Icon Pilipinas: April 2020 Transparency Report

*Last updated: May 5, 2020 (made corrections to spending)

Hello ICONists!

Wow, can you believe it’s already been two full months since we officially registered as a Public Representative (P-Rep) for the ICON network? 😱

Time sure does fly!

Especially when you’re working extra hard to promote + grow awareness of the ICON Project. 😊

Let’s recap on what our team at Icon Pilipinas was able to accomplish since our last update was published on March 22.

Icon Pilipinas Quick Recap

✅ Increased followers on Facebook from 2,620 to 39,515.

✅ Achieved post reach on Facebook of 713,000 (over 28 days).

✅ Published 8 new articles on Medium.

✅ Increased subscribers on YouTube from 82 to 182.

✅ Published 4 new full videos on YouTube.

✅ Increased followers on Telegram from 13 to 26.

✅ Increased followers on Twitter from 168 to 270.

❗Icon Pilipinas continues to operate at a loss, with total expenses now at ~$3,855 USD.

Social Media

Background in the Philippines

As readers may know, our team at Icon Pilipinas is based in Manila, Philippines.

Luckily for us (and hopefully ICONist will agree), the data shows that Pinoys spend more time on social media than anyone else in the world:

statista

The current population of the Philippines is ~110 million (13th largest country by population in the world), but more impressively than that, there are 73 million active users on social media (which makes up 67% of the total population!).

DataReportal

Furthermore, a staggering 98% of these active social media users are accessing content via their mobile devices.

Facebook Growth

In terms of social media platforms being used most frequently in the Philippines, Facebook has pretty much built up a monopoly, with a mind-blowing ~88% market share. 🤯

Stat Counter

Therefore, it makes the most sense for Icon Pilipinas to focus the bulk of our time + effort towards building our brand on Facebook.

Initially, when we put together our 2020 Roadmap at the end of March, our goals for growth on Facebook were outlined as follows:

Icon Pilipinas Facebook goals

We even took to Twitter to share our outlined targets with other ICONists:

Twitter

When we published our last update in late March, the Icon Pilipinas Facebook page had 2,620 followers.

We are happy to report back that thanks to some really aggressive advertising spent on Facebook ads, Icon Pilipinas was able to smash our roadmap target of hitting 20,000 followers by January 2021 in just a SINGLE month!

At the conclusion of April, the Icon Pilipinas Facebook page has achieved 39,443 likes and 39,515 total follows.

Icon Pilipinas Facebook stats

Facebook Marketing Ads

More importantly than just collecting more likes + follows on Facebook, ICONists should know that at Icon Pilipinas, we are regularly posting new advertising materials 24/7 to get the ICON name out there.

Here are just some example of ads we’ve run on Facebook since our last update:

Icon Pilipinas Facebook ads

When it comes to advertising, we promote not only our own content, but also the work of other ICONists (see above); we truly believe that if the end goal is to grow ICON Project as much as possible, then P-Reps MUST collaborate and work together for the greater good (which is ICON growth + adoption, of course).

For Icon Pilipinas, on a more micro-level, our objective is to help make ICON the go-to blockchain project in the Philippines. Point blank — When someone thinks about blockchain/crypto, after Bitcoin and Ethereum, ICON needs to be the first thought that comes to mind.

Our roadmap target of obtaining 500,000 post reach over a 60 day period by January 1, 2021 was eclipsed when we were able to hit 713,000 post reach over just 28 days, from March 30 to April 26.

Facebook post reach

We are thrilled with our recent “hyper-growth” experienced on Facebook, but nevertheless, we do realize that we still have lots of room to grow + improve, moving forward from here.

Medium Educational Articles

At Icon Pilipinas, we need to reach everyone in 🇵🇭 and we can only do so by becoming the bridge to help non-techies better understand all this fascinating tech stuff.

That’s why we invest so much time + effort into writing our in-depth articles (which for a given piece can take anywhere from 4 hours to 10+ hours to complete), such as the following, which were all released since our last update:

• ICON (ICX) Project: Why It’s Legit
• ICON (ICX) Project: How to Buy ICX Tokens in the Philippines
• ICON (ICX) Project: What’s in It for Me?
• Blockchain Basics: The Blockchain Trilemma (Part 4)
• Blockchain Basics: Consensus Algorithm (Part 3)
• Blockchain Basics: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology (Part 2)
• Blockchain Basics: Different Types of Networks (Part 1)
• Icon Pilipinas: 2020 Roadmap

We are putting in the hard work now so that any newcomers to ICON and Icon Pilipinas won’t have a challenging and steep learning curve to overcome.

