Happy Friday (And National Hot Chocolate 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 digital gold goes to Aytekin Tank, founder of Jotform, who shares his views of the fear of criticism, explains how it’s ultimately unavoidable, and points out five tips on how to effectively avoid being hindered by it in your own journey or venture.

Up next, Nicole Bianchi explains why great headlines are über important in today’s noise, and lays out her five step process on how to write them to be the most effective at capturing interest in the article itself — the ultimate goal.

Rounding off the podium is Tom Kuegler, prolific Medium writer, who shares with us the psychology into how and why he routinely (and like clock-work) manages to pump out written content more than almost any writer out there.

Monique Danao provides some tried, tested, and true methods of building backlinks to your blog and/or website, so that your efforts can become more discoverable on Google and other search engines, and finds herself in the fourth spot.

And finally, closing out this week’s list is Sola Kehinde, who details out how to get better at writing by utilizing various forms of feedback, and using it to identify and highlight the problem areas that may stand out. After all, we learn best from our mistakes.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Jan 25 – Jan 31, 2020 →

Happy Friday (And National Compliment 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, our top spot features an insightful piece by Tony Fahkry on Mission.org on how to step out of our comfort zones (admit it, we all have one!), and face our fears, obstacles, challenges, and potential inevitable failures, making it a rare occasion to justify the use of “YOLO!” (Sorry! ?)

Just below in second place, we’re given a fresh look into recent new findings about the psychology of procrastination, as reported by Christian Jarrett over at the BBC. He recaps that experts in the UK and Canada have suggested (with viable proof) that procrastination may be more of an issue with managing our emotions, not managing our time. Worth a read if procrastination is an on-going issue for you personally.

Next, we get to Tim Denning, a familiar name here lately, who shares the writing schedule he swears by, and that’s worked for him over the years to build his name, portfolio, and most importantly, actual readers — millions of them.

Christian Mihai reminds us about reciprocity in his short and sweet piece on his The Art of Blogging blog, landing in fourth place this week. He makes an excellent point that mutual co-operation with other bloggers, writers, and creatives is a huge networking factor that many don’t put much thought and/or action into.

Finally, Ali Mese provides us with thirty awesome bite-size tips on how to write better with the use of superior grammar. Little things like this add up, and these useful tips can help you drastically elevate your writing to reach another level.
Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Jan 18 – Jan 24, 2020 →

Happy Friday 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 featured a new report by Paresh Dave of Reuters that Google will, within two years, be getting rid of, or significantly changing the way web cookies are handled by advertising companies and organizations on Chrome, a similar move Apple did two years ago to its Safari browser, finally securing a huge win for the web and privacy as a whole, and earning the top spot of the week.

In 2nd place is a Medium piece by Rachael Hope who shares her personal insights and experiences with platform “discoverability” and how unfair and luck oriented it can be, and details how it’s your job and full responsibility to do enough self promo to get found by potential readers or viewers.

Next up, we find Gregory Gundersen who writes a highly detailed and technical summary about all of his direct (and indirect) benefits of maintaining (and writing for) a research blog, and how it contributes to the overall research community of the past, present, and future.

Emily Kirkpatrick lands on our fourth spot this week with her well-written and inspiring personal story about how one (recent) viral tweet flipped her world and professional writing career upside down, and how she stood by her beliefs without backing down.

Last but definitely not least, is a short and sweet “how-to” post by Niki Mosier of Moz blog, specifically for those who run a podcast (or are thinking about it) and want to be more discoverable on Google. Coincidentally, it’s another one of those posts that actually follows it’s own advice to a tee.
Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Jan 11 – Jan 17, 2020 →

Happy Friday (and National Bittersweet Chocolate 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!

The first gold of the new decade goes to Chris Stokel-Walker, who reports on how the “EduTube” or “StudyTube” vlogging community has grown to inescapable heights, how it’s changing education as a whole, and how colleges and universities are scrambling to catch up.

Right behind, we find Darren Rowse of Problogger who takes a look at the pros and cons of using your real name as opposed to an alias in your blogging and/or creative journey.

Rounding off the podium is Courtney Maum, author of “Before and After the Book Deal”, who shares her experiences and insights on internet virality, along with the inevitable trolls that come with the territory, and offers great advice on how to deal with it all.

Matthew McFarlane argues that using Grammarly, or any other grammar and spelling checking software, can backfire in various aspects and hinder one’s ability to improve in the long run, earning him a spot in the fourth place slot.

And finally, we arrive at Nicole Bianchi who provides her eight top strategies that she personally used in 2019 to continue improving her writing, and details them out individually in a helpful and easy-to-digest listicle format. Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Jan 4 – Jan 10, 2020 →