One of my continual sources of amusement is finding marketers that confuse execution with expertise.  Instead of spending so much  time building your “consulting” website or re-tweeting other people’s stuff – why not spend time reading?

Audacious suggestion, right? Think about it; carpenters have the rule-of-thumb ”measure twice and cut once.”  It’s what makes the most of their time and results in a more professional product.  Why not apply the same thing to marketing?

As my personal contribution to the betterment of the marketing profession (as well as in the tradition of “link love” for those who produce great content) here are the 5 blogs I read religiously and that I think can help educate and inform any marketer:

1. http://mashable.com/ – The industry standard for social media news.  In the past these guys have been all over the map but they’ve finely tuned their news style to create Mashable as a hub for  current events in social media and interactive marketing.
2. http://econsultancy.com/blog – one of the smartest sites out there for combining social media and real world business strategy.  UK-based but globally relevant, you’re not going to see breaking news but you will find some of the best insights and observations.
3. http://allthingsd.com/ – The WSJ’s digital media blog.  In case you didn’t know, they run a conference every year with the world’s best minds, everyone goes and the recaps are put on this blog, they also are a good authority to cite in any client presentation.  If you need authority, you can’t beat the WSJ.
4. http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/ – Another good, biz/social media blog. Jason Falls writes this, a good guy with a very practical approach to SM (as opposed to the hundreds of “also rans” that think they know social media because they have a Facebook and Twitter account).
5. http://www.copyblogger.com/ – Finally, it’s not really a business or media blog but Copyblogger has great tips on the holy grail of all great marketing; concise and insightful content. Very relevant across all platforms, I used it religiously when I was first starting out as a copywriter for the web and still keep up with it for inspiration and ideas.

If it sounds like I am on a bit of a soapbox with these suggestions it’s because I am.  To me, it’s important to do your homework and come to a project prepared with not only the skills but the contextual relevance that comes from staying current.

Got a blog that you read religiously that I missed?