Happy Friday (And National Tooth Fairy 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!

Starting us off this week is Paul Graham, founder of YC Combinator, and long time web writer, who shares his thoughts and views of what he considers “useful writing”, detailing how to achieve it in formal and informal essay writing, and providing real life examples of why it ultimately matters. Well worth our top spot this week!

Next up, we get to Katy Waldman of the New Yorker, who craftily reviews a new memoir by Elizabeth Tallent called “Scratched”, detailing “how the pursuit of perfection can paralyze a writer,” as aptly summarized in her own words. And you thought your occasional writer’s block was bad!

Wrapping up the top three is Benjamin Hardy reminding us that to succeed in any creative venture or journey, we need to constantly push ourselves to take action. By being relentless, we can tweak our craft, and can form habits that will help us eventually get to our desired destination. Failing is a part of the game plan, and that’s the only true way to learn to get better.

Just below, PJ Howland, SEO professional at Moz, reports on and details out his findings on how Google has removed “spot zero”, and how URLs will no longer serve in both the featured snippet and the front page of Google. These changes can have an enormous impact on SEO tactics and strategies going forward.

Last but not least, we arrive at Patrice Peck, writer for the New York Times, who puts the spotlight on the history of the ever-growing Jasmine Brand blog, which started 10 years ago, and shares some tactics used in it’s explosive growth that catapulted it to one of the top celebrity news sites and social media empires of today.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Feb 22 – Feb 28, 2020 →

Happy Friday (And National Caregivers 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 our list with Rosie Sherry, community manager at Indiehackers, who shares her secrets of how (and why) she curates all sorts of news, resources, and other interesting articles from outside sources to maintain a healthy stream of knowledge (and entertainment) to her communities on and off Indiehackers, along with her social media channels, and other online presences. A very useful and informative post that earns our top spot this week!

Next up, Divad Sanders provides his 5-part blueprint on how to structure and mass produce article after article using a systematic approach, ensuring digestible, linear, and easy-to-follow articles, earning him second place.

Rounding off the podium is Cristian Mihai, who reminds us that to blast through perfectionism, and to avoid or minimize the righteous fear that comes with the territory, we need to write fast, and edit even faster when producing content for your readers.

Just below, we find Kevin J. Duncan, Editor-in-Chief for Smart Blogger, who shares his massive guide on “How to Find (& Land) Freelance Writing Jobs” as the title suggests. It’s especially worth the (loooong) read for new-comers that can quickly catch up on the most recent information, strategies, and much more from the vast world of freelancing.

Finally, we get to Laura Wagner, who reports on Vice Motherboard the news of how an amateur sports blogger/reporter got his Twitter account “highjacked” by Vox Media, the company that employed him, even though it was purely his own idea and effort to do so on the side. As of today, the ball is in Twitter’s court to resolve this fairly.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Feb 15 – Feb 21, 2020 →

Happy Friday (And Valentine’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!

Let’s begin with Madeleine Dore of the BBC, who introduces the Get Your Life In Order (GYLIO) productivity “life hack” to the masses in her well researched piece on the ever-growing practice that may actually be the real deal, especially useful for those of us that also have to manage our digital lives on the side. This potentially life-changing advice may be well worth a read if you struggle with organization and getting things done regularly.

Close behind in second place, GaryVee hosts a keynote at the Senior Bowl Summit, and does an informative (and often humorous) Q&A about the history, present, and future of entrepreneurship, social media, digital marketing and other relevant topics in this 70 minute video.

Katrina Loos shares her top seven unconventional ways to be not only “followable”, but also “discoverable” on Twitter (but realistically, on most, if not all the other social networks as well), and presents some live-action personal tactics that worked well for her, and earns the digital bronze this week.

Next up, Daniel Cooper reports on Engadget about how domain prices are set to rise soon due to the ending of older Obama-era legislation that froze the price at USD $7.85. This will obviously affect entrepreneurs, businesses, creatives, and anyone else who hosts a self-hosted blog or website that has it’s own TLD.

Last but definitely not least, Darren Rowse, old school blogger and entrepreneur, shares his past experiences on how found the time to build his first sellable digital product (an e-book), and offers seven excellent tips that may help you do the same as a new avenue of potential revenue.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Feb 8 – Feb 14, 2020 →

Happy Friday (And Bubble Gum 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 we begin with Matthew Schneier of NYMag who details out how podcasting is growing, evolving, and making a massive impact on the younger generations in his well written and long-form piece.

Right behind, we get to Moz contributor Suganthan Mohanadasan, who gives us a glimpse into the ever-changing technology Google is continuously tweaking, and highlights the most important SEO changes coming over the next year that shouldn’t be ignored by any aspiring blogger, entrepreneur, or creative. Staying ahead in the game is extremely important.

Bilingual blogger Sergey Faldin provides us with some real down-to-earth rules he follows to pump out dozens of quality articles each and every month on Medium, and earns the digital bronze this week.

In fourth, we get to Chengwei Liu, Professor of Strategy and Behavioural Science, who gives us a neat summary of his recent research (and findings) on the topic of luck and the massive role it plays in business, or any other creative or entrepreneurial venture or journey.

Finally, wrapping up this week’s best is Cristian Mihai who shares his top 10 most straightforward and common sense tips that can improve your blogging, lays out how to stay “real”, and reminds us that the most important ingredient is good old fashioned hard work.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Feb 1 – Feb 7, 2020 →