Empress Of Drac, A Cebuana Blogger

At first glance, the thought of initiating a worldwide event is like a vagary.  People are raising their eyebrows, some are pessimistic, and some don’t even give a deal.  The main point here is that, we successfully initiated something which would result to a global impact later on.  We don’t need to expect a lot because this is the first, and though we have some failures, we surely can learn from it.

I wanted to congratulate Cebu Bloggers Society Inc. for successfully launching the very first World Bloggers’ Day event at Parkmall Cebu just a while ago.  It’s actually the very first time that all blogging communities around the Philippines made representations for each group.

The event started with an Invocation led by Willand Cuna (CBS member), followed by a welcome address by Miss Ma. Carla Estella, PR Officer of Parkmall, Cebu.  This was followed by the presentation of the blogging communities from around the Phillippines by Mark Monta, founder of Cebu Bloggers Society Inc..  Three blogging communities sent in their presentations: Manila Bloggers’ Network (headed by Azrael Coladilla), SOCKSARGEN Bloggers (headed by Avel Mananzala), and Davao Bloggers (headed by Ria Jose).  And, of course, Cebu Bloggers Society Inc. had also presented a short AVP about their organization.

After the blogging community presentations, Mark Monta presented the newly elected CBSI officers to the public.  The following are Cebu Bloggers Society Inc.’s newly elected officers.

President - Vernon Joseph Go
VP for Content Management - Michelle Louise Maglasang
VP for Corporate Affairs - Agnes E. Jimenez
VP for Education - Jerry Gervacio
VP for Marketing - Michael Sinjin Pineda
VP Membership - Clarence Andrew Mongado
VP for Ways and Means - Mark Monta
Treasurer - Bryan Karl Yuson
Secretary - Wilhelmina Sarawi
Auditor - Jorich Ponio
BOTs for Special Projects
- Gerrymie Tampus
- Guada Conception Esmena
- Mark Alessandrew Abitona
- Prince Ryan Gilig
- Ruben Licera Jr.
Ombudsman/Legal Counsel - Atty. Ethelbert Ouano

The presentation of officers was then followed by the unveiling of Parkmall’s monthly blogging contest.  Agnes Jimenez, the Events Coordinator, presented the contest’s guideline and mechanics.  This blogging competition is open to all Cebu-based bloggers.

The bloggers then enjoyed a sumptuous dinner prepared by Parkmall’s best food tenants.  The event ended with the awarding of the blogger of the day, the one with the best cast-away outfit, and a closing remark by CBSI’s new president, Mr. Vernon Joseph Go.

A lot of raffle prizes were also given during the event.  By the way, Ricky dela Cruz of Rabsing.com, won the best cast-away outfit contest.  Atty. Ethelbert Ouano and Doyzkie Buenaviajie were the men of the event (emcees).  Thanks a lot to Parkmall’s Marketing Team, headed by Madam Judith Letty Sellner for the major support and sponsorship.

N.B.: Before ending this post, I would also want to give special thanks to the special team behind World Bloggers’ Day’s online launching.

Graphics and Design - Jim Villaflores
Press Release - Bert Padilla
Post & RSVP - Michelle Louise Maglasang
Article - Milafel Hope Dacanay
Wikipedia Release - Jerry Gervacio (to be published later)
Others - Mark Monta, Agnes Jimenez

Photos will follow later.

In the end, my loyalty to CBS prevails.  At first, I hesitated doing this because of that little mess that happened a month ago.  But when I think of it now, it’s just like a tiny splat of mud that temporarily stirs the very still water.  Cebu Bloggers Society Inc., no matter what will happen, is still the only winner in my mind and heart.

CBS is very dear to me because of various personal and official reasons.  This is why I’m voting for it (http://cebubloggers.com) in the PBA’s Bloggers Choice Award.  In the near future, I am quite sure that CBS will not only become the leading bloggers group in Cebu, but also, will become the Philippines’ premiere blogging community.  This is because, as what Bimbo Cabochan said, “CBS is a very powerful group.”

CBS is the most organized blogging community in the country and has the highest number of active members compared to other blogging organizations outside of Cebu.  Unity, respect, humility, and camaraderie are the main components that bond the group together.  Being tagged as a “very bureaucratic” organization, is definitely a compliment.  Arigatou ne!

