Four Must Have Go-To Information Sources

I’m no super hero, but I read. A lot. I block out an hour every day (including weekends) to read about trends, business, marketing and what’s happening in different segments of business. By learning about what’s going on in different industries, I get insights and ideas that I can implement at my own company. I also learn what I should avoid. It’s a scary world out there. Monsters are lurking.

Reading also gives me lots of great content to post on social media. Having a social presence is a must, no matter what your role or industry. It helps build a personal brand and will increase the number of potential customers without having to sell. It can help one establish him or herself as a thought leader – someone that is an expert and setting trends.

Given that time is so valuable, I’ve spent a considerable amount of it  vetting news sources and finding the resources that have the most valuable content. Here are my Fantastic Four go-to sites:

1) Fred Wilson’s AVC Blog

Fred Wilson is my favorite venture capitalist. Sure he’s super wealthy and successful, but he’s also a normal guy that I can relate to, and he really cares about the wellbeing of people and our country. He invests in companies with a civic mission and in companies that build excellent work environments for their employees. He writes every day about things that matter in life. His writing has a technology focus and gives me good insight into new tech advances, trends, emerging companies, and things to watch out for.

Find his articles here: https://avc.com/archive/

2) The Hustle

In 2015, I attended a one-day event in San Francisco called Hustlecon. Hustlecon was created to give entrepreneurs the opportunity to hear non technical founders discuss their respective companies. The founders teach the practical tactics they implemented to start and grow their companies, and they share insights from their wins and losses.

I loved the Hustlecon event. My favorite speaker was Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. He spoke about how he was able to inspire a team of people to work for him for over two years without getting paid.

I attended Hustlecon because I was so impressed by Sam Parr’s marketing and writing. He’s the creator of Hustlecon. He’s also the producer of The Hustle, a blog about tech and business. The Hustle is super fun, witty and easy to read. It includes major business news, stories about little known companies, and obscure but interesting concepts that I would likely never consider. It provides an interesting viewpoint on trends, business topics, unique revenue models, leadership and why businesses succeed and fail.

The Hustle sign up: https://thehustle.co

3) Pocket Hits

I have a diverse palate when it comes to business interests. Outside the world of print, I co-founded a supplement company called Zen Balance. We launched our first product Relax + Focus last year.  I’ve been immersed in the world of ecommerce, Amazon and retail sales. I love vegetarian cooking, swimming, running and writing. I like Pocket Hits because it provides diverse content from many different industries. It provides summary emails each week listing the most viewed articles on the topics I care about. It’s run by the team at Pocket, a service that lets you save articles, links, videos for later viewing. Pocket Hits delivers the most popular stories from articles saved to Pocket in the form of email and Twitter.

More than 1.5 million items are saved to Pocket every day. The Pocket team analyzes all the content by looking at which items have the highest volume and rate of saves, opens, shares, and favorites – it’s an algorithm they call Impact Rank. This gives them a good idea about which pieces are the most engaging. I like that it’s unbiased; a New York Times article doesn’t get any more leverage than a personal blog post. This creates an equal playing field for all publishers.

Sign up for Pocket here: https://getpocket.com

4) Quora

Quora was created as a way for people to share their knowledge. Sometimes the best way to learn is from our peers – people that have already experienced something or have extensive education or training in a certain field. The founders of Quora wanted to unleash the power of knowledge by connecting people who need information with the people that have it. Their site brings together different perspectives so people can appreciate and understand different backgrounds, perspectives, and rational.

Quora uses a question and answer format. Someone posts a question on any topic and the community posts responses. There are a wide variety of responses. I find this extremely helpful in getting several different worldly viewpoints on all subject matters. The answer with the most “upticks” is placed at the top so readers can easily find the most popular or supported answer.

I love that I can post a question on anything I need help with and get responses from industry experts. People such as Hillary Clinton, Glenn Beck, Sheryl Sandberg have been known to respond to questions. The responses to the business focused questions are most helpful. They give me a lot to think about. The different viewpoints add diversity – one may receive a response from a PhD, a housewife, and/or an entrepreneur. 

Sign up for Quora and then customize your feed: https://www.quora.com

Using one or all of my Fantastic Four go-to sites may not transform you into a superhero, but I think you will find the personal touches, wit, humor and style helpful, fun and educational. 

“We can’t change the past, but we can change the future.” Sue Storm

- Sarah Scudder

Published in Print Solution's May 2017 Magazine. Sarah Scudder writes the monthly Linking Verve column for PS Magazine.