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.

So without further ado, here are this week’s (Jan 4 – Jan 10, 2020) most valuable posts from the /t/BES creatives community:

? 1.  The Rise of EduTube: How Social Media Influencers are Shaping Universities
“For Dotson, the benefits of producing content that can help students understand a subject in more depth or decide which campus to spend three to four years of their life at outweigh the drawbacks.”

? 2.  Should You Blog Anonymously or Use Your Real Name?
“One of the decisions you face when starting a blog is whether or not to use your real name. It can be a tricky decision, because there are pros and cons to whatever you decide.”

? 3.  Going to Dinner with Your Troll, and Other Tales of Writing Gone Viral
“For writers, “going viral” means that you have a piece of writing (most likely something that was either initially published online, or at least accessible there) that has been rampantly shared in a short amount of time.”

4. Stop Using Grammarly
“I know that figuring out English grammar and spelling is tough. I misspell quite a few words when I’m writing. But I’ve come to realize that I don’t actually misspell a lot of different words.”

5. 8 Strategies That Will Help You Improve Your Writing Skills
“In today’s post, I’m sharing eight ways you can become a better writer in the New Year. These are the same steps I followed in 2019 and that I plan to implement again in 2020.”

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: Christian Grab on Unsplash