At ProductPlan, we’re big fans of blogs. We publish hundreds of articles a year on our own blog, and regularly share other articles, blog posts, and resources with fellow team members, partners, and even customers! Blogs are a great way for product managers to stay on the cutting edge of the field and further develop in their careers. We put together this list of some blogs that have a home in our respective bookmarks folders. Be sure to also check out our ultimate guide to resources for product professionals, since blogs are just one of the possible avenues.
1. SVPG Insights Blog
The Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) was founded by product management veteran Marty Cagan as a way to share the knowledge and experience of some of the tech industry’s most experienced product leaders. Before developing the SVPG, Cagan was responsible for developing and managing some of the most recognizable brands in tech, including Hewlett-Packard, Netscape Communications, and eBay. In addition to an ongoing series of workshops and larger events, SVPG’s Insights blog regularly features excellent articles on a series of product-related topics. Recent topics include process, data science, communicating your product strategy, and risk.
Whether you’re new to product management or a product executive, SVPG’s Insights blog is a great site to add to your bookmarks and check in with on a regular basis. The regular contributors and guest bloggers produce insightful articles relevant to product folks from companies of all sizes, from startups to enterprises.
Where to start: Learning Fast vs. Fsvpg.com/failing-fast-vs-learning-fastailing Fast
2. Amplitude Blog
Founders Spenser Skates, Curtis Liu, and Jeffrey Wang created Amplitude with a single mission in mind: help teams build better products. A core tenet of Amplitude’s philosophy is that product analytics is something everyone should be involved with. Their blog reflects this vision by showcasing how different roles – from product managers to engineers, to designers – can use analytics to build better products.
Amplitude’s blog often features guest posts by product experts including Hiten Shah, Brian Balfour, and John Cutler, and others. For anyone interested in stepping up their product analytics game, this blog is a must-read.
Where to start: Why Outcomes Over Outputs?
3. Pendo Blog
Pendo is a well-known analytics tool in the product management world. Many product folks appreciate its intuitive and easily-navigable design and its robust features. Analytics and user feedback are invaluable to product managers working on complex software products, and Pendo’s blog is almost as indispensable as these metrics.
Pendo regularly publishes great content at a regular cadence, offering insights from their own experts and guest writers. While it’s true that many of their articles focus on their product (#greatcontentmarketing), they also publish tons of great general interest content for product managers, with articles on launching new products, using Net Promoter Score, and even how product and UX teams can work together most effectively.
Where to start: 10 Things Learned from Launching a New Product
4. Product Talk
Created and administered by Teresa Torres, Product Talk is a great resource for product managers, user experience designers, founders, and more. The site acknowledges that building technology products is hard work and the answers aren’t always immediately clear or available. Torres explains that the goal of Product Talk is to help product developers better understand their users and customers, more effectively integrate experiments into their product design and development process, and make data-informed decisions that simultaneously drive business and customers’ success. If you’re a product manager or involved in the product development process, the value here is obvious.
Recent blog posts have focused on topics like rapid prototyping, continuous user research and discovery, experiment design, and interviewing tips.
Where to start: How to Take Notes During Customer Research Interviews
5. Hacker Noon
Hacker Noon publishes tons of great content on their Medium.com publication relevant to engineers, product managers, UX advocates, and more. Hacker Noon has a great bench of regular staff writers but is also open to contributions from outside writers, and often you’ll see articles by industry experts, including current product managers at a variety of great tech companies.
Because there’s such a wide variety of contributors, Hacker Noon offers articles on an excellent variety of topics. Recent topics have included Bitcoin, tech and geopolitics, lean product management, the future of cloud services, and scaling your product or application.
Where to start: We Can’t Do That in One Sprint
6. Ken Norton’s Blog
Ken Norton is a well-known product management expert. Currently, Ken is a partner at Google Ventures, following a successful career as a product manager for some of Google’s premier products, including Google Docs, Google Calendar, and more. In addition to regularly delivering keynotes at major product industry conferences and advising hundreds of companies as a partner at Google Ventures, Ken regularly publishes articles on product management topics like what a product manager should do in their first 30 days at a new company, how to work most effectively with engineers, planning, prioritization, and strategy.
We love that Ken shares our philosophy of publishing articles that appeal to product folks for a variety of reasons. While it’s great to be hyper-specific and do deep dives into planning and prioritization, it’s also fun to talk about career advice, hiring tips, and the other idiosyncrasies of life on the product team.
Where to start: Leading Cross-Functional Teams: Always Bring the Donuts
7. First Round’s The Review
When First Round Capital decided to create a new blog to share articles on a variety of startup-related topics, they said they wanted to create the Harvard Business Review for startups. They regularly acknowledge that building a startup is not easy to do. It’s full of challenges and potential pitfalls that are unique to the VC and startup spaces. The Review is billed as “an entirely new kind of online publication, built for technology entrepreneurs, where they can learn how to build better companies. And they can learn directly from the people actually doing it.” We think they’ve done a pretty great job living up to their initial goals.
The Review offers a lot of great content for anyone working in the startup space, including founders, marketers, investors, and product managers. Their articles are written by startup experts for startup folks so there is a tremendous amount of first-hand experience and knowledge sprinkled throughout their posts. Some of the recent articles have covered topics like networking, fundraising, building empathy on product teams, and developing a solid PR plan for your product.
Where to start: The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2017
8. Inside Intercom
At ProductPlan, we’re big fans of Intercom’s content in general. We regularly read their blogs, share their books with team members, and happily recommend their tools to our partners. Inside Intercom is a fantastic blog and resource for product managers and anyone interested in what it takes to build a fantastic product. Inside Intercom has produced and featured enough excellent content over the years, they’ve organized it into several distinct categories: Customer Support, Design, Sales and Marketing, Product Management, and Startups. There’s really something for everyone here.
That being said, there are a lot of product management-focused articles. Recent articles aimed at product managers cover topics like strategic vision, A/B user testing, the pains of scaling your app, and deep-dives into specific prioritization methods.
Where to start: Sharing the Power of Data Through Partnerships and Storytelling
Have more amazing product management blogs in your bookmarks bar? Share them in the comments below!
