Happy Friday (and National Chocolate Milk Day) everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another weekly round-up post from our growing community of bloggers, writers, vloggers, podcasters, and other fellow creatives. To be straight to the point, each and every week we hand-pick five top posts from a pool of the highest voted user-submitted/created posts in the community and include them in this weekly round-up blog post, along with the newsletter for all of our e-mail subscribers. As per our submission rules, posts shared can not be re-posts, or older than 1 month (31 days), meaning that all of the following are fresh and recent! Tune in every week and you will gradually become a better and more insightful creative over time!

Securing the top spot is Shannon Ashley who shares her insights about about creativity, specifically how (like in business) execution is multitudes more important than worrying about having the perfect idea.

Author Kristen Lamb takes a lengthy deep-dive into the relationship between branding and human behavior, specifically the psychology behind it in her piece that lands in our 2nd spot.

Rounding off the podium is Jacob Kastrenakes of The Verge who reports that YouTube will be backtracking its decision to remove their verification functionality (that most top creators approve of), with the CEO personally apologizing on Twitter.

Up next is David Farkas who provides us a wholesome list of ten link-building misconceptions for bloggers and other website owners. The SEO landscape is always changing, as is the nature of the internet, so being informed and staying ahead is key.

Finally, Wendy Syfret of The Guardian gives us her opinion on how social media (blogging, podcasting, etc) has vastly helped to pave the way to the golden age of television that we’re all blessed to be living in today.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Sept 21 – Sept 27, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Pepperoni Pizza Day) everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another weekly round-up post from our growing community of bloggers, writers, vloggers, podcasters, and other fellow creatives. To be straight to the point, each and every week we hand-pick five top posts from a pool of the highest voted user-submitted/created posts in the community and include them in this weekly round-up blog post, along with the newsletter for all of our e-mail subscribers. As per our submission rules, posts shared can not be re-posts, or older than 1 month (31 days), meaning that all of the following are fresh and recent! Tune in every week and you will gradually become a better and more insightful creative over time!

Claiming the top spot this week is Tina Jordan of the New York Times who rounds up personal tales of various habits of five professional and successful writers that helped them get where they are today (on this week’s best-sellers list!).

Just below in second place, Zat Rana takes a unique look at the difference between surviving and thriving from the perspective of success, focusing on the psychology behind living up to our potential and why it’s important to do more than just the minimum.

Up next is Stuart Heritage, writer at The Guardian, who explains that the most efficient way to dealing with online trolls and bullies is to actually use the muting and blocking tools provided. Engaging may seem enticing, which is what they’re hoping, but will almost always just make things much worse, similar to the “Streisand effect”.

In fourth, we get to Kiera Abbamonte’s lengthy but insightful how-to post about the useful and effective strategy of repurposing written content into various formats and platforms. If you put in the time to create good content, it only makes sense to do as much as possible to squeeze all the juice of out it.

Finally, we get to a familiar name here, Tim Denning, who writes on Medium about the importance of utilizing the strengths of curation, providing some real life examples, and explains how it builds trust from your audience which is priority number one.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Sept 14 – Sept 20, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Peanut Day) everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another weekly round-up post from our growing community of bloggers, writers, vloggers, podcasters, and other fellow creatives. To be straight to the point, each and every week we hand-pick five top posts from a pool of the highest voted user-submitted/created posts in the community and include them in this weekly round-up blog post, along with the newsletter for all of our e-mail subscribers. As per our submission rules, posts shared can not be re-posts, or older than 1 month (31 days), meaning that all of the following are fresh and recent! Tune in every week and you will gradually become a better and more insightful creative over time!

Drew Duboff leads us off this week with his insightful look into how to start an interview series, and provides us with the (many) benefits that come with it. As a host of his own interview series, he speaks from experience and genuinely knows what he’s talking about.

Back in April, in an attempt to combat the growing propaganda and “fake news” epidemic, Facebook first announced that it may be launching a revamped “News Tab” section, but didn’t really provide any further details. This week, in 2nd place, Laura Hazard Owen shares some more details that have been trickling out about how exactly it will benefit readers, along with writers and publishers.

Next up is Franziska Eichler, a self-proclaimed wellbeing coach who’s had the chance to work with world-class musicians such as Skrillex, treats us with some some personal “tips to nourish your physical and mental wellbeing while you try to do it all” in her post for The Creative Independent.

Just off the podium in 4th is Rachel Thompson with some self-branding advice for authors, insisting that blogging is a must in today’s extremely noisy landscape and simply cannot be ignored if you ever want to be found organically by potential readers.

Finally, we conclude our list with Pamela Wilson’s post on CopyBlogger, who takes the entire process of creating a blog post (or anything else creative really) and divides it into a completely do-able 4-day process that stretches out and simplifies all the must-do tasks that come with it.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Sept 7 – Sept 13, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Read-A-Book Day) everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another weekly round-up post from our growing community of bloggers, writers, vloggers, podcasters, and other fellow creatives. To be straight to the point, each and every week we hand-pick five top posts from a pool of the highest voted user-submitted/created posts in the community and include them in this weekly round-up blog post, along with the newsletter for all of our e-mail subscribers. As per our submission rules, posts shared can not be re-posts, or older than 1 month (31 days), meaning that all of the following are fresh and recent! Tune in every week and you will gradually become a better and more insightful creative over time!

This week’s top spot is captured by Ana Andjelic at Fast Company with her psychological look into how “Self-promotion might not come naturally for some, but less outgoing people can use their natural strengths to create an authentic online presence” as she elegantly puts it, while laying out 4 main types of methodologies introverts can utilize to become more discoverable.

Up next is some major cyber security news rocking the blogging world involving WordPress whos CMS powers millions of blogs and websites. Davey Winder, Senior Contributor at Forbes, reports about how nefarious actors are leveraging vulnerabilities in certain third-party WordPress plugins to “create a new user with administrator privileges on the victim’s site.” If you’re on WordPress, you probably don’t want to ignore this.

Taking home the bronze is Tim Denning, a familiar name here being on our weekly round-up several times now, with his translucent piece about his personal experiences with writing for Business Insider, along with other major publications with massive viewerships.

In fourth, we find Kelly Gurnett who contends that language, grammar in particular, is constantly evolving, especially so in the modern day internet era. We 100% agree that different circumstances and audiences call for different rules and tactics, and recognizing that is a must.

Finally, we wrap it up with a little motivational web comic by Guy Downes from OfficeGuyCartoons illustrating how taking a detour in our creative journeys, departing from the standard in an attempt to be different, can be a winning strategy that help propel us to the finish line faster and with more wisdom.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Aug 31 – Sept 6, 2019 →