Social media changes more rapidly than the weather in the mountains. There’s a new feature, a unique best practice, or even a new social media site just around the corner. Things change in the blink of an eye.
I’ve collated a list of 28 social media marketing resources to help you stay up to date — or even ahead of the curve — at all times. Whether you prefer newsletters, podcasts, blogs, or tools, there’s something here for everyone!
7 social media marketing newsletters
Social media marketing newsletters are a great way to keep your ear to the ground without doing any heavy lifting. Plenty of newsletters provide social media platform updates, and others offer advice on social media success. Here are the top seven, but if you need more, check out this list of 18 more relevant newsletters.
1. ICYMI by Lia Haberman
Lia Haberman teaches influencer marketing at UCLA and writes a kickass marketing newsletter. She primarily shares social media updates across almost all major social media platforms. Her newsletter is accurately titled, “in case you missed it,” aka ICYMI.
It’s an excellent marketing resource if you want to stay updated with new features and newsroom updates.
2. Link in Bio by Rachel Karten
Rachel Karten is the former social media lead at Bon Appétit and is now the brains behind the newsletter, Link in bio. Each issue is a deep dive into a social media best practice or an interview with a social media marketing manager.
It’s one of the best marketing resources to learn how to understand your potential customers and how they behave on social media.
3. Creator Economy by Kaya Yurieff
Kaya Yurieff leads the creator economy newsletter run by The Information. Instead of platform feature updates, this marketing resource takes more of a journalistic approach and doubles down on specific creators’ news.
You should sign up if you want to learn about online marketing as a whole and how the creator economy fits into it all.
📩 Subscribe to Creator Economy.
4. Growth in Reverse by Chenell Basilio
Ever wished someone could backtrack your favorite successful creators so you could follow in their footsteps? Chenell Basilio’s newsletter is one of the few marketing resources that helps you do just that.
Each week there’s a new edition on a new creator sharing how they went from 0 to over 50k+ subscribers.
📩 Subscribe to Growth in Reverse.
5. Social Media Tea by Annie-Mai
Social media tea is where Annie Mai shares social media updates — from new features to the latest best practices. She also adds her own insight into what these features getting launched means for creators.
But if you just want the platform updates, you can follow her on X or LinkedIn.
Social media updates you NEED to know:
👋 Threads has launched a live test of posts that will disappear after 24hrs
👀 LinkedIn is rolling out in-feed video carousels titled “videos for you”
💫 Instagram have launched new fonts and sticker options for Stories
🎧 Instagram is…
— annie-mai (@anniemaisocial) August 28, 2024
📩 Subscribe to Social Media Tea.
6. Buffer’s newsletter
At Buffer, we share a newsletter every Friday that gives you the best of all worlds. It’s a marketing resource that contains social media trends, advice, feature updates, and other things we’ve published on the company’s blog.
If you want one of those marketing resources that gives you the gist of everything quickly, look no further.
📩 Subscribe to Buffer’s newsletter.
7. Future Social by Jack Appleby
Jack Appleby is a prominent thought leader in the social media world. His newsletter is one of the top marketing resources for learning social media strategy and getting practical advice — even on the most technical topics.
Each issue contains valuable insights and creative resources to help you become a great marketer.
7 social media marketing podcasts
Social media marketing podcasts are among the best marketing resources to look into if you’re keen on getting advice directly from marketing leaders. Many hosts do expert interviews of creators from various domains to share an entire library of social media advice.
Like with the newsletters, this is a condensed list of the top seven marketing podcasts. If you want more, check out these 24 other marketing podcasts.
1. Social Media Marketing podcast
Michael Stelzner, the founder of Social Media Examiner, runs the social media marketing podcast. Each episode involves Michael interviewing successful social media leaders and dissecting their marketing strategies.
Social Media Examiner also has a free newsletter, cutting edge blog, and downloadable resources if you’d like to check them out.
🎧 Listen to Social Media Marketing.
2. The Creative Edition podcast
Emma Cortes Ellendt is the host of The Creative Edition podcast, and the best part is that she’s on the ground as a creator — just like you are. She’s sharing advice that’s working for her and occasionally bringing in guests who are also a part of the creator economy world.
Emma’s podcast is worth a listen if you’re looking for marketing resources that share tips directly from the horse’s mouth.
🎧 Listen to The Creative Edition.
3. Creator Club
Katie Steckly is the host of Creator Club podcast where she shares content creation strategies and often answers burning questions that might be on every creators’ mind — like can you pivot your social media niche? Or how to get your first 1,000 followers?
She also shares these episodes on her YouTube channel if you prefer video over audio. Like Emma, Katie’s also one of those creators who’s been there, done that.
4. The Future Belongs to Creators
The Future Belongs to Creators is a podcast hosted by email marketing company ConvertKit. This is one of those marketing resources that casts a wide net — so you can learn a lot about various exploding topics, from when you should become a full-time creator to how to design excellent landing pages.
The hosts also go live on their YouTube channel to record every episode and answer listener questions every Friday. If you want an interactive marketing resource, here’s your chance.
🎧 Listen to The Future Belongs to Creators.
5. The Business of Creators
Ian Shepherd’s goal is to spotlight essential tools for creators. He does this by directly interviewing the people in these companies and highlighting how their software can help creators drive growth and monetize.
It’s one of the best marketing resources to learn about the various people and companies involved in shaping the creator economy.
🎧 Listen to The Business of Creators.
6. Creators on Air
Passionfroot is a tool to help creators do more brand deals. Their podcast, Creators on Air aims to make you feel less alone on your creator journey.
The interviews are from creators across domains to help you learn a host of things like search engine optimization (SEO), branding, etc.
