Happy Friday (and National Author’s 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!

Bijan Stephen of The Verge captures our top spot this week with his deep dive into one of YouTube’s most successful channels “Hot Ones by First We Feast”, it’s origins, and recipe (pun intended) for success. A well researched and highly informative read that should not be missed.

In a close second we have Ryan Law over at Animalz blog who published a piece about what he explains as “a copycat crisis in content marketing”. He interprets that it’s no longer worth utilizing the overused skyscraper technique, and makes a solid argument to put more effort into experimentation and trying new things. Agreed!

Topping off the podium is writer “Yanyi” on the “realities of leaving your day job, the complicated relationship between being creative and being truly productive, and the value of sometimes changing your mind” as is adequately summarized by their sub-intro.

Next up we find a post by Deanna Ting from Digiday who examines how a handful of major online publishers are trying out and jumping on young and growing social platforms in their attempts to reach their younger audiences, and to get their “foot-in-the-door” advantage as early as possible.

Last but definitely not least, Medium writer Shannon Ashley provides her personal knowledge and experiences in her short but sweet piece about how to never run out of ideas and how to find inspiration.

So without further ado, here are this week’s (Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2019) most valuable posts from the /t/BES creatives community:

? 1.  Inside Hot Ones, the Wildly Popular and Violently Spicy YouTube Show
“The business of making videos is like the business of making any other high-volume food product; the processing machines can’t stop, because the public’s hunger is never satisfied.”

? 2.  Copycat Content: SEO Tools Got Us Here, Humans Will Get Us Out
“There’s a copycat crisis in content marketing. Explore the search results for virtually any lucrative keyword, and you’ll find a bunch of articles with lookalike titles, headers and examples.”

? 3.  Q&A: On the Differences Between Creativity and Productivity
“Writer and critic Yanyi on the realities of leaving your day job, the complicated relationship between being creative and being truly productive, and the value of sometimes changing your mind.”

4. What Publishers Are Learning From Being on TikTok
“All three publishers said they view TikTok primarily as a long-term way to engage and grow their respective audiences, similar to how they did with Snapchat a few years before.”

5. How to Always Find Something to Write About
“I used to think that being a writer was a lot like being an entrepreneur or inventor. As if you needed one really good and unique idea just to get started. I’m happy to report that I was wrong.”

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

Be sure to tune in next Friday for another great weekend reading list that will make you a better, wiser, and more informed blogger, writer, and/or creator! Don’t forget to bookmark this blog, or better yet, add us to your RSS reader if you use one! 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: Omid Armin on Unsplash