iblog-5While things are still fresh in my head, I will now write about my iBlog5 experience and the priceless ideas I got from it. So to start things, let me inform you that I was 2 hours late. What’s new? I wasn’t able to catch the talk of my blogger friend Mica about Blogging 101 (with AJ Matela).

The Video Blogging 101 session gave me some insights about the how-to’s and what-else’s of vlogging. Azrael Coladilla and Kring Elenzano gave some helpful tips about video making. The talk tickled a portion of my senses and gave me a small push at the back, whispering, “Why don’t you try video blogging?”, then another portion of my senses twitched a bit and uttered a response, “Forget it, you don’t look good on camera.”

Mobile blogging is really a huge technological innovation. I haven’t personally tried mobile blogging but I’m planning to use my phone for Plurking. By the way, if you want to add me as a friend on Plurk, my user ID is Technofied. See you there!

I started taking down notes during the Do’s and Don’ts of Blogging 101 talk, so I may have a more detailed take on this segment. But I decided to make a separate article about this so let me just give a brief insight about it - Blogging should come from your heart, and not from other’s hearts. Was that clear enough? Maybe not. But seriously, if you want to have an authentic blog, just make the most out of it by blogging YOUR thoughts. Don’t let other’s thoughts affect your writing because at any given circumstance, haters and critics will always exist. They’re like cockroaches. Hitting a couple of them with your slippers will cause a negligible effect on their population.

The part that I was most excited about was the Blog Promotion and Traffic Generation Strategies 101 by Coy and Winston. They gave helpful tips on how to make your blog appear from a pool of seemingly countless blogs or websites around the world. They tackle about online visibility, increasing blog readers, maintaining high traffic and as well as reputation building. So how will I attract attention in the blogosphere? I think the best way is to do something bizarre and simply blog about it. Don’t forget to attach photos or videos as proof. I remembered when my officemate shared something about this weird blogger during our lunch chat. He said that this psychotic freak finds pleasure from killing cats. He blogged about his cat-ventures and his site swallowed a huge ball of traffic, well mostly from haters and animal rights activists. I bet he’s saying, “Who cares? I got tons of traffic. The cat species will never be extinct anyway”. But seriously, if you want to promote your blog and take it to the next level, just put these things into practice: write quality posts, write about passion and expertise, try to be unique (put your handsome picture on your blog) and join social communities.

The afternoon session was a little less interesting for me but I think I was able to grasp lots of things from the succeeding talks - Legal Issues in Blogging, Preparing Bloggers for 2010 Elections and Blog Advertising Situations. Legal issues really matter, and as far as I am concerned, I have had some copyright issues in the past when I worked as a part time writer. Since then, I became more careful in making posts for my blogs.

2010 Elections is fast approaching, and I realized that bloggers can make a huge difference in the political situation here in the Philippines. I also learned that blogging was one of the key factors that placed Chiz Escudero on the legislative seat. Blogging is definitely a force to be reckoned with.

I will simply give a shout-out to our friendly sponsors from AyosDito, Philippine Online Chronicles and Yehey. Way to go guys! Special mention to Ms. Janette Pacquiao.

Fitz Villafuerte gave some crafty advice about pro-blogging. These are the things that pro-bloggers will tend to keep to themselves (probably these are top secret tips as far as non-pro bloggers like me are concerned), but thanks to Mr. Villafuerte, he shared them to us. I hope he didn’t leave anything inside his pocket. Peace Sir!

Anton Diaz tackled about the 4 stages of blogger evolution: Artist -> Advocate -> Entrepreneur -> Maven. Personally, I think I am still in the Artist stage because I am an artist. I breathe art. My life is an art. I am an artwork. I want a nude painting of myself. Please. Seriously, I think I still need to learn lots of things and I should first evaluate myself in order to determine my advocacies. I also need to write more quality posts before I go to the second stage of evolution.

So there you go. I hope I was able to give those guys who didn’t make it to the event an essential overview about the recently concluded iBlog5. I will definitely make a few more posts about some related topics because if I squeeze them all in here, this post might become too long. And long posts shoo away potential readers.

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