#GTMTips: 10 Blogs, 10 Articles, 10 People To Follow

Quite a while ago, I wrote an article on what I considered (then) to be my favorite Google Tag Manager resources. Many of them are still very valid, but I still wanted to write a follow-up. Times have changed, and GTM is very different from what it was two years ago when I wrote the post.

So in this article, I want to divert your attention to 10 blogs, 10 articles, and 10 people - all which are and/or share excellent Google Tag Manager content on a periodic basis.

Now, I know I’m going to leave many amazing individuals and awesome resources out of this post. Please don’t read anything into it, and instead share these omissions in the comments section of this blog! These are not my “top 10” or “best of the best”, but rather individual works of art that I consider very relevant today.

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Tip 44: My 10 x 10 x 10 Google Tag Manager resources today

10 Favorite Google Tag Manager Resources today

Let’s start with blogs. There really aren’t any blogs devoted solely to Google Tag Manager, so I’m going to link to stuff that’s hugely useful for Google Tag Manager usage in general. This might include JavaScript tips or some excellent Google Analytics configuration stuff.

All the resources below are listed in alphabetical order.

10 Blogs To Check Out

There are many great analytics blogs out there, but only few produce content on a regular basis. In the following list, I’ve included blogs that I use or refer to almost daily. Not all of them have a regular publishing schedule, unfortunately, so hopefully if more people start reading them, the authors will pick up the slack!

1. Analytics Ninja

http://www.analytics-ninja.com/blog.html
Check it out: REAL Time On Page in Google Analytics

Yehoshua Coren publishes content quite rarely, but when he does, it’s just FULL of amazing information. He takes complicated, usually quite techy concepts, and translates them into a business context.

2. Analytics Pros

https://www.analyticspros.com/blog/
Check it out: Getting Started with Google Optimize

Analytics Pros are one of the better-known Google Partners, and they produce a lot of content especially around new product releases. They’ve done an excellent job at outreach, even if much of the content is geared towards the Google Analytics Premium audience.

3. ConversionWorks

http://www.conversionworks.co.uk/blog/
Check it out: Explain GTM - Google Tag Manager Containers in plain English

ConversionWorks do a great deal of outreach, especially in the small sphere of European Analytics events and conferences. They’ve written a bunch of free tools which are incredibly useful and value-adding in day-to-day GTM use. Their tall and extremely British leading man, Doug Hall, has also written an excellent book on GTM best practices and design patterns, which you can download (for free, of course) here.

4. Digital Debrief

http://www.kristaseiden.com/
Check it out: Step-by-Step: Adding a Second GA Property via Google Tag Manager

Krista Seiden is an Analytics Advocate at Google, and certainly does her part in spreading the word of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager around the globe. She occasionally writes extremely helpful guides and tip posts about GA and GTM in her blog, but she’s got a wealth of other, useful content for budding analysts, and women and men in tech.

5. L3 Analytics

http://www.l3analytics.com/blog/
Check it out: An alternative approach to GTM event tracking

Peter O’Neill is one of the most industrious people in digital analytics, and his company L3 Analytics does a great deal of outreach in the form of blog posts and conference participation. The blog isn’t updated all that often (at least with cool GTM and/or GA articles), but when new content is published, it’s always very engaging. Usually, the articles offer alternative approaches or contrarian views to concepts we take for granted in the analytics world.

6. Loves Data

http://www.lovesdata.com/blog/
Check it out: A Beginners Guide to Google Tag Manager Environments

Loves Data is a spectacular and wonderful company operating in Australia. Their outreach is impressive both in quantity and quality, and you’ll do well to follow them in social media channels as well. Many of their guides are geared towards beginners, but the comprehensiveness of these tutorials always manages to impress me.

7. Bounteous

https://www.bounteous.com
Check it out: Instantiating & Using The Google Tag Manager dataLayer

Honestly, this whole article could have been just about Bounteous. I have a huge crush on the whole company. The amount of content they produce is staggering, and they target all audiences from beginner to creepy JavaScript nerd. They’re humble and down-to-earth about what they do, and whenever I read their content I never get the feeling that they’re trying to pitch or sell anything. They only want to educate GA and GTM users. Thus, they’ve set an example that I strive to follow in every single article I write in my blog.

8. MeasureSchool

http://measureschool.com/
Check it out: Google Tag Manager for Beginners

I don’t really know of any free courses or trainings for Google Tag Manager (apart from Google’s own, excellent Google Tag Manager Fundamentals), so I’m ecstatic about the work that Julian Juenemann has put into his own MeasureSchool. The content is free and ready for you to download and make use of! Be sure to check it out. He also has a YouTube channel full of great GTM content, so take a look at that, too.

9. Online Behavior

http://online-behavior.com/
Check it out: Google Tag Manager Injector: Painless Tagging

Online Behavior is Googler Daniel Waisberg’s love-child, and incidentally my all-time favorite Google Analytics blog. The amount of content he and his impressive cast of guest writers produce is impressive, but the quality of the articles is what really makes my head spin. There’s a wealth of information for both beginners and for advanced users.

10. Thyngster

http://www.thyngster.com/
Check it out: Tips for working with Custom HTML and Custom JavaScript tags in Google Tag Manager

David Vallejo is a GTM wizard, and he really knows his way around JavaScript. His posts are always VERY techy, but he approaches them with a clear goal in mind: helping others combat issues they might have with complicated setups. Usually his solutions are simpler than they seem, and always, always tackle the problem handily and without turning your setup into a complete mess.

