Happy Friday (and National Tell-A-Joke 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 top spot revolves around the blockbuster news hitting the blogosphere with WordPress parent company Automattic announcing they will be acquiring Tumblr. It’s unknown what changes may happen, if any, but the way they’ve been masterfully scaling WordPress to now power over 30% of ALL websites, they’ve earned our trust that they will make the right decisions to benefit the blogging community as a whole in the long run. Only time will tell.

Tim Denning makes our list an impressive second time in a row with his insightful look into motivation, how it affects us creatively, and how to combat demotivation when it inevitably arrives. A well written and relatable article that should not be missed.

Rounding off the podium is Jenny Justice with her insightful look into the psychology of rejection. In her Medium piece, she writes about how creativity comes in many flavors, but one thing is certain, there will be haters along the way. That’s just the nature of this business, and developing a thicker skin can go a long way in your endeavours.

Up next, James Scott Bell from KillZoneBlog  dives into Parkinson’s Law. As Wikipedia defines, Parkinson’s law is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. To avoid it, he explains that we must set and stick to daily theshold goals so that small tasks can be gradually completed along the way, instead of getting lumped and compounded at the end.

Finally, we arrive at an article (or more of an open-letter to Google) by Kamal Patel, founder of Examine.com, about how “Google is waging war on the peddling of magical pills and miracle cures by questionable health sites — and Examine.com seems to have been caught in the crossfire”, in his own words. He makes some great points, and hopefully the issues he and his team are having (which can happen to any of us, for any reason) are resolved sooner than later.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Aug 10 – Aug 16, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Book Lovers 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!

Douglas Preston from the L.A. Times captures our top spot this week with his investigative look into how writers are earning significantly less compared to just a decade ago because of various scams such as counterfeiting, doppelganging, title and sub-title cloning, piracy, plagiarism, among others. Little is being done about it at the moment, but it’s great to see this appear in a popular and nationally read newspaper, helping it garner it some well deserved attention.

In a close second, Darius Foroux lays out an incredibly simple but effective 4 step plan on how to form new habits that ultimately reflect your progress in life, and your creative journey. The pattern almost each and every time: Start small and work your way up.

Topping off the podium is Ann Marie Nieves from the Writer Unboxed blog, who focuses her post on small victories and how to embrace them, which coincidently is a bit of a continuation from Darius’ post just above. Great minds think alike! 😉

In our fourth spot Tim Denning, a popular Medium writer, self-reflects on the lessons he learned the hard (but common) way–by failing. Creating and launching a paid course is a growing and effective tactic in monetizing a blog or website, but as the space gets more congested, it will only get harder for those who dare step into the arena.

Last but not least, we arrive at The Art of Blogging, with Christian Mihai’s simple but effective list of things you can do to improve your blog and attract more readers. Some of these will take a significant amount of work, but that’s just how it works and sadly there’s no getting around it.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Aug 3 – Aug 9, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and International Beer 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 top spot belongs to Cali Bird from The Gentle Creative with her enthralling advice on how we as creatives can attentively balance our ambitions with the important people in our lives. Relationships are extremely important to maintain for keeping a strong mental health.

Next up, just below at #2 is Sara Fischer from Axios who details out some recent news about Youtube and their continuing struggles dealing with creator backlash, and ever growing competition from other video platforms.

Nathan Barry, notable CEO of ConvertKit, lands on our 3rd spot this week with his piece about developing good habits, and sticking with them thick and thin. Listing his own experiences, he explains how it’s always tough to start something new, getting easier along the way once the routine starts becoming more normalized.

Up next is a guide written by Stephanie Diamond with illustrations by Carlos Sanchez about “changing where you live and work in order to nourish your creative lifestyle” as accurately put in their own words. It’s a lengthy one at 2700+ words, but a good one!

Wrapping up our list is Nate Hoffelder with his insightful look into landing pages for your blog or website, how to utilize them as effectively as possible, and the best practices for whatever you inevitably may want to use them for.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: July 27 – Aug 2, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National All or Nothing 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 brings us an incredibly insightful piece by blogging pro Tom Kuegler who posts on Medium (you might need to use incognito mode if not a member) about how personal life experiences are an absolute must to bring blog posts to life, landing him the top spot in this week’s edition. It’s all about having knowledge and experiences that no one else has, and being different!

