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Saturday, April 22, 2006
Toral: Internet celebrity
By Janette Toral
Digital Filipino
Can the Internet help you become a celebrity? By all means, yes, even if you don’t want to.
Last week, I got an email from one of my e-commerce students. She is Leah Tirol-Magno, site owner of Bohol-Island.com.
Through the Internet, she discovered the business potential of selling real estate online. Her business is doing quite well, allowing her to take a vacation abroad. While in the United States, she got the chance to meet fellow Boholanos whom she only interacted with in her website forum.
If the Internet is used well, a person can become a celebrity in terms of stature and recognition in the community or social circle where they belong to. Leah related that she never imagined the stature the Internet has brought her. Her popularity surged that one local newspaper dubbed her as “Bohol’s Internet Princess.”
Her blessings prompted her to get involved in an Internet Literacy Project where she teaches young Boholanos how to use the Internet for free. She has reached out to about 15,000 Boholanos in three years.
Last Monday, I trained eight teachers and one entrepreneur on blogging 101. Apart from introducing traditional blogging definition, types, dos and don’ts, I spent a lot of time on content development ideas. The problem with writing, even for a column like this, sometimes you just encounter a mind block where you’ll be at a loss how to proceed. I have an Observer’s Deck that contains 50 flash cards which is intended to give people like me sparks in writing.
After the training, the students proceeded in creating their own blog. To ensure that it is done correctly, we integrated Google Adsense for revenue generation, blogroll through Bloglines.com and site traffic tracking through Performancing.com.
I asked them to blog about what they learned in our morning session using one of the 50 content development ideas as an approach. To make the exercise more challenging, I asked them to attend iBlog2 (http://www.iblogph.org), the Second Philippine Blogging Summit, last Tuesday and gave them topic assignments to blog about. I had the opportunity to see how they’ve fared and provided more advice to make their blogging activities more relevant and fruitful.
The iBlog2 event went pretty well last Tuesday. It had more than 200 participants and the amount of coverage that it is getting in the blogosphere is simply amazing. As my friend Ida Bata would tell me in her public relations 101 briefing, free and significant coverage is what a person prays for, compared to the advertiser who has to pay for it.
Imagine the possibility of at least 100 bloggers writing about the event. Wouldn’t that be fantastic! Do run a quick search at Technorati.com to see the volume that I’m referring to.
Yes, anyone can become an Internet celebrity today. Blogs provide such opportunity. Gone are the days when one has to have a big mailing list or forum to reach such a stature. Just have a significant blog that has regular traffic and be often referred to by news publications and experts, then you might just be on your way to becoming the next celebrity.
(http://digitalfilipino.blogspot.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 22, 2006 issue)
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