Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) leaves catastrophic damage in the Philippines
Super typhoon Yolanda, known internationally as Haiyan, is estimated to have killed 10,000 people in one province alone. There are 4.5 million Filipinos affected in the Eastern Visayas region, leaving thousands of families homeless. Yolanda wreaked havoc on November...
Halloween Fun Facts
Are you all set for your Halloween party? You may not know this but Halloween is the second highest grossing holiday in the world next to Christmas! For kids, it means candies and post-Halloween toothache. For adults, it means spooky parties and over-the-top grotesque...
The Bold and the Brilliant: How Facebook Created a Global Social Network
A brand’s impact on its consumers can easily be determined by their loyalty and frequency of usage. Over the past weeks, we’ve been looking at brands that have achieved these and more. In our previous blogs, we’ve explored the principles that characterize Apple and...
The Bold and the Brilliant: How Google Became More than a Brand
Brands can make or break a culture. The strongest brands we’ve known have created a new norm not only in their industry but also in society in general. Last week, we kicked off our three-part blog series on The Bold and the Brilliant: Brands that Made a Difference by...
We’re Not Internet Marketing Experts, and That’s a Good Thing!
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” ― Socrates When I first joined Pepper a few years back, the firm’s focus was, as our About Us page states, “to provide you with an exemplary assistant who not only shines in performing simple tasks, but is also...
The Bold and the Brilliant: Brands that Made a Difference by Being Different
Every person is brand conscious to a certain extent. From the basic things we use to our niche preferences, we all have reliable brands that we always return to even if we’ve tried their promising competitors. Some brands are so good that they develop a deep sense of...
Strategic Outsourcing: 5 Aspects of Business You Should Never Outsource
Outsourcing has revolutionized business processes in many ways. From manufacturing to information technology, customer service, writing, administration, and even health care, outsourcing has removed the boundaries of traditional office space to make way for a more...
Picture Perfect: A Blogger’s Guide to Copyrighted Images Part 2
Images give life and character to any blog. A boring text-laden page becomes interesting when striking images are strategically placed along the way. We have previously tackled how to choose quality images for your blog. Today we’re concluding our two-part series on...
The Role of Social Media in Moving Filipinos to Action
Over the past couple of months, social media has become more than just a “personal” platform to thousands of Filipinos. It became a powerful instrument for Filipino netizens as they leveraged the reach of social media to gather resources, unite different people...
Picture Perfect: A Blogger’s Guide to Choosing Quality Images Part 1
Creating a blog involves multiple elements. Aside from your core content, you need images to support it. Pictures add variety and interest to an otherwise text-heavy page. As a blogger, you need to be discerning on what image you will use on your site. You can’t...
The Art of Building Your Blog Reputation: Encourage Reader Engagement
Businesses have been recognizing the increasing importance of blogs over the past years. In the 2012 study done by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, it showed that 171 (34%) of the Fortune 500 companies have corporate...
The Art of Building Your Blog Reputation: Create Quality Content
Building your blog reputation is no easy task but that is not to say that it can’t be done. It takes specialization, content building, and reader engagement to back it up. In our previous post, we looked at how you can establish your expertise. Reputation is all about...
The Art of Building Your Blog Reputation: Establish Your Expertise
The blogosphere is practically a world without limits. Despite the more than 133 million blogs indexed by blog search engine Technorati since 2002, more are still being created every day. The demand for blogs has been huge as well with 77% of internet users reading...
Navigate Through Your Brain with Mindmapping
In a previous post on Beating Writer’s Block, we briefly mentioned mindmapping as a way to get ideas out from our heads and onto paper. Today, we’ll revisit that topic and delve a bit deeper into mindmapping. Many of us take notes in a linear fashion. Lists and...
A Virtual Assistant In My Hand: Apps That Help Me Stay Productive
I've often joked that my brain is stored on my phone. Compared to the amazing virtual assistants I work with everyday, I'm a veritable mess. Fortunately for me, my gadgets (and the apps I install on them) help me stay productive, and in a way, serve as my own virtual...
Be our Valentine: Get 27% off VA Services and a Full Custom SEO Gift
We're always looking for ways to spice up your life, and for the entire month of February, we've got two hot new ways to do so. Hot New Plans First up is a pair of hot new packages designed to give you more time with your loved ones. After all, you want to spend...
2013 List of Official Philippine Holidays
The Pepper bunch are a hardworking crew, and that's a good thing. On the other hand, some of us run the risk of pushing ourselves too hard, and that's not quite so good. Fortunately, every so often, the powers-that-be require us to take some time off to relax,...
Making the Most of Our VA Services, Part 2: Communicate!
Welcome to the second part of our primer on virtual assistants. Since you're here, it's a safe bet that you, like many people, you don't quite know what to expect from a virtual assistant, or VA for short, and aren't quite sure how to work with her. The simple fact is...
Making the Most of Our VA Services, Part 1: Don’t Expect Super(wo)man
For many people, working with a virtual assistant, or VA for short, comes with a steep learning curve. Most people don’t know what to expect from their VAs, and are never quite sure how to work with them. We’re not surprised by this, because just a few short years...
Finding Inspiration
No matter how much you love writing, or doing any type of creative work for that matter, it doesn't always come easy. It's inevitable - there will be times when your creative juices simply don't flow. What do you do then? We have a few ideas. Just beat it Sometimes...
Beating Writer’s Block
Writer's block sucks. Whether you're crafting a blog post, typing up an essay for school, preparing a report for work, drafting an email, or writing anything else, writer's block sucks. Yes, it sucks so much it bears repeating. Writing about how much writer's block...
Blogger vs. WordPress – Which Works Best for You?
Remember that scene in the Facebook movie The Social Network, where young Mark Zuckerberg blabbed about his bad breakup with his girlfriend online? He felt so bad and heartbroken, he even compared her to a farm animal. That was blogging back then—a whole new,...
How to Promote Your Blog in 5 Simple Steps
No matter how awesome your web design is, or how convincing your words are, it won’t really matter if you have no readers. People will need to know you have a blog in the first place. How? Here are 5 simple steps:
Typhoon Sendong: Deadliest Typhoon To Date
During the early hours of December 17, 2011, tropical storm “Sendong” (international nameWashi) struck Cagayan de Oro City, as well as neighboring cities in the southern Philippines, catching most of its sleeping inhabitants completely off guard. What would have been a merry Christmas for most families turned into heartbreak and longing for dead or missing loved ones.