Up next is a post from early July, where our very own B.E. author Jakub explains how the ever so lengthy creative journey is a different experience for each and every one in almost every aspect, and how the concept of compound growth accelerates the speed of getting through it significantly. He uses a neat hypothetical vehicle concept to help get his points across.

Rounding off the top 3 is Christina Gleason on her relatively short but useful post about the proper use of copyrighted images, how not to just “steal” them from places like Google Image search, and how to legally and ethically use royalty-free image sources for the visual aspects of your creative endeavours.

Number 4 brings us Darren Rowse from the iconic ProBlogger blog who details out everything you need to know about evergreen content, which is generally content that doesn’t age and stays fresh, but most importantly shareable for an extended period of time.

Finally, in the fifth and final spot is a gloomy but striking piece by Michale Stelzner about how Google is making its products more convenient and easier to use, but at the huge cost of the creatives who produce the content that Google inevitably displays. About half of users who make a search never leave a Google results page because they get what they want right there and now — it’s a problem that will only get bigger as Google and its technology gets smarter.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: July 20 – July 26, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Daiquiri 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 started with some big news when Google announced that they are shuttering Blog Compact, an analytics tool that worked with WordPress and Blogger, making it our top and most impactful story and well deserving of the top spot.

Next up at #2 is a piece by Ryan Biddulph for our very own Blog Enhancement Blog! He provides us with invaluable insights into his prolific experience and how to gradually grow your name and value by taking action, and sticking to a process like he did (and does).

Topping off the podium is a wonderful illustration by @SylviaDuckworth on Instagram that details how the bulk of sacrifices and failures that eventually lead to success are mostly out of public view.

Moving on to the fourth spot is Carol Tice from The Write Life with her five helpful tips on how to craft the absolute best headlines for your blog posts and articles.

Finally, rounding off the top five is Sonia Simone, who provides us tips on how to write the best and most engaging list posts, or “listicles” as they are better known as. Unironically it comes in a listicle format.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: July 13 – July 19, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Simplicity 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 top spot is claimed by Tim Herrera, founding editor of Smarter Living, who writes a piece for the New York Times about the psychological complexities of dealing with perfectionism in our creative works, and looks into ways of snapping out of that nasty fallacy.

Following at 2nd place is Lucy Davies who provides 5 excellent and helpful tips on how to speed up your writing to get more pumped out in a shorter amount of time. It ends up being a lot of extra content over a long period of time.

Rounding off our podium spots is Adam Connell from Blogging Wizard who takes an insightful look into the art of leveraging social proof to make your profile(s) and website(s) look as authoritative and trustworthy as possible.

In fourth is marketing veteran Lorie Loe with her seven step outline of how to streamline and scale the process you use to create your content. Setting up a system will make it easier to be consistent, which is an absolute must in all of today’s noise.

Finally, wrapping up the list is a piece by chiropractor Dr. Brent Wells, that focuses primarily on the well-being of writers (and other professions that require lots of sitting), and provides tips on how to stay as healthy as possible to get the job done.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: July 6 – July 12, 2019 →

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’s top spot is claimed by Aline from interviewing.io who put over 2500 words into describing her ingenious tactics on how to write insightful, and more importantly, helpful pieces that consistently get the up votes to reach the front page of one of the biggest tech link sharing and discussion communities online. She’s also got the goods to back it up!

At #2, Ric Burnett from the gofindyourhappy.net blog shares his experiences and goes into what practices have helped him build his following to date, and provides helpful short-form tips what you can try yourself to give you a better chance to find the momentum that is required to grow those numbers.

Rounding off the top three, copywriter and blogger Nicole Bianchi takes a deep dive into the art of “cliffhangers” in writing and storytelling, details how and why it works on most of us, and breaks down how to strategically utilize it in your blog posts, books, emails, and social media.

Up next, self proclaimed creative Chris Ashby details how completely normal it is to not just fail, but fail constantly at most creative endeavors, and how the experience gained from those failures can be utilized to get better and advance to the next level.

