Pilipinas Popcorn is a lifestyle and entertainment online magazine based in the Philippines. It covers everything from local pop culture, Philippine entertainment news, event and restaurant features. It’s also one of the top 100 blogs to follow in the Philippines—all thanks to a stellar editorial team who also happens to be Murphy Consulting’s very own content creators.

The site is a PR project from Murphy Consulting and its Filipino counterpart, Linkage Web Development. It first went live in September 26 and is still churning out exceptional content to this day.

As with every site launch, 2016 was an uphill battle for Pilipinas Popcorn. It struggled to gain traction, what with the other sites it’s competing with at the time. Various content strategies were executed—weekly local TV show reviews, commentaries on the latest pop culture and social media buzz, and jumping into memes.

The editorial team went through countless content planning sessions and underwent all sorts of trial and error scenarios that not only wear them down but also built up a resilience towards failing numbers too.

The main problem always boiled down to the struggle of gaining a significant fanbase. No matter how great the content was, it seemed as if it didn’t hit the mark entirely.

Fast forward to December 2016, though, when Pilipinas Popcorn got the boost it needed to bang the doldrums and emerge as one of the country’s best lifestyle blogs.

Content creation was never a problem for the Pilipinas Popcorn editorial team. But it wasn’t until November 2016 when one article got the attention of thousands of Philippine entertainment fans and sent the site into a rolling frenzy of new users and and unique page views.

A November 16, 2016 TV episode recap of Maalaala Mo Kaya? (Can You Remember?) started the avalanche of page views and sessions for Pilipinas Popcorn. The team’s blog coverage of a local Christmas event in Baguio City, Philippines also hit it off with numbers, with almost 8,000 views by the end of the year.

This helped the Pilipinas Popcorn editorial team figure out the initial type of content that the site would go on to produce until the first quarter of 2017.

TV recaps and quick news coverage of developing stories during the following year helped add to the fire that Pilipinas Popcorn started to burn. Eventually, though, that momentum started winding down, bringing the editorial team back to where they started. But with the end of an era always gives room for another.

2017 was the year that brought Pilipinas Popcorn to local influencer status because of its approachable branding and the distinct styles of the writing team. Since its past articles were able to catch lots of views, the writing style also gave way for a convincing prowess that also defined what Pilipinas Popcorn is to this day.

Local brands and restaurants started noticing Pilipinas Popcorn and jumped on the influencer train. That’s when the site became a local blog that brands went to for quality content that didn’t only have a great play on words but also photos and vlogs that helped add fuel to their influencer campaign.

That nailed the brand that the site wanted to be. Although it still publishes occasional movie reviews, entertainment news, and interactive listicles, local partnerships with brands are the main source of income and type of content that Pilipinas Popcorn produces on a weekly basis.

So what is Murphy Consulting’s role in all of this? Apart from the technical maintenance of its website, the editorial team is where success is at. As previously mentioned, the Pilipinas Popcorn team are the same people working on all of Murphy Consulting’s marketing and content-related campaigns. The team also handles the on-page optimization of its content to ensure that the same system is used for Murphy Consulting’s clients.

Simply put, Pilipinas Popcorn is a passion project that continues to generate conversations, deliver value, and elevate influencer marketing locally and nationally.

As of December 2019, across all search engine results pages and its website, Pilipinas Popcorn continues to achieve the following milestones:

30,000 total monthly website audience

37,000 monthly page and website clicks

57.89% increase in click through rate

And of course, this all translated to a whopping _____% in conversions overall.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Through Pilipinas Popcorn, local clients for Murphy Consulting’s Filipino brand, Linkage Web Development, are being funneled into their doors following what they read from the lifestyle site. Apart from partnering with brands, Pilipinas Popcorn also serves as a gateway for local clients to avail of Linkage Web Development’s marketing and website packages for their own businesses.

It started off as an online lifestyle magazine. Now, Pilipinas Popcorn is a brand that doesn’t only make local businesses look good, but also turns online clicks to physical visitors that in turn avail of Murphy Consulting’s White Label services.