Happy Friday (and National Beach 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 was one filled with some major drama in not one, but two seperate stories, including one that captured our top spot.

With over 30 MILLION followers combined on Facebook and Instagram, buddhist monk turned life coach and influencer Jay Shetty is kind of a big deal. It’s also kind of a big deal that he was outed for giving himself credit on countless videos and pictures of quotes written by others.  Check out the article for all the details including the full video by Nicole Arbour who provides ample examples.

Up next, at #2, is Shaunta Grimes with her highly relatable piece about how to ethically but effectively market yourself and whatever creative endeavour you’re on. She wisely reminds us to just be ourselves throughout the process and remember that the eyeballs you’re trying to reach out to are also attached to humans. You have to make sure you blog, and often, as it’s the absolutely most effective tactic out there, and do the tasks that are required to be done to help spread your work far and wide.

Securing third place is a motivational webcomic shared by Gary Vee on his Instagram that shows how your surroundings can completely change any situation. Things like creative endeavours simply take time, and no one can predict the future or how it will turn out. But being around positivity and good vibes, and having people rooting for you, can make the journey, and often just a learning experience, more enjoyable and humbling.

In fourth, Lucrezia Iapichino from Blogging For New Bloggers, takes a legal look into the GDPR, or fully known as General Data Protection Regulation. Although it’s a European law passed in early 2018, it essentially applies to all blogs and websites, since a large part of internet users reside there and are bound to their laws. The only way to fully get around following it would be to force block that entire cluster of users from accessing your site, but that would be just a terrible and shortsighted idea.

Finally, in the fifth and final spot, we arrive at the second drama post mentioned earlier, this time involving an Instagram influencer getting involved in a motorcycle accident. Zoe Kleinman, Technology reporter for the BBC, gives us a glimpse of how influencers are using controversial and unsafe tactics and situations to try and build attention, which ultimately results in more followers, more sponsors, and more clout.

So without further ado, here are this week’s (Aug 24 – Aug 30, 2019) most valuable posts from the /t/BES creatives community:

? 1.  Life Coach Jay Shetty Exposed for Plagiarizing Quotes
“A monk-turned-motivational-speaker-turned fraud? Nicole Arbour has accused motivational speaker Jay Shetty of plagiarising his entire career from other people’s work.”

? 2.  A Marketing Guide for Introverts (Mirror)
“Writing is such solitary, interior work that it tends to attract introverts. We work well alone. And if we happen to have a little bit of ambivert in us — if we like to be around other people some — well, that’s okay. “

? 3.  Comic: If You’re Not Happy, Change Who You’re Listening To
“Misery unfortunately does love company and sadly that’s even more true when it’s a loved one, please let this little drawing pierce your heart and allow you to rethink who you are listening to.”

4. Does the GDPR Apply to Bloggers?
“It doesn’t matter if you are based in or outside of the EU, if you target users based in the EU or monitor their behaviour, you have to comply if you collect, process, store or otherwise handle the said data.”

5. Instagram Influencers: Have We Stopped Believing?
“Last month, Nashville Instagrammer Tiffany Mitchell posted photographs of herself lying by the side of the road. She wrote that they were taken following a motorbike accident.”

That’s all folks! You can view all the rest of the community’s top submissions (9 more) here.

Be sure to tune in next Friday for another great weekend reading list that will make you a better and more informed blogger, writer, and/or content creator! If you have anything awesome to submit that others might enjoy, feel free to do so — it might even end up on next week’s top five!

And don’t forget to help others find this nifty resource by sharing it around! Huge thanks!

PS: Run a blog, vlog, or podcast, or any other creative endeavor? Start an accompanying homebase/community (like ours) on Snapzu (a social sharing platform for bloggers/creatives) and utilize it to help you dominate your social media game using the immense power of content CURATION, and effortlessly create and send out awesome routine round-up posts/newsletters like this to help grow your audience (and newsletter) 3x faster. It’s free! More info here.

Header image credit: John Westrock on Unsplash