To kick off the year for this blog (wedding preparations not withstanding), I have decided to make a conscious effort to embrace social media. We’re not talking about collecting “friends”on Friendster, Plurk, Twitter, or Facebook here. I am talking about building one’s online reputation. Being an Internet marketer after all means putting your name out there.

Here are two obvious basics you can start with.

1. Own your domain - Even if you don’t know anything about building a website, nail that <firstname><lastname>.com domain down. All it takes is a credit card and $9.99. You can take your time learning everything there is to know, but your domain name might be gone in the next hour.
2. Find uniformity – All of us have tried searching for our names online at least once or twice, and what are the first results that come up? Social networking. I have acquired the usernames alvinj on Linkedin, alvinjimenez on Facebook, and alvinj on Plurk. I wish all of them were alvinjimenez, but someone beat me to it on Linkedin and Plurk.

Doing the above will take more than 10 minutes, and will guarantee yourself a lifetime of controlled findability.

Unlike in the US, the online city guide landscape is very limited in the Philippines. Clickthecity.com was pretty much the only choice you had if you wanted a comprehensive city guide. Even then, people only visited the site for the TV and movie schedules (yup, that’s really it).

It was sometime last year when Summit and NMI decided to join the city guide wars with Spot.ph. Needless to say, it was a complete mess. Back then, there was already a clear disconnect between the site and (objectively speaking) the magazine arm of one of the most prestigious print companies in the country. The site clearly didn’t enjoy the same quality control all Summit magazines were known for.

As I write this, both Spot.ph and ClicktheCity.com are undergoing various levels of redesign, reformatting, or whatever you want to call it. Hence leaving me with too many things to write about (and thus more reasons for you to come back here).

All of this just made me think — more than the occasional “blog-about-this-blog-about-that” event, online newspaper, or social networking site, are Filipinos ready to leave everything traditional and go online?