It was a fun learning experience last February 20 when Freelance Blend in partnership with Manila Workshops held the WordPress Blogging Basics at The Office Project co-working space at Salcedo Village.

Attendees from various industries came together with different purposes, ranging from wanting to supplement their freelance career with a thought leadership platform, just figuring out how to set up a blog, or taking their existing blog to the next level. With these, there came a collective goal of learning about the basics of setting up a WordPress blog.

Investing Time and Money at WordPress

Marv generously shared his journey to freelancing and how he got into blogging. Although he started his blog in 2014, he now has a following of freelancers and people who want to take the leap to freelancing.

I may have started in 2014 but I invested on the hosting and design. That’s when your readers know that you’re serious on your craft.

There were also demo sessions and multiple Q & A’s throughout the first half of the program about monetizing one’s blog, how much to invest on your first blog, image usage copyright issues, and blog design specifics, among others.

Participants were grouped into 4 where a representative will be picked as a candidate for the Most Promising Blog of the workshop by the guest blog experts.

Meeting and Learning from the Blog Experts

During the afternoon session, the blog experts dispersed to the groups for the pitching session as well as for sharing their knowledge with the attendees.

Marv de Leon talking about search engine optimization with his group members.

Jonel Uy, owner of Digital Circles, sharing with his group about the importance of social media marketing to drive traffic to your blog.

Fitz Villafuerte, founder of 199Jobs and blogger at Ready To Be Rich, while shared with his group how to brainstorm on post topics that will answer their target market’s questions.

Martine de Luna, chief blissmaker at Make It Blissful, shares with her group on how to cultivate a community around one’s blog.

Among the 4 attendees that pitched their blog idea, Maita de Jesus of The Best of Everyday won first place with a copy of Cyberpreneur Philippines as her grand prize.

Congrats, Maita!

A panel Q & A happened next after the awarding. The blog experts shared trade secrets like having sponsored posts as a better income generator for a lifestyle blog while having Google Adsense as that for a personal finance blog.

How do you stand out from the noise? Find a niche within a niche.

Know what your audience is looking for. Write about that.

Start a personal blog and after 3-4 months, you will notice which topics you like writing the most. Build your blog on that.

It was a great experience not only for learning but meeting people who will share your knack for discovering the power of thought leadership using WordPress.