7. The Colin and Samir show
Colin and Samir are YouTubers who interview some of the biggest creators on how to grow, build an audience, and get brand partnerships. They’ve had successful YouTube channels themselves.
They also have a newsletter covering the latest news in the creator economy and a community to help creators learn from each other.
🎧 Listen to The Colin and Samir show.
7 social media courses
Social media courses make for an excellent marketing resource for anyone who wants to learn the science behind social media. You can choose to pick courses that match what you need at the moment: whether it’s overall strategy or something specific like copywriting.
If you want a more extensive list, check out our list of top 12 social media courses.
1. Unignorable
Unignorable is a cohort-based course (aka done real-time) taught by buyer psychology pro Katelyn Bourgoin and entrepreneur Neal O’Grady.
My favorite thing about Unignorable is it moves beyond the traditional advice. It won’t just help you rack up a list of empty followers — the goal is to help you build a loyal audience that converts into future buyers.
✍️ Join Unignorable’s waitlist.
2. Long to short
Everyone says you should repurpose your content — especially your long-form content for social media posts. Editor and industry veteran Erica Schneider and AI pro Rob Lennon teach you how in this course.
You can start learning and applying practices from the course within 90 minutes. The idea is to get your money’s worth from every piece of content you create — without burning out.
3. The Creator MBA
If you want to learn how to become a full-time creator successfully, there’s no better teacher than Justin Welsh. He has grown his audience from 2K to 600K on LinkedIn and has over 200K subscribers to his weekly newsletter, The Saturday Solopreneur. This course will teach you exactly how to replicate his methods and grow your audience and income.
These aren’t just theory lessons. There are practical methods you can start using right away — including Notion Work Station, too.
4. Graphic design basics
Your social media post is nothing without an excellent graphic to accompany it. And who better to teach graphic design than Canva? The course includes the basics of graphic designing — how to design aesthetic images, alignment, fonts, and all that jazz.
The best part? The course is free to use and self-paced. Start immediately and work at your own pace.
✍️ Start Graphic design basics.
5. Social bank
Elise Darma is a social media pro who’s been there, done that. She has successfully built an audience across all major social media platforms — including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Her course teaches you how to make money using Instagram.
Her unique Seasons Method is designed to help you get more leads and sell more of your products or services — regardless of your follower count.
✍️ Buy Social Bank.
6. How to write thought leadership content
Ryan Law has worked with companies like Ahrefs, Animalz, Google, and more. Needless to say, he knows his way around thought leadership better than most. In this course, he teaches actionable ways to create thought leadership content through four modules.
There’s also a free lesson available so you can see how Ryan teaches and get a feel for the course material.
✍️ Buy How to write thought leadership content.
7. Social media management accelerator (SMMA)
Latasha James is the creator of the SMMA course. It’s a cohort-based one, so you’ll have to enroll when it’s live. It’s perfect for social media managers who want to up their game. There are seven core modules.
SMMA is the perfect marketing resource for any social media manager — whether you’re in-house or freelance.
✍️ Buy SMMA.
7 marketing resources directly from the source (aka social media sites)
Sometimes the best way to learn something is to go straight to the source. Most social media platforms have extensive libraries of content and reports that can help you grow on that platform. They might not be as comprehensive as social media courses might be, but they can help you level up from 0 to 1.
1. Pinterest’s Predicts reports
Pinterest releases a report every year predicting marketing trends to help you stay ahead of the curve.
You can learn which terms are trending to form your keyword strategy and calibrate your ad campaigns to drive more traffic, too. It’s like someone doing the market research for you — especially for search engine optimization.
➡️ Read Pinterest’s latest report.
2. TikTok’s What’s Next reports
Like Pinterest, TikTok also releases its own ‘What’s Next’ reports to help you spot trends and actionable practical suggestions.
An example accompanies each trend to help you see how to embody the audio, actions, etc., and understand which strategies work on the platform. It’s an excellent place to derive content inspiration.
➡️ Read the latest What’s Next report.
3. Meta Blueprint
Meta Blueprint is the Meta company’s blog helping you learn the basics of all Meta platforms. You can also participate in various workshops and gather certifications from their courses.
The Meta Blueprint is a great marketing resource for anyone who’s dipping their toe on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.
➡️ Read the Meta Blueprint blog.
4. LinkedIn courses
LinkedIn has a lot of free courses on various features of its platform such as LinkedIn pages, advertising, B2B marketing, etc.
Like with Meta, these courses can help you learn the basics of the network.
5. Born on Instagram and Instagram’s @creators profile
Born on Instagram is a website specifically curated to help Instagram’s creators. You can take an introductory crash course to understand the fundamentals of Instagram, learn how to do your branding on the platform, and kickstart building an audience.
When you’re thorough with the fundamentals, I’d recommend following and staying updated with Instagram’s @creators account. They release new posts, content series, reports, and trends every day to help you grow on Instagram.
➡️ Follow @creators.
6. X for business
X for business is the platform’s blog to help creators learn organic and paid ways to grow on X.
X’s marketing resources are a bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the platforms on this list, but it’s still a decent place to go to if you want to brush up on the basics.
➡️ Read the X for business blog.
7. Creator Insider by YouTube
Creator Insider is a YouTube channel that shares information, advice, tips, and tricks to grow on YouTube.
From learning about the algorithm to staying up to date about the new features, this channel has it all.
➡️ Watch Creator Insider’s videos.
What are your favorite marketing sources?
Despite the plethora of digital marketing resources, you’ll have a few favorites. That’s okay! All of us are only human and can keep up with a few marketing resources at a time. Which resources you find useful depends on what stage you are in your creator journey and they’ll evolve as your needs change. After all, your small business and the social media world are constantly changing.
Did your favorite resource make it on this list? I’d love to hear about it! If not, share the knowledge of new marketing resources in the comments below.
