My iBlog8 Philippine Blogging Summit Review

Year 2005 I first heard of the word “blogging” when I was a college graduating student. I somewhat “belittled” its worth back when then blogging is defined as an online diary for one’s happenings, rants and raves. Late of 2009, that all changed when I signed up to Blogspot with no idea what domain I will take or what niche will my blog be! Now, blogging is not anymore the definition I used to know about it before. It is now used for marketing, advocacy and so many possibilities we never imagined it would evolve this way. When I started blogging I did not thought about money, I was trying to make use of my idle time.


The two day iBlog8 Philippine Blogging Summit that I joined with other 300 plus active bloggers of the country, made my passion for blogging burning more! The diversity of ideas from different speakers stirred my mind I wish I would have blogged earlier. Carlo Ople talked the most drooled part – blogging’s money making potential. He talked about relentless passion of a blogger should be: continuously sending cold calls and emails, writing at night, covering events with no pay , networking and building relationships to clients, advertisers and brand managers. Whether one blogs for money or advocacy, one should consider any of these points he said. It is better to have direct advertisers over Google adsense. Direct advertisers pay more over the adsense. A blog should have a media kit (in Powerpoint or Slideshare) about what it is, revenues, expenses and rates always ready to give to advertisers.

Sean Si talked about SEO (search engine optimization) – that titles are the most important in a post, should be not more than 70 characters long and make sure the keywords (what you write about) is there The idea behind this is when people type those keywords the blog should in page one or next and should be in higher ranking . People click first those searches that are in the first pages positioned in the upper part compared to succeeding pages. Keyword density is how many times the keyword appear in the post. And boy! No need to count and not even needed to spread it out all throughout the post, just keep writing good content he said.
Jason Acidre, a former professional counterstrike gamer (is there one?) talked about link building. Under inbound marketing is the organic way of cheaper, effective & measurable way of being searched within the blog posts of linking previous posts from current posts. Having a great content is always the reason why a post is shared across social media sites so it is important to continue and promote it like hell! In doing so what happen is it translates more links, better search rankings, constant flow of traffic and more lead sales!

Janet Toral talked about the Politics of Blogging. She explained that a blogger have time to grow and should know his/ her skills or what sets him/her apart from the rest. Posts should not be almost always events it should have some personal posts from the blogger – there should be a balance and remind the readers that this is not a website, this is operated by a person. That blogging is not all about money and freebies. It is all about getting involved in any positive acts whether it is paid or free. If invited in events to cover be professional: treat events as a way to meet people who can be a source or way of another greater opportunity.

There is no single group of bloggers online that can monopolize and attend to the needs of all the bloggers. There will always be new groups of bloggers that will arise, but that does not mean we are “divided”. Each groups with different niches have different purposes. Yes, bloggers do fight each other too! A blogger should be responsible about what he/she posts. Bloggers should be responsible against cyber bullying, mob thinking and no to tyrant bloggers! Blogging is also a competition that brings more opportunities, ads, sales and recognition. That one’s blog is his/her brand. It should have identity in order to stand out from the rest. At the end of the day a blogger should decide if he/she let other influence him/her or be the influencer online. Of course I would choose to be the last one!

One can’t blog without embracing social media! Bloggers should have presence to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc and make sure to interact with their readers, followers and comments may it be a positive or negative. Atty. JJ Disini talked about social media legal issues like use of photos with credit but without consent (I do it a lot!) and many more. As expected everyone got confused while listening to his 15 minute talk and he said that it is his job to confuse them. Comedy blogging is really not everyone’s forte. I laughed my heart out to this speaker. His presentation was very funny that I forgot to take note of his name. But I did managed to catch him on Twitter - @mistervader. I will follow him sometime soon.

There you go! I learned a lot and had so many millions of follow up questions when I reached home. Will I use this blog to network, to gain money, build brands, to be recognized or to save lives? I then recalled back what was my initial intention why I blogged the first time – to impress someone. Damn! Yeah but never did it happen but I found out what are the stuffs that interest me and these are the reasons that keep me blogging until now. As Carlo Ople says in blogging “walang basagan ng trip” a street expression meaning “do it in any way you want it - no one cares anyway so long as you’re doing the right way”.