Aside from email marketing and pay per click (PPC) advertising, there is one strategy that has been used by successful online marketers worldwide.  And that is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is an online marketing that proves to be very effective because it uses SEs (Search Engines) as its means of attracting website traffic.  This traffic includes people who are searching for anything on the web.  It is reported that more than 80% of American internet users are using search engines like google, yahoo, bing, etc. to look for stuffs to buy, or services to subscribe to online.  This means that if someone wanted to outsource services, he would likely use google to search for companies who offer outsourcing services.

It is recommended for online outsourcing businesses to use SEO to market their services.  Why SEO? Because it is more effective than paid advertising and PPC.  SEO is one of the best online marketing strategies that has been used by multinational companies all over the globe.

Below is a rough draft on how to optimize your website in order for it to become search engine friendly.  Note that I categorized each procedure as internal and external.  Internal means you need to have access to the administration page of your website to implement the task, while external procedures don’t require admin access.

Internal

1.  Identify Relevant Keywords - Let us take for example supportresort.com.  The possible keywords that should be used in order for it to top the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are support resort, online support, online support staff, hire staff online, outsource php programmer, outsource customer support and the list goes on.  These keywords should be placed on your site as meta tags.  If your website will top on SERPs, then a high volume of traffic will come in.  This means greater chances of attracting new customers to subscribe to your services.

2.  Sitemap -  This is actually very important in search engine optimization because it allows web crawlers to easily access your website content.

External

1. Link Building - This includes exchanging of links if you have a blog, or if your website has a link category.  This could also help increase traffic generation, thus increasing chances of getting new customers.

2. Submission to Directory Sites/RSS Sites/Social Bookmarking Sites - Another way of increasing the popularity of your site through the power of directory listing.

3. Article Submission - To maintain your online business credibility, it is also important to publish articles that are related to the services you offered.  This is another way of informing the public that the company doesn’t solely exist for profit.

4. Blogs - It is one of the most effective SEO tool.  This is because blogs are search engine friendly.  Unlike static websites, blog sites have mechanisms wherein search engine web crawlers can easily penetrate.  Most successful companies have blogs on their websites.

5. Forums -  There are lots of online forums where you can advertise your services by putting a link or banner in your signature.  There are also people who frequent in forums who are looking for cheap, yet high quality outsourcing services.

6. Social Networking Sites - Facebook, Friendster, Multiply and the likes are effective advertising mediums you can use to market your website for FREE. On the other hand, you can also tap bloggers to blog about your services.  This is what other companies have been doing as part of their online marketing strategy.  In my next article I will discuss in full details the importance of site mapping in search engine optimization.

Before anything else, I need to thank Miss Aileen Estoquia, for her help during our stay inside the UP Diliman Village. Xie xie ni for the very affordable, yet, very great accomodation. I also want to mention Mr. Xerxes Aaron Chua Bernades, my ultimate travel companion. Without him, my journey to Manila wouldn’t be that exciting.

I think, I’m the kind who expect too much, but has very low acceptance. I mean the summit is okay, but it is not what I expected it to be. This may sound unfair to the organizers who had shed rivers of sweats to make the event successful, but this is only my personal observation. This doesn’t necessarily reflect the majority’s impression. To make this review not so bias, I will enumerate first the positive stuffs.

PROs:

1. It was held in a very comfortable venue.
2. The activities started on time.
3. Free snacks and lunch.
4. Presentation equipments were all ready.
5. Some nice speakers(i.e. those ones who tackled Photoblogging 102, Video Blogging…)
6. Nice Q & A facilitation.
7. Great after party treats.

CONs:

1. There were no ice-breakers in between the talks.
2. A certain speaker didn’t discuss well the topic assigned to him. He seemed like he was just talking to himself and was talking about how people treated him because of the peculiarity of his blog. I don’t even think he’s aware of the audience’s reaction while he was there on stage. Good thing his partner saved the topic.
3. A few speakers were just merely reading from their power point presentation. Tsk…tsk…
4. A certain speaker was out of his mind. He suggested a system of leveling among bloggers, which I find unrealistic and should only remain a theory. From an artist to a maven? What is that? Jeezzz…
5. IDs were only given to the first 300 web registrants. This actually made me feel alienated. I’m soo weird. Haha…
6. Some of the participants had no free lunch(mostly those late ones). This is understandable since the event had a limited budget.
7. Siopao tragedy. I didn’t even bother to continue eating that thing. Haist…the prize of freebies…I sound sooo pathetic. I know. Hahaha!
8. There’s no getting to know each other activity or program during the after party. Bloggers from Manila stayed with their crowd, and bloggers from the south…well, had also obviously stayed with their own crowd. There were only a very few bloggers who made efforts to reach out to other bloggers. Everyone was very comfortable with their own beloved minions. Or, is it just me? Hehehe!

