Filipino Hanapbuhay in AI Era Leveraging Digital Platforms

Updated , Published at 2:29 PM PHT,
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Building Sustainable Income Streams Thru Digital Platforms

The evolution of Filipino "hanapbuhay"

Traditional images of "hanapbuhay" in the Philippines present families working together in the fields or making a living as fisherfolks near the coastlines. These families work closely together since they are related to one another by blood or marriage. With the advent of technology before the AI Era, these rural or fishing areas have began to develop into small bustling business centers that adopted e-wallet apps like GCash and Maya. Since digitalization has irrupted into the rural areas, in the AI Era, many city-dwellers decided to lower cost-of-living expenses by returning to these provinces to setup their remote work. This article seeks to "bridge" the traditional concept of Filipino "hanapbuhay" into the AI Era where content strategies such as zero-click for search is relevant to earning a living.

What does "hanap" and "buhay" mean?
Answer: The Filipino term "hanapbuhay", can be divided into two Filipino words: "hanap", meaning to search, and "bu-hay", meaning to life (stress is on the first syllable), or living/alive (stress is on the second syllable).
What does "hanap" and "buhay" combined mean?
Answer: If hanap and buhay are combined as a compound word, it means "search for a livelihood" or "search for a living" - searching for a job, occupation, business, employment, or career to sustain one's life and family [1].
What does "Hanapbuhay" mean in relation to Search?
Answer: The word "hanapbuhay", rooted in the word "search", is also relevant to present methods Filipinos use in Facebook or YouTube as a means of livelihood, like content creation in blogs/social media marketing and web production (planning, designing, developing, and optimizing a website to meet business goals). These two digital means also use "search" as a means of livelihood. Search engines with AI capabilities are vital in both content creation and web production [2][3].

Rosauro's Legacy: Our parents' generation, and a generation before them, always valued being simple, conservative, practical, and self-sufficient in their "hanapbuhay".

  • These are the values they embodied in their work.
  • So, we were taught that the goal isn't about "getting rich quick."
  • It's about learning well the ropes of "hanapbuhay", with the practical wisdom of past generations, and by applying it also to present strategies of investing in AI search technologies.

While deeply rooted in traditional values, the pursuit of "hanapbuhay" in the digital age demands a new level of adaptability. Past Filipino generations who have "withstood the challenges of wartime" embody the traditional ethics. The younger generation, who have learned from them, now demonstrate how those values can still be significant and relevant in times of economic downturn. However, since the current landscape is characterized by rapid transformation and pervasive uncertainty, it also necessitates the adoption of innovative strategies to maintain both competitiveness and sustainable growth. This is possible by continuously monitoring economic environments and staying attuned to trends and the evolving needs of business in both B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) MSME relationships.

With Filipinos being inherently resilient - a human skill known to be irreplaceable in the AI industry - they can combine it with a proactive mindset and preparedness.

  • A proactive mindset is crucial for navigating economic and environmental shifts.
  • It can transform disruptions into opportunities for growth.
  • It involves adapting to relevant AI technologies and to acknowledging human connections in the responsible use of AI for the benefit of all.
  • It is testament to the new rallying cry, "Sana all!" [4].
Adaptability & Growth in Business & Technology Systems

The strategic goal to adapt and grow as a Filipino MSME or professional freelancer in the era of AI is to leverage tools responsibly for insights and productivity boost. For content creators, successful AI adoption can mean aiming at producing copy and other digital content that delivers and obtains leads. However, the objective is not just to produce copy that gains leads, but to achieve it with:

  • efficiency and cost-effectiveness,
  • enhanced customer experience and productivity,
  • value breakthrough,
  • and tool reliability and accuracy [5]

This is the real purpose of proper and responsible AI adoption: to make work easier, with better quality output, and in less time for better revenue and ROI. Also, Filipino MSMEs and professionals can integrate those human skills that invite the Filipino economic community online with the spirit of "bayanihan, pakikisama, and utang-ng-loob" in their digital content. Additionally, they can imbibe their content strategy with a spirit of resilience that does not break the spirit of the Filipino MSME online.

This strategic goal can be applied to digital platforms using content to build income streams through

  • Personal branding & AI-optimized outreach in LinkedIn
  • Building community & authority on Facebook w/ AI technology
  • Amplifying reach & expertise through AI-powered SEO
  • Zero-click searches: Gaining visibility without the click
Personal Branding & AI-Optimized Outreach in LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a crucial digital platform for

  • professional brand development,
  • marketing your MSME
  • networking,
  • AI career development,
  • Job hunting.

You can do all these with AI tools that generate content, tailor engaging messages for your brand, and identify leads for connections or services offered.

Awareness of industry trends and connecting with a core group of professional family members, schoolmates, former co-workers, or MSME contacts is a good start to strengthen your professional platform. These main connections become the base to build new links to market your work expertise and skills to a bigger professional network through a marketing strategy called geotargeting (location-based marketing that reaches specific markets and channels income streams) [6].