10 People To Follow

The following 10 people are very active in social media, sharing excellent content on a regular basis, responding to user questions, and inviting conversation around hot analytics topics whenever and wherever possible. I can’t recommend enough that you follow them and join in on the discussion wherever appropriate.

10 Excellent GTM Articles

The following 10 articles are, in my opinion, hallmarks in Google Tag Manager writing. They exemplify all the goodness that content creation can inspire, and they are quite simply brilliant resources for any skill level.

1. 7 Steps to Pushing JSON Structured Data using Google Tag Manager (Mike Arnesen)

http://www.6dglobal.com/blogs/7-steps-pushing-json-structured-data-using-google-tag-manager-2015-03-04

Mike Arnesen’s article on how to inject SERP refinements through Google Tag Manager is an example of how to write a great content piece: produce a hypothesis, test it opaquely, and present the results. The article nicely shows how important Google Tag Manager is also in the organic search world.

2. Complete Guide to Google Tag Manager (iPullRank)

http://ipullrank.com/google-tag-manager/

A thorough guide through (almost) all facets of Google Tag Manager. For a “complete” guide, some of the parts are lacking (e.g. GTM for mobile), but the guide steers you through all the most critical concepts of GTM, which any users would do good to learn.

3. Creative uses of Google Tag Manager: site hacking / ripping (Julien Coquet)

http://juliencoquet.com/en/2015/03/24/creative-uses-of-google-tag-manager-site-hacking-ripping/

One of the funniest GTM articles out there. Learn how Julien Coquet took up the battle against idiots who had ripped his entire site content onto their own site. With GTM, Julien turned the tables against the hackers.

https://www.savio.no/analytics/easier-enhanced-ecommerce-product-promo-tracking

Excellent article by Eivind on how to automatically split your Enhanced Ecommerce payload if it surpasses the payload size limit of 8KB that Google Analytics imposes on the HTTP requests. A techy but critical article on how to fix a potentially disastrous data quality issue in Google Analytics.

5. Google Tag Manager: A Step-by-step Guide (Online Behavior)

http://online-behavior.com/analytics/google-tag-manager

Daniel Waisberg’s Google Tag Manager guide is still one of the best out there, and he keeps the content fresh and up-to-date.

6. GTM for Mobile: Updating Your iOS Application Through Google Tag Manager (Analytics Pros)

https://www.analyticspros.com/blog/tag-management/gtm-for-mobile/

Not much has been written about Google Tag Manager for mobile. In this article, Luka Cempre from Analytics Pros walks your through one of the more powerful use cases speaking for the adoption of GTM for mobile.

7. How to setup Content Grouping in Google Analytics for your WordPress site (Daniel Carlbom)

http://dcarlbom.com/google-analytics/content-grouping-with-wordpress-and-google-analytics/

Daniel’s blog has a lot of great information for WordPress users tackling with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. This article is a prime example of how to use the power of the WordPress engine to fuel your site tracking.

8. Track Brightcove Player with Google Tag Manager (Isaac Abramowitz)

http://iabramo.com/2016/03/08/track-brightcove-player-with-google-tag-manager/

Isaac’s article on utilizing the Brightcove API with Google Tag Manager shows how sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.

9. Tracking Form Submissions in Iframes (Bounteous)

https://www.bounteous.com/insights/2015/10/21/google-analytics-iframes-form-submissions/

A brilliant four-parter from Bounteous, tackling an extremely difficult topic: how to track interactions within Iframes.

10. Understanding your Website Visitors: Prospects vs. Customers (L3 Analytics)

http://www.l3analytics.com/2016/01/18/understanding-your-website-visitors-prospects-vs-customers/

Typical to his style, Peter isn’t satisfied with just providing a nice, fun solution to improve your site’s data collection. Instead, he’s ambitious enough to show the business ramifications of the data collection method at hand. In this article, he walks you through a setup which allows you to segment your visitors in Google Tag Manager.

Summary

I hope you find these resources useful. I want to remind you that this is far from an exhaustive list. I left out many excellent blogs to subscribe to, people to follow, and articles to read. I wanted to keep things simple, and just give you a jumpstart on your journey to becoming a true GTM stalker.

I don’t really need to even say this, but none of the references in this articles was paid for or solicited in any way, and no one coerced me to add them to the list. I genuinely think that these are excellent resources for you to keep up your GTM skills, and I truly hope you take a look at them!

Don’t forget to follow the vibrant Google+ community, and if you have problems you can always share them in the Product Forums as well.

Please share YOUR favorite resources in the blog comments! Let’s spread the love.

#GTMTips: 10 Blogs, 10 Articles, 10 People To Follow

Tip 44: My 10 x 10 x 10 Google Tag Manager resources today

10 Blogs To Check Out

1. Analytics Ninja

2. Analytics Pros

3. ConversionWorks

4. Digital Debrief

5. L3 Analytics

6. Loves Data

7. Bounteous

8. MeasureSchool

9. Online Behavior

10. Thyngster

10 People To Follow

1. Damion Brown

2. Julien Coquet

3. Mark Edmondson

4. Stéphane Hamel

5. Phil Pearce

6. Lea Pica

7. Zorin Radovancevic

8. Jeff Sauer

9. Krista Seiden

10. Daniel Waisberg