Saturday, February 21, 2015

I Finally Attended the Blogopolis (Part 1 of 2)

Blogopolis is an annual gathering of bloggers organize by Nuffnang Philippines, the country’s premiere blog advertising company. For the longest time, I'm not attending the event because of its pricey entrance fee of P1,000. Yesterday, I was able to attend it for free and realized that you’ll just have to join their contests to avail of a free ticket.

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So Blogopolis has a lot of guest speakers associated with the blogosphere and they’re given 10 minutes to talk about their topic, which greatly varies from speaker to speaker. I was surprised at the number of speakers to the event and I only got bits and pieces of their advice on how to improve my blog. They’re constantly looking at how many minutes are left on their allotted time.

I’ll probably create a more detailed blog post on some of the speakers but here are the topics that the speakers talked about.

Ivan Henares talked about heritage, conservation and adaptive reuse. He emphasized that we don’t need to destroy old buildings – we just have to conserve it and re-use. He also talked about social media as a powerful tool to disseminate information. One example is how netizens reacted on social media about that building behind the Rizal Park that totally destroys its vista.

Sen Bam Aquino talked about WASAK (anti-kotong hotline), Sangguniang Kabataan Reform Bill, Go Negosyo Law and the status of Internet speed in the Philippines. He was a bit disappointed that netizens tend to notice Tweets related to his personal life that his work as a senator. He also cited a famous meme on Facebook (on how slow the Internet speed in the Philippines compared to other countries in Asia) and how it lead to senate inquiry with the telcos to improve this situation.

Pamela Cortez (and her co-author) of Pepper.ph talked about creating viral contents. They gave emphasis on providing quality contents on blogs and how they managed to achieve it. They gave tips like planning the content of the blog, to focus on quality and readability, to give different features, create magnetic headlines. They also achieved their position as one of the leading food blogs in the Philippines by giving unbiased ratings on the food and restaurants that they feature and by giving leverage on honesty and integrity.

Gang Badoy of Rocked Philippines shared the importance of having a good blog name and how important it is to be at the right place at the right time when an important event happens or simply being the journalist that you have to be. She also wanted Filipinos ask better questions, to complain intelligently, to look for a cause or advocacy and to choose the best language to one’s blog.

Representative from Acer Philippines showed the latest gadgets that will greatly improve our blogging experience. He mentioned that they called their product Liquid because it takes the form of its container, which means, it can fit the personality of its user.

Abe Olandres talked about increasing traffic and expanding contents to our blogs. He and his team from Yugatech achieved a whopping 3 million pageviews a month by content planning, having editorial calendars, studying social media and web analytics, having content diversification and YouTube-first content, doing re-purpose contents (looking at archives articles), offline engagement, horizontal & vertical content, and having thematic topics (based on season or occasion).

Michael Josh Villanueva of Gadget Match talked about the reason why he quit his job to become a YouTuber and shifted gears towards a new direction. He mentioned that the Internet is a great equalizer – and that you can achieve success online, regardless of the school you came from. He gave very practical tips on how to improve traffic on your YouTube channel and even gave some of his inspirations like Tyler Oakley, Sam Tsui, among others. According to him, to succeed on YouTube, you need a great concept, space, fast upload Internet speed and lots of practice. His tips are:

Produce great content
Be consistent
Make what you love
Be shareable
Be conversational
Find your niche

Jeff Lo of Pinoy Fitness told us his success story and how to took the risk of quitting his regular job and focus on his career, both online and offline, as the man behind Pinoy Fitness. He also talked about influencing other people, in a good way. The lessons he learned are:

1. Passion - love what u r doing
2. Find a need
3. Take a risk
4. Commit
5. Evolve -- let your passion transform you

They are just some of the numerous speakers at Blogopolis 2015: Shifting Gears. I’ll probably post the lessons I've learned from the other speakers, some other time. Thank you Nuffnang Philippines for the free ticket and hope to see you again next year for Blogopolis 2016.

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Ivan Henares talked about “Social History Online: Importance of Heritage, Culture & Tourism in Today’s Social Society”

 

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Senator Bam Aquino talked about “Putting The Message Across: Social Media as a Tool to Disseminate Relevant News & Information”

 

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Pepper.ph authors talked about “Audience Reaction Towards Viral Content”

 

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The hosts with Pepper.ph authors as well as Gang Badoy – who discussed “Empowerment of Advocacies Through Social Media”

 

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Acer Philippines representative showing the reasons why to choose Acer Smartphones.

 

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Abe Olandes of Yugatech talked about “Revisiting Possibilities: A Blogger’s Options for Expansion and Content”

 

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Michael Josh Villanueva talked about “Why I Quit My Job to Become a YouTuber”

 

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Jeff Lo of Pinoy Fitness talked about “Expanding Audience Beyond Social Media” Going Offline and Still Expanding”

 

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