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.

So without further ado, here are this week’s (Dec 14 – Dec 20, 2019) most valuable posts from the /t/BES creatives community:

? 1.  How To Break Through Barriers To Creativity
“When creativity has deserted us, making progress with our content is like drawing blood from a stone. A form of mental fog clouds our work, and progress is slow and painful.”

? 2.  The Secret to Innovative Work: Be Different, Not Better
“For years, I was obsessed with comparing myself to others, constantly measuring my own accomplishments against the work of others. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I always felt like a failure.“

? 3.  The Origin of the World’s First Travel Blog
“In 1994, the goose chase of finding connectivity and filing digital dispatches was an exotic exercise. It made me reliant on tech-savvy locals, whether in Senegal or Shanghai.“

4. YouTube Created a Generation of Young Stars. Now They Are Getting Burned Out.
“Some top influencers are deciding to disconnect from the video-sharing platform, worn down by what some say are the demands of YouTube’s algorithm for fresh content to promote.“

5. Social Media Tips From the Pros
“I recently polled experts for their top small business social media strategy success tips for a client assignment. Today’s article shares the “overflow” social media tips.”

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: Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash