here are three tools that I consider really powerful: Spyfu for keyword research. It is an excellent second line of research that enhances and enriches the data gathered from Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker. With Spyfu, I particularly like the Keyword Kombat feature that lets me clearly see comparative strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors. A second tool that I consider valuable is Crazy Egg. I use this tool on a regular basis to check how users are interacting with my pages. This gives me quite a few insights into how I can improve conversion and improve the user’s experience. I must include in my tool kit the Web Developer Plug-in for Firefox. It is a super tool for analyzing sites. I use this in conjunction with YSlow to understand how a site is performing.

2) In your opinion, how important is it for website owners to reduce their page load time and do you recommend they enable gzip compression?

Page load time is important for both users and search engines. Users want to receive the information immediately and are increasingly impatient. Speed issues also impact search. Every site has a “crawl budget,” and performance issues can impede how much of a large site is crawled. Managing performance is essential to indexing for large sites. Gzip compression is a recommended speed enhancement. The choice and recommendation would, of course, depend on the site. As I indicated above I use YSlow as part of my tools for evaluating sites. Speed is an issue.

“If I was looking to promote my business, YouTube is the place that I would choose to target. Twitter is the current media darling, but I’m not sure that I would recommend it at this time over YouTube.”

3) LinkedIn, Twitter,YouTube, Digg, or Facebook? If website owners could only pick one to invest their time into, which would you pick and why?

My choice would be YouTube since the sheer volume of traffic that comes to the site is so huge. YouTube’s traffic is the second largest online. It is also readily optimizable so the site owner can ensure take measures to get maximum performance from their videos. If I was looking to promote my business, YouTube is the place that I would choose to target. Twitter is the current media darling, but I’m not sure that I would recommend it at this time over YouTube. As a professional, I would urge the website owner to have a personal LinkedIn account and a Facebook page. Both are good networking tools. I personally prefer LinkedIn.

4) What change in the search engine world over the past year has had the biggest impact on your business?

The biggest impacts have come from the global recession. As a result I have seen an increase in the demand for SEO services as businesses that previously were prepared to spend lots of money on SEM are now reconsidering the virtues of SEO. Many are taking budget from other marketing efforts to put them into SEO and SEM. There is also an increasing demand that search deliver results.

5) Which session (apart from yours) are you most looking forward to at SES Toronto and why?

I am keenly interested in the future and use conferences to tune up my radar for what is the next big thing. For this reason I am looking forward to the session entitled “Follow the Carrot: Cool Mobile Apps.” As search migrates to the phone we all need to understand mobile marketing. Overall, the session line up is so good that it will be difficult to chose one session vs. another being held at the same time. I am moderating the session “SEO Then & Now: What’s the Same? What’s New?” which should be very interesting, but at the same time there is also a session entitled “Signals: What Relevancy Indicators Are Search Engineers Watching For Today?” that should be an excellent forward-looking session. Overall, this should be a terrific conference.

Thank you to both Greg and Amanda for spending the time to answer these questions. To learn more from them you can always attend SES Toronto! If you’re planning on coming out let me know and we can have lunch together.