Learn More About SEO with Janette Toral

essential online learning for the digital entrepreneur, with Renzie Baluyut.

Here's a snippet of a post I wrote up over at another blog of ours, inviting digital entrepreneurs from all over to check out this interesting webinar series on Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

So you have a blog, you got all kinds of social media going on, but why is it taking you so long to get any real traffic coming to your site?

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), while a relatively young industry, is a very high-demand skill among internet marketing practitioners. SEO involves bringing in quality traffic to a blog or a website from search engines through natural (or more appropriately, “organic”) search results.

Companies and organizations scramble everyday to achieve the topmost spot on a search result page, with the notion that the earlier your site appears on the list of search results, the more visitors you will get from the search engines. In effect, what you’re really after is web presence. SEO helps your blog or website achieve just that. Greater traffic potentially means increased sales, or at least an increased involvement with your target internet audience.

Search Engine Optimization is not only a great internet marketing tool, but is also a highly marketable skill set- sought after much by all kinds of companies, even BPO’s and foreign clients.

The Certificate Course on Search Engine Optimization Techniques will be conducted by none other than Janette Toral, one of the leading authorities on e-commerce and internet marketing in the Philippines. Know more about Janette Toral here.

The course will be conducted as a series of webinars-- online workshops and discussions- which means anyone can register and conveniently join in from just about anywhere in the world, as long as they have a good enough PC or laptop, as well as a reliably stable internet connection.

The hands-on webinar series will touch on tips and techniques to essentially get your blog or site to the top of search engine rankings-- search pages on Google, Yahoo, and Bing- and stay there.

Topics that will be taken up for The Certificate Course on Search Engine Optimization Techniques include:

• An introduction to search engine marketing & optimization
• Identifying niche positioning for products and services that you'll sell, how to target customers, buying frequency and motivation.
• Keywords discovery, attractiveness analysis, and implementation.
• Improving your website structure and navigation.
• Improving your website page titles, description, menus, body text, other assets, and good content (on-page optimization)

The course runs for three days: October 6, 8 and 10- a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, from 6 to 8pm, local Philippine time (GMT +8:00). October 6 and 8 will focus more on theory, discussions and demonstration, while October 10 will touch more on comments on work submitted to the speaker for assessment and feedback.

More details on the SEO Certificate Course can be found here on the webinar series' event page. Or you can go right ahead and register for the course straight away.

Cheers, everyone!

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Looking For Royalty-Free Music?

scouring the web for worry-free music with Renzie Baluyut.

I was working on a bunch of promotional videos just earlier on- nothing too fancy, just a few clips to promote our upcoming events. It's been some time since I've done any significant work editing video anyway. But it's always fun- I miss the days I get to do work on audio and video.

Anyway, for those of you putting vids together, with plans of uploading your work up on video services on YouTube, MySpace, Vimeo, etc., you know that one of the more important concerns is making sure you don't step on any copyright toes. Also great if you're in the business of creating and producing your own podcasts and video-blog entries.

There are a lot of great resources for all kinds of royalty-free music available online. One site I've managed to find is Kevin MacLeod's Incompetech.com. His work is licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0". Which generally means it's cool to use his music as long as you give him proper and due credit.

I've managed to get a good number of tracks from Kevin MacLeod's site. And I've actually found a particular piece just perfect for my video project. But just like any business-savvy netrepreneur, you will probably want to have several sources of royalty-free music bookmarked.

I hope to compile a good list of these sites soon for all to share and support. That's the least we can do for these forward-thinking musicians, artists and fellow entrepreneurs who have made our lives easier with what they do best.

Cheers, everyone!

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Webinars Are The Way To Go

new ways to do business with Renzie Baluyut.

I have recently attended some webinars with ProFora Media- a virtual events company based in the Philippines. There are advantages to being able to attend online workshops and seminars right at the comfort of your own bedroom. All you need really is a stable internet connection and a good enough PC and laptop.

There were quite a number of good topics this week: there were talks on social Media, e-mail marketing, setting up Amazon aStores, blogging and others. Our speaker was broadcasting live from Australia, and we had participants from all over the Philippines- Metro Manila, Bacolod and Cebu. The audio was fairly seamless, there was a good degree of interactivity, and all in all, the webinars were executed rather well.

I just realized that, particularly for small businesses and entrepreneurs, there's simply a huge potential for it. Other than the obvious purpose of holding all kinds of online seminars and meetings, I thought this platform can also be used for:

• Managing several branches or outlets all over the country.
• Keeping tabs of your sales team no matter where they are.
• Building yourself as an authority on a particular topic or subject matter, as a means of extending the reach of your blog, website or company.
• Chat party sessions, or town hall meetings- great for all kinds of communities from anywhere around the world.
• A great way for artists and musicians to meet their fans

And any of these can mutate in so many other different ways.

The challenge for webinar event organizers, however, in my opinion, is to get people to try out webinars and experience it for themselves. Webinars are a convenient and cost-effective way to get learning, at the very least. It's still a great way to do networking for those who want it, and I've already laid down some ideas for anyone with a business or organization.