Lastly, to be fair, I did enjoy the overall event. I also learned a lot of new things and had also met few interesting people. Btw, here’s a CBS group pic during the after party at Katips.

Photo Credits: lord_dracula and vanjahnn

Related Posts(Copied from Ceblogger’s post)

If you wanted to seek diversion from your stationary and monotonous office slave life, habituated by same old faces of your friends and comrades, getting too close for comfort with your clanmates, tired of doing same old stuff, and wanting to breathe another flavor of carbonated oxygen, then you should have been hanging out with the CBS crowd.

The CBS crowd, a mob of cool online addicts who share common personality disorders, just had their first summer camp out and team building at Jardin De Busay.  An overdosage of appreciation goes to Mr. Vanjahnn, a fellow CBS mob member, for letting the the whole gang stay at their beautiful place.

The whole gang of raucous blogging cyborgs had spread live bullets of laughter and lethal nonsense talks all over the bloody place.  At the end of the team building initiation, team Wang-Wang, a team full of semi-carnal blogging cyborgs, emerged victorious over their lousy opponent, the name I won’t mention because I’m afraid it would just be a waste of bandwidth(peace team unknown, lolers).

On the other hand, a certain lousy cyborg got drunk and wasted during the event because he bragged that he can drink el hombre like a beer.  The result?  Well, the rest of the cyborg addicts molested his wasted moments and took a lot of photos to scandalized his holy body.  Lolers!  Peace be with you whoever you are.  Hahahahaha!

Below is the confidential list of cyborgs who made it to the said gathering:

1. Vanjahnn of FocalGlass.Blogspot.com
2. Mark of EUTS.Wordpress.com
3. Mikyu of Ifancy.me
4. Clarence of DahongLaya.com
5. Kai of CalendarNotes.Blogspot.com
6. Miong of MiongandMarquee.Blogspot.com
7. Empress of EmpressOfDrac.com
8. McBilly of McBilly.com
9. Attorney of Bethelo.Blogspot.com
10. Prince of RoyalGrapiks.Blogspot.com
11. Aldwin of Multiply.com
12. Bryan of WhatAboutBryan.info
13. Jorich of BeyondTheNorms.org
14. Tiannex of SimpolNiBai.Blogspot.com
15. Timoy of MugnaSaBadlis.Blogspot.com

Xie, Xie Ni for the fun and baka moments.  Hehehehe.

Photo Credits: Vanjahnn

A fellow Cebu Bloggers Society member, Pinoy Blogger, just informed the group recently that there will be a free summer blow out this coming May.  This event will be sponsored by Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort in cooperation with Pinoy World.  This activity is actually open to all bloggers in Cebu, but most specifically to CBS members.

Free resort accomodations, fun games, and sumptuous foods are waiting for all the participants.  In the games, the lucky bloggers can win gift certificates and other freebies.  In order to participate to this great summer event, the blogger must visit Pinoy Blogger’s post and follow a few easy instructions to register.

The posted date of this event was set to 9th of May, but this is in conflict with the schedule of the iBlog Summit in Manila which will be held on the same date also.  The CBS VP for Events, Xerxes Bernadez,  asked Pinoy Blogger to move this activity to 16th of May.

For further details about this event please visit Pinoy World.  And if you wanted to know more about this beach resort, you can visit Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort’s blog.

Photo Credit: bluewateronline.wordpress.com

I dunno what happened.  I’ve been busy for a few weeks and laid low in checking my site’s stats.  I just found out yesterday that this site has been removed from google’s search results list.  I found this by keying in my major keyword “empressofdrac“.  I used to google my site using that keyword and my main page always tops the results list, but yesterday, it’s the other way around.  I can’t find my site even in the last pages of the results list.  Instead it’s my forum which is hosted freely in forumer.com on the top .

I googled to check what happened.  I found out that google will remove your site if you put illegal stuff in there or when you do some dirty tricks to raise your page’s popularity.  But I did none of the above.

I checked my all in one SEO plug in set up and what I noticed is all the no index options are checked.  But I don’t think this has something to do with it.  The no index there are just for my categories, archives, and tag archives.  This is really a mystery to me.  I guess I need to do further investigation.  Tsk…tsk…tsk.