Geotargeting helps:

  • precisely target the right audience & boost conversions
  • increase relevance with personalized content
  • allow "localized advertising" and "region-specific promotions, offers, and messages"
  • improve customer engagement

You can use AI to build your personal brand. A good personal brand integrates true-to-life storytelling which you can integrate with your unique value proposition (UVP). Once you have determined your UVP, you can strengthen awareness of your brand, by repurposing long-form content from other platforms to your LinkedIn posts, so that you aren't just networking for connections, but actively establishing your expertise and unique insights into the LinkedIn feed. Repurposing long-form content means you reformat your blog posts or other articles into other formats like short reels, videos, audio content like podcasts, or infographics (an effective format used by LinkedIn professional content creators). This is what Mr. Neil Patel, a popular professional voice on LinkedIn, mentions in one of his posts as making your brand visible "everywhere".

Building Community & Authority on Facebook w/ AI Technology

Facebook is another important digital platform for vital social media connections and niche marketing. For MSMEs, you can readily open a Facebook Page for your MSME and use it as a channel for producing short reels that promote community engagement and useful content dissemination. These reels can contribute very well to lead generation and brand visibility, giving more opportunities to tap new income streams. Images, AI-automated responses, and geotargeting can also be used. A real example in the PH would be antique buy-and-sell MSMEs in the province of Rizal. They use real photos of antiques and geotargeted ads that effectively reach leads in Pasig City.

You can also use AI to generate content that delivers consistent brand value. Many GEN AI tools can be employed to easily produce copy and short videos for posting with less work and time. These can reproduce leads that free up your precious time for the human insights needed for "brand storytelling", as we did in this Archive. Brand storytelling that embodies your (unique value proposition) UVP involves nuance and cultural cues that can pitch your value well. It can be combined with the efficiency of AI to provide clues for better presentation, and also act as a soundboard to test your ideas. Eventually, the clues AI provides lead towards crafting a more effective sales pitch.

GEN AI image of modern urban Filipino household

Symbolic GEN AI image of modern Filipino "hanapbuhay" with less extended family members involved and living in an urban setting: not as strong ties with neighboring families, but stronger economically with ties to private and government institutions.

Amplifying Reach & Expertise through AI-Powered SEO

To expand reach and attract new income streams through digital platforms, SEO best practices are crucial. Content scaling can be done with AI through long-tail keywords, making your content more specific to your niche expertise. Due to the conversational use of AI, you can research long-tail keywords that are often used by those who search in AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini. Content scaling can be done with product launches or information updates executed with the right timing and the right keywords. Executed at the right time, your expanded reach can tap leads to new income streams [7][8].

A blog or website is not a luxury anymore in the context of "hanapbuhay" for Filipino MSMEs or professionals in the age of AI. So, with your site, you can optimize for long-tail keywords in your posts or articles. These keywords directly contribute to establishing expertise and authoritativeness. This AI-powered SEO strategy is integral to the goal of producing and delivering valuable and high-quality content to your target market. As more loyal readers engage with your site, you can formulate an income stream strategy that can serve this audience. And this income stream is certain if you implement Google's EEAT framework [9].

The following are more SEO best practices that deliver. It can appear at first more technical than content scaling, but if specifically needed for your MSME or professional work, there is no obstacle to learning each strategy given in the list below:

  • building FAQ-based content to match AI snippet-friendly formats
  • employing AI for schema markup,
  • use of internal linking strategies,
  • meta description optimization,
  • analyzing site visitor data to increase your SEO metric.
Zero-Click Searches: Gaining Visibility Without the Click

A particularly relevant strategy for MSMEs with blogs is the "zero-click strategy". This approach focuses on providing direct answers to user queries on search engine results pages (SERPs) without necessarily requiring a click-through to the site.

Your brand's site still gains even without the "click", because visibility in the source links increases brand awareness supraliminally. When the user who searched remembers a phrase or word from your site listed in the source links after AI Overviews, he can remember it (supraliminally), and then decide to go back and gather more information from your site for stronger clarity in his search.

A key strategy here is to find that keyword or key phrase in your title page that functions "supraliminally".

How to optimize for snippets in Zero-click?
Answer: To optimize for featured snippets, you can format your text to provide immediate answers to questions using concise, clear formatting, such as bullet points or numbered lists, and question-based phrasing.
How to use structured data for Zero-click?
Answer: To use structure data, a schema markup must be applied to your copy to make it easier for Google to understand your content and display it in rich results like FAQs, product reviews, business events, food recipes, etc.
How to know high-intent queries for Zero-click?
Answer: To know the high-intent queries that users place in AI search, conduct keyword research to identify actual questions that your audience is asking.
How to build brand authority for Zero-click?
Answer: To build brand authority, you must consistenly enhance your brand and work to to make it appear regularly in results. This reinforces your expertise even without clicks [10].
Rosauro's Cue

Unlock the power of "Hanapbuhay," the Filipino concept of searching for livelihood, blending traditional resilience and practicality with cutting-edge AI strategies. Discover how digital platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook empower sustainable income streams. Learn to navigate the AI age, transforming challenges into growth opportunities, and making that first step to build an AI-ready workspace for hanapbuhay.

To learn more about how to apply these strategies to your MSME or professional work, send us an SMS or an email given in our Contact Information page.

You can also follow the Archive at LinkedIn or give us a share at the icons below the Cookies Notification. A detailed guide to register an MSME in Pasig City is also in this Archive.