Blogging and Commercialization: Do we, as content creators, provide what we promised?

All our efforts and dedications here at Freedom Wall are finally rewarded. Freedom Wall won the Best Cebu Travel Blog award and, Ian Limpangog, the man behind the blog was recognized as Cebu Pacific’s Travel Blogger of the year.

We are thankful to everyone who became part of our journey, especially to our sponsors, friends, and blogging family.

When we accepted the awards, we were given two minutes for our acceptance speech. Here is the full transcript of what we shared during the awards night:

Since almost every blogger group in Cebu is represented here, I think this is a perfect venue for me to share my two cents.

For us to sustain our blogs, we partner with individuals or companies. These companies give us experiences and in return, we, as content creators, share the information about their existence, promotions, new products, and even strategies. 

This cycle is called commercialization, one of the ugly truths of blogging mentioned by Marj on her blog: dakilanglaagan.com. It’s a beautiful article—you guys should read it.

It is painful to accept, but commercialization is necessary in order for the blogging community to strive and flourish. It is somewhat like a symbiotic relationship, a mutualism more specifically.

Part of this what we called commercialization is providing value. While our partners fulfill their promise, do we fulfill ours? Are we doing enough? Or are going an extra mile?

Providing value is not about posting content and earning reactions. Social media “virality”, though at some point helpful, is only a one time, short-lived achievement.

It doesn’t always translates to leads or should I say, it doesn’t always convert to the partner company’s ultimate objective. 

More often than not, people react to the content because they like it, they like you, or they wanted to get noticed by you, but not on the product that you flaunt on your posts or photos. Not to mention, we also rake reactions from various syndication groups that we participated in. Those reactions, more particularly, are not valuable.

Providing value is about creating immaculate contents that transcend through time and are readily available to the people who are truly interested to the material content, NOT the content material. 

Should I elaborate? Material content is the message. It is something that you want to imply or something that you want your followers to learn while content material is the post that you deliver, it could be an instagram photo, a facebook post, or a blog article.

Posting verbatim press releases is not providing value. Rearranging the paragraphs or rewriting with synonyms is not providing value either.

Write about the details of your experience, that way, you make your contents unique. Search engines will find your content interesting, and eventually give you a better ranking.

It is sad that many people join the blogosphere because of the perks that come with it, not because they are driven by passion to make a change or small impacts that matter.

So guys, think again.

Thank you, BCBA!

Ian Limpangog, BCBA 2019 Finalist