VINCE GOLANGCO: The Man Who Turned Storytelling Into Business

Admit it or not, you know him.  You might even like him.  And why won’t you?  He’s a personality who hosts social events and a successful radio disc jock who holds the title as one of the cutest DJ’s in the Metro.

But before gaining fame from his radio job, Vince Golangco is first and foremost a blogger.

He founded WheninManila.com, a site which frames anything about the Philippines, as well as the very successful Blogapalooza, a sort of association of bloggers.

Seeing his expertise about blogging, Foster the Paper secured an interview with Mr. Golangco last March 2, 2012 at Paragon Plaza, who gamely shared the ingredients of his success in this relatively new world of blogging.

Below is the excerpt of the interview. Read on to know how wheninmanila.com and Blogapalooza were born and to learn the basic things for new bloggers from non-other than the master blogger himself!

Foster the Paper: How did you start blogging?

Vince Golangco: When I moved back in the Philippines I just wanted to share my stories with my friends from San Diego, from all over the world so I would just start writing.  I had different blogs before and of course for this one, for When in Manila it came from the same way as “When in Rome, do as what Romans do” so When in Manila, here are the things to do.  So it’s just me wanting to share stories.

FTP: Was there any particular reason why you started blogging?

VG: It’s just that I wanted to tell stories.  I’ve always been a storyteller.  So it’s like if I go to a really good place kunwari I visited a restaurant “Oh my God it was so good!”  I would tell my friends “You need to try this restaurant,” or “Grabe, you should try this dish. Ang sarap sobra,” so from that it was just me wanting to tell stories.  I started a blog while sharing things I did, from not just Manila but the Philippines and really the world because I travel a lot.

FTP: How did it become successful?

VG: I’ve read a lot about SEO which is Search-Engine Optimization.  Let’s say we both have the same blog.  Let’s say both of our blogs talk about gadgets, cellphones but I have better SEO.  So when someone searches, let’s just say they search for iPhone, , they will see my blog on the page one of Google.  Your page will come out on page 7.  So, sino kayang mas madaming hits? Ako.  Because no one goes on page seven of Google eh, do you ever click on page two?  So that’s  what SEO meana, unahan kayo sa Google.  I knew that.  Plus you have to write every day.  It’s really a commitment because content is king.  So you need a lot of content and the way you write has to be a certain way where it’s SEO friendly.  So a combination of liking to write and reading about SEO and doing research, combine those, for your blog to be successful.  I think those two are the main things. 

FTP: What are the perks of being a blogger?

VG: You get invited to go at the coolest events and you get to meet the coolest people.  Just two or three days ago, I was invited to Malacanang, to meet the President.  I get to meet the president.  And I got exclusive screening because National Geographic is showing a new documentary made by the Filipinos called Inside Malacanang.  The first time anyone ever watched it was inside Malacanang and the president was there so I got to shake his hand, I got to take some pictures.  Just among, amongst, a few other people I get to meet from blogging.  In New Year’s, I partied with Solenn because they wanted me to write about ‘Partying with Solenn’.  So I partied with Solenn and even better is they paid me to party with Solenn because they wanted me to write about it.  Who wouldn’t want to get paid to party with Solenn?  But it’s not just about the money though.   It’s really about meeting people.  I get to meet cool people and then I get to share my stories, so I’d say that that’s the most fun part, the best part about being a blogger. 

FTP: What’s the concept behind Blogapalooza?

VG: Because WheninManila.com gets so many inquiries.  Every day I get about 10-20 emails from people asking about getting promoted on my site, or how can they meet two bloggers or they need help with their online social media.  So eventually me and my friends said “Hey how about we put together one event, which is Blogapalooza, where all the bloggers can come and they can meet businesses who want to meet them?”

Because we found out, especially with small businesses that they can’t afford to throw a blogger event.  Because it is expensive.  To throw a blogger event, first you need to pay for the venue, yun pa lang it’s already 10k, 20k for these whatever restaurants.  Then you have to pay for food.  Oh my gosh that’s expensive!  Then if it’s a big venue then you have to pay for a host, lighting, sound system, etc.

Either way it’s expensive to throw a blogger event but worse, is the businesses, they don’t know who the bloggers are.  They don’t know who to invite.  I’m good friends with a lot of bloggers, I know who to invite.  So Blogapalooza was about inviting good bloggers who can you know, who can help a business out if they like your product.  If they like your product then they can write about it, it would help the business in some way.  And at the same time, businesses get a chance to meet them and the bloggers on their part, they get a lot of cool things to try out and a lot of cool things to discover.  So that’s the concept behind Blogapalooza, we call it the first B-to-B networking event which means business to blogger networking event.

Foster: How can one get good SEO?

VG: It’s very, very complicated.  SEO. The two main things I teach people whenever I speak, again it’s very complicated there’s a lot of aspects to it, are keywords and links. 

Let’s start with links.  Links, if a blog has a lot of links it tells Google that your blog is important.  Cause think of CNN, a lot of people link CNN.  Like, “According to CNN…” and then they link.  Right? On their blog.  Or they’ll like, “Oh, did you see the news on CNN? This happened today…”  So people linking to CNN,  there’s a lot out there.  That tells Google, “Oh there’s a lot of people linking to this.  It must be important.  This site must be good, so I’ll rank it higher.”  So that’s one.  If a lot of people are linking to you,  your SEO is better.

Number two is keywords.  A keyword is not just a word, it could be a keyword phrase.  So keyword is one word or a phrase.  Let’s say you are looking for food, let’s say steak.  ‘Steak restaurant in Manila’: so that the keyword phrase.

In you blog post itself there are certain ways, certain number of times you need to put that.  They say you need to repeat that about three percent of the time.  So let’s say you have a hundred words, you need to repeat that at least three times.  And then it has to be in your title, it has to be in your keywords.  Also in keywords you should bold one, underline one and italicize one.  So there are certain techniques to it, but the main thing is you repeat those keywords.  You repeat it over and over again in your article. 

So in an article you also don’t use pronouns.  Let’s say your article is about Justin Timberlake in Manila.  That’s your keyword, Justin Timberlake in Manila.  If I said “Oh Justin Timberlake is in Manila now.  I am so excited.  He is here to sing his songs,” that’s wrong.  Because no one’s looking for ‘he’ or I say ‘he is here to sing his songs’.  The way you write online is “Justin Timberlake in Manila, I’m so excited,” or “Justin Timberlake in Manila to sing his songs, blah, blah, blah”.  So you repeat it.  It gets a bit repetitive.

You don’t do it too much but you do it again roughly three percent of the time, three to five percent of the time.  So don’t use pronouns.  Those are the two main things, keywords and links.  Links at the beginning you ask friends, you say “Hey, pa-link naman.”  It’s called exchanging links.  So you link to them, they link to you, something like that and there are some online sites that does exchanges.  But eventually once you write good articles, people will link to you, sometimes they will get pictures from you, “Oh I got this picture from When in Manila” or somebody will link to you like “Oh my God this is such a good article you need to read this”.  So by the way it’s very complicated, it’s very long there’s a lot to it.