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.

So without further ado, here are this week’s (Jan 11 – Jan 17, 2020) most valuable posts from the /t/BES creatives community:

? 1.  Google Cutting Web Cookies, Ending Lucrative Tracking Tool for Advertisers
“Google within two years plans to block a common way businesses track online surfers, endorsing costly changes to how the Web operates as it tries to satisfy increased privacy demands from users.”

? 2.  Want to Succeed in Online Publishing? Stop Waiting for a Handout
“Whose job is it to make sure I get exposure? It’s my job, and mine alone. It is my responsibility to find the readers who connect with me and provide content they want to read.”

? 3.  Why I Keep a Research Blog
“Maintaining this research blog has clarified my thoughts and improved how I approach research problems. The goal of this post is to explain why I have found the process so valuable.”

4. Why I Quit My Full-Time Writing Job Over a Viral Tweet
“Too many of us are hired for our voices and then paid to edit them out again. Hired to produce an endless stream of titillating, yet anodyne, content designed to appeal to the widest possible audience.”

5. The Not-So-Secret Value of Podcast Transcripts
“What are the benefits of transcribing your podcasts and what’s the best way to go about getting them on your site? Niki Mosier breaks it down into 8 easy steps in this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday.”

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: Sasha Stories on Unsplash