Happy New Year’s Eve 2019 everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another 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 is a special yearly edition.

As we bid a final farewell to 2019, along with the second decade of the new millennium, we take a look back at the long year that was, and highlight the absolute best of the best in the world of blogging, writing, and content creation, courtesy of all the amazing writers, creatives and other talented individuals that our constantly evolving and expanding industry has to offer.

With over 500 submissions in the ever-growing BES Community this year, you can imagine it wasn’t an easy task to pick just a handful, or roughly three percent, to feature in this exclusive end-of-year post, especially with all the unique perspectives and wonderful styles provided.

But we did our best (with some major help from our invaluable community) and hope you enjoy reading them all as much as we did!

Continue reading A Year in Review: 2019 in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation →

Happy Friday (and Ugly Christmas Sweater 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!

We begin with a comprehensive piece on the Craft Your Content blog by Chandler Bolt who writes about the common struggles with creativity that often plagues the best of us, and what to do when it inevitably creeps up, earning him the top spot in our list this week.

In a close second, we find Jeff Goins who justly argues that when plunging into a new creative venture, it’s best to be different, as opposed to being better, while listing ample examples in a highly inspirational and personal piece that shouldn’t be missed.

Rounding off the podium is Jeff Greenwald of the BBC, who takes us back 25 years, and details how the first travel blog came to be, along with the (vastly different) struggles of that early era of the internet.

Next up, we get to Georgia Wells of the Wall Street Journal, who reports about how many top  vloggers and other creatives are getting burned out by the rigorous demand of having to keep creating fresh content constantly to be listed favorably by the algorithm, and stay discoverable on the platform.

Finally, wrapping up the list is a short but sweet listicle post by Sandra Beckwith who shares with us some of the social media tips she obtained from social media experts from various walks of life.

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

Happy Friday (and National Violin 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!

We begin with Vice Magazine culture writer Lauren O’Neill, who takes us back to the early days of mobile social media, when smart phones were still new, and gives us a great reminder how visual-based apps, more specifically Instagram, have evolved and changed cyberculture and digital marketing over the years, and continue to do so to this day.

Next, we find Ali Luke who shares with us her top 21 mistakes that most writers make when writing their first e-book, first listing and explaining the common particular mistake, and then providing a useful “What to do Instead” tip to follow.

Just after Ali is Kelly Konya, who writes on the Grammarly blog her most valuable tips on how to write better in general, including to not write and edit at the same time, to avoid “throat-clearing”, and to sharpen your writing skills.

In fourth, we get to boice-Terrel Allen, podcaster, writer, and musician, who does a Q&A on “how starting a podcast changed his life, not letting fear get in your way, and what can be learned by listening to other people’s stories.” as succinctly headlined in the post itself.

Last but definitely not least, Maddie Rosier shares her secrets in her Medium piece on how to “speed write” good, solid articles in 60 minutes flat, providing a useful time management guide, along with relevant and resonating examples.

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

Happy Friday (and National Bartender 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 we start off with a really succinct and straight-to-the-point Medium listicle piece by popular writer Nicolas Cole who lists 19 things (based on his personal experiences) that we all, or at least those who want to make a living off writing, should be in full understanding of.

Just below, we find Eric W. Dolan, the founder of PsyPost blog, who summarizes the results of a recent psychological study which confirms that “increased cooperation between brain regions linked to both cognitive control and spontaneous processes is associated with heightened creative ability”, as he puts it.

Next up is Aaron Orendorff, guest blogger turned editor-in-chief of “Shopify Plus”, who tells his personal story and shares his experiences of how he started off at the bottom, grinded away and put in the work, made invaluable connections, and catapulted his writing career to the next level.

In fourth, we have Angelica Hartgers who shares with us her top four tips on how to stay productive in our writing endeavors, and how to not fall behind during the hectic Holiday season that is just around the corner.

And finally, wrapping up our top posts of the week is Anne R. Allen who takes a deep-dive into the importance (and best practices) of regularly leaving comments on relevant blog posts, as a networking, discoverability, and growth tool.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2019 →