For those who want to give webinars a try, the guys of ProFora Media and Digital Filipino have a series of online talks, in celebration of Digital Filipino's 10th anniversary- The ProFora Media Lightbulb Sessions- on Thursday, 17 Sept 2009. The webinars for the day include:

• 11am - 12nn "The State of E-Commerce in the Philippines" by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
• 2pm - 3pm "Briefing on the 3rd Digital Filipino Web Awards (2009)", by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
• 5pm - 6pm "New Trends in Outsourcing", by Gio Carino of Prodigy AE
• 6pm - 7pm "Online Video Marketing", by Mary Tolentino of ClientFirst
• 7pm - 8pm "Blogging For Money: How To Make Money From Writing Blog Reviews and News Articles", by Janette Toral of Blog4Reviews

Interested parties can contact ProFora Media directly, by checking out their Facebook page over here, or emailing them here: info@proforamedia.com.

As a public service, here's a little something about both Digital Filipino and ProFora Media, in the event you'd like to check them out:

Digital Filipino started out as an e-commerce resource website, run by Janette Toral, but has since then evolved into a community of web professionals, online entrepreneurs, new media enthusiasts and educators all over the Philippines.

Digital Filipino also serves as a venue to marketing Janette's books, articles, events, and advocacies. This site started last September 17, 1999 and continues to help a lot of people with their respective e-commerce and internet marketing needs.

Visit the website: http://www.digitalfilipino.com/
Join the community! http://digitalfilipinocom.ning.com/
Check out our blog: http://digitalfilipinoclub.blogspot.com/

ProFora Media is the Philippines' premier virtual events company, providing organizations, professionals and knowledge-seekers with new and innovative ways to learn and do business that are cost-effective and productivity-efficient.

Find out how webinars can work for your company today! Contact ProFora to attend one of our webinar, or arrange for a demo for your organization today.

Our website: http://www.proforamedia.com/
Check out ProFora on Facebook!
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ProForaMedia

Cheers, everyone.

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10 Sites with Free Images for your Blog

notes on Blogs and Blogging by Renzie Baluyut.

This post was originally published in my other blog in December of last year. Since then, there had been changes with that site's general direction, prompting me to move much of the original content over to this blog right here.

Digital Photography and Blogging go hand-in-hand. It is not uncommon for bloggers to take their own pics and post them up on their own sites.

Still, there are a lot of bloggers out there who aren't that much into digital photography- I just got into it myself earlier this year with my trusty Canon. So where else can you possibly get photos to use on your blogs?

Here's a list of ten sites you can go through if you're looking for pics to use on your blog:

1. Flickr. Flickr is Yahoo's very own photo storage service. It's quite popular, and many Flickr users offer their photos for use to the public.

2. Stock.Xchang. I've been using Stock.Xchang for years, as far back in my days of radio sales and marketing, finding images for powerpoint presentations. Lots of royalty-free stock photos, and easy to navigate around.

3. Image After. Another collection of free stock photography.

4. Google Images. Google's own database of online photos. There's a whole lot of pictures here, but since they have different types of copyright, it means that not all would be available for free use.

5. Buzznet.

6. PD Photo.

7. Open Photo. An excellent stock photo community, with lots of categories to browse through. Creative Commons licenses apply to different photos.

8. Our Media.

9. Free Stock Photos. Great site for free stock photos, but rather limited in terms of its selection. Still, free is free, and you can't beat that.

10. MorgueFile.

In any case, it's always wise to review each site's Copyright policies- as it always is when you visit sites with pics you'd want to use for your blogging efforts.

Thanks to the guys over at AboutWeblogs for the tip.

This post, by the way, was originally published The Status is NOT Quo | RenzieBaluyut.com in December of last year. At the time, that blog of mine had a lot of articles on a whole lot of topics. It's been streamlined since then, and all posts on Marketing, New Media and Entrepreneurship were moved here to KeyboardMonkeys.com.

Cheers, everyone!

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Online Entrepreneurship with Renzie

With this blog, I formally begin my career as an Online Entrepreneur.

I've been blogging for a little over a year now (as of this writing), but it wasn't until November of 2007 that I have realized the potential for blogging to be a legitimate online business. Later I found out that it's not just blogging: there are quite a number of ways anyone can make money online- legitimately, safely, without having to sell yourself short, or resort to shady dealings or anything of the kind.

That being said, welcome to my latest blog, "Online Entrepreneurship".

Though I admit, I'm learning as I go, just like everybody else- this blog is meant to document my ongoing Quest for Financial Independence. I'm more than willing to share tips and advice to anyone else willing to walk the same path as I am.

So "Online Entrepreneurship" is a learning blog. I'll post my realizations and discoveries as they all happen. There's a lot to be learned out there, and just about any real-life business can translate well into an online asset. And just like any successful endeavor, it's going to take patience, discipline and time.

All this is probably in connection with my desire to start a new life, which I blogged about elsewhere.

So what's there to learn in here?

• Tips on being a better online entrepreneur. Management concepts, time management, marketing, and staying in the entrepreneurial mindset.
• Guides to online learning, recommendations on what podcasts to listen to, blogs to read or websites to visit.
• Building better blogs; how to start one from scratch, how to market it, and make the most out of your traffic.
• Internet Marketing; something every online entrepreneur should know. Stuff on SEO, using social media, buzz marketing, etc.
• E-commerce and the growing digital marketplace.
• And other topics that I haven't thought about now, but may want to dig into much later on.

Feedback is definitely most welcome. I would appreciate questions, requested topics you'd want me to touch on, and opinions on all things Online Entrepreneurship.

Cheers, everyone!

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