Finally, we get to a common theme among writers, the pesky old “writer’s block”. Fiction writer L. Dixon shares her take on how to defeat writer’s block and provides eight tips on what you can try if you ever get stuck. Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: June 29 – July 5, 2019 →

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!

International bestseller and a multi award-winning author Jana Oliver captures our top spot this week with her guest post on The Write Life that digs into the important topic of stress and how it affects our writing, along with our creativity in general, and how to deal with it to minimize its effects.

At spot number two freelance blogger Dana Sitar points out how the concept of blogging (and other online writing) is very different that what we learned in English class, which mostly consisted of essays and other technical writing. Times have changed and so did expectations.

Next up at #3, Jasmine Garsd from NPR investigates the growing trend of paid advertising posts on Instagram masquerading as regular organic content and how young audiences have a difficult time distinguishing between the two.

Moving on down the list, we get to an insightful piece by David Lazarus, a Los Angeles Times columnist, about the various types of deceptive “dark patterns” found on blogs, websites, and social networks that confuse readers/viewers in order to increase metrics, opt-ins, collect data, or all three.

Last but not least, long-time blogger Anne R. Allen shares her experiences over the past ten years of her blogging journey, organized into ten insightful tips she learned along the way. Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: June 22 – June 28, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Selfie 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 top spot belongs to The Cut’s Katie Heaney with her very compelling and remorseless piece about how emotionally challenging and draining it can be to write on a regular basis and how being afraid of failure plays a major role.

Up next, Writer Dorothea Lasky “ruminates on the nature of creativity, witchcraft, and the eternal nobility of being an artist.” as explained in the sub-heading on her insightful post. We’re also  treated to an extremely detailed web comic about the daily routine of a writer in 26 parts, starting from A and ending with Z, Illustrated and created by Grant Snider of Incidental Comics.

Finally, Christian Mihai from The Art of Blogging lists nine common and useful tactics to increase readership/traffic to your blog, and an unidentified author from the WonderShuttle blog gives us a deep-dive investigation into Slack’s (Yes, the one that was just all over the news about their 20 BILLION valuation) content strategy that helped catapult them to get where they are today. Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: June 15 – June 21, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National Flip-Flop 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 best of the best has self-proclaimed indie maker Steph Smith thoroughly explain how to become great in whatever or wherever your passions take you, but not before becoming good, or even just decent at first.

Also featured are three excellent and highly insightful pieces looking into all sorts of ways in improving in the craft of writing, non-fiction specifically. Dana Sitar takes a deep dive into the differences between tone and voice and how to apply them more skillfully. Writer & business marketer Henneke lists 29 ways on how to escape content mediocrity. And Lynn Dickinson from Writer’s Digest explores the many habits (or lack thereof) of writing day-in and day-out.

Finally, Ian Bogost, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, dusts off and boots up a classic Macintosh SE, taking us back in time into the late 80’s and how writing on a computer was done in that era, along with the often humorous retro experiences that came with it. Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: June 8 – June 14, 2019 →

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, our 100th (!!!) issue of this series features insightful looks into the importance of work-writing-life balance in our lives, along with 3 unexpected principles for optimal creativity, by successful writers Jami Gold and Jennifer Blanchard respectively. Awesome B.E.S. tribe member katymac shared a web toon by Office Guy Cartoons reminding us that if you keep an open and undistracted mind, there’s more chance you’ll capture the big and clever ideas. Cory Hedgepeth dives into the seemingly ageless question of what type of casing is best for titles, headlines, ad copy, or subject lines. And finally, WaPo writes about how book sub-titles are getting ridiculously and unnecessarily long, because it’s a tactic that works significantly better for digital discovery and how in this environment, if you don’t do it, it leaves you at a disadvantage vs. those that do. Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: June 1 – June 7, 2019 →

Happy Friday everyone!

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 (30 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! Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: May 25 – May 31, 2019 →

Happy Friday everyone!

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 (30 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! Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: May 18 – May 24, 2019 →

Happy Friday everyone!

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 (30 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! Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: May 11 – May 17, 2019 →

Happy Friday everyone!

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 (30 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! Isn’t that the point!? Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: May 4 – May 10, 2019 →