Icon Pilipinas is here to help! The resources we’re putting together are intended to facilitate “less painful” learning, especially for newbies.

When it comes to new technology like ICON, don’t forget, intimidation can easily drive away new people, so we must do everything that we can to combat this.

YouTube Growth

When we published our last update, the Icon Pilipinas YouTube channel had 82 subscribers, and we’ve since grown that figure to 182, at the conclusion of April.

Icon Pilipinas YouTube Channel

YouTube Educational Videos

Speaking of trying to combat intimidation, that’s what our YouTube videos are for! We always do our best to break down complex topics into more digestible and fun segments, for non-techies. 🤗

Since our last update, we’ve published 4 new full videos on YouTube (8 uploads in total; which include 4 short clips).

Icon Pilipinas YouTube videos

Unfortunately, though, due to the 2020 Luzon Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ), which has effectively kept everyone in Manila under lockdown, we’ve had to scrap many of our original ideas for YouTube content (we’re saving those for later…).

It’s too early to say for certain what will happen next, but we’re closely monitoring May 15, when the current ECQ might “shift to a more lenient general community quarantine or GCQ”:

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) yesterday expressed optimism that Metro Manila would be able to shift to a more lenient general community quarantine or GCQ after May 15.

The Philippine Star

In any event, Icon Pilipinas has been doing our ABSOLUTE BEST to adapt to the current situation (which again, is most unfortunate), and we will keep putting out new YouTube content covering ICON Project, regardless of what happens with ECQ or GCQ.

Longer-term, hopefully the ECQ/GCQ proves to be most effective + successful, and then we can resume recording footage outside again, featuring other people and actual scenery. 🙏

Telegram Growth

Our Icon Pilipinas Telegram chat is a FREE public chat room and any (respectful) ICONist is encouraged to join. 😃

There are currently 26 members on the Icon Pilipinas Telegram chat, which increased from 13, previously.

Icon Pilipinas Telegram Group Info

Most of the conversations are in Taglish (English + Tagalog), but really, don’t be shy, don’t think too much, and please join us!

It’s so much fun talking to these guys:

Example 1: Icon Pilipinas Telegram Chat

Example 2: Icon Pilipinas Telegram Chat

There are some really AWESOME + HELPFUL + PASSIONATE enthusiasts on here. 🙌 🤩

ICONists, don’t miss out!

Twitter Growth

On Twitter, Icon Pilipinas is experiencing gradual growth, as our followers have increased to 270, from 168, previously.

Icon Pilipinas Twitter

As outlined earlier, when it comes to social media, our main focus has to be on Facebook growth, since that’s where the majority of Pinoys are hanging out!

But it’s not that Icon Pilipinas is ignoring Twitter entirely (we still post regularly on there as well!), and fortunately for us, ICON Project is extremely well represented by some of the most HARDCORE ICONists you’ll ever come across. 💪 😎

That being said, because Crypto Twitter is already so well covered by ICONists, really, we hope more and more P-Rep teams will elect to take a similar approach as us and that’s to target some ADDITIONAL social media platforms for future ICON growth. 🤗

Straight up — If we want to recruit new ICONists, P-Reps have to make a concentrated effort to go where ICON is an unknown and foreign concept; this means expanding our collective reach into as many new frontiers, markets, and places as possible.

Instagram Growth

We currently have 45 followers on Instagram, up from 36, previously.

Icon Pilipinas Instagram

Not much needs to be said for our progress on Instagram at this time. Quite frankly, until the lockdown/quarantine is over and we can go back outside to take photos, Icon Pilipinas will not prioritize growing our Instagram page.

Instagram growth remains more of a long-term plan for us at Icon Pilipinas.

Spending

Since our last update, Icon Pilipinas has spent an additional 77,943 PHP (~1,540 USD) on marketing ads to grow ICON Project.

Furthermore, noteworthy expenses since our last update include the following:

• Node and infrastructure support = 8,071 PHP (~160 USD)
• Images licensing for articles = 6,209 PHP (~123 USD)
• Productivity software = 1,771 PHP (~35 USD)
• Combined total staff wages = 15,000 PHP (~297 USD)

From the items highlighted above, total expenses (excluding wages) sum up to 93,994 PHP (~1,858 USD).

In total, Icon Pilipinas has spent (excluding wages) ~195,032 PHP (~3,855 USD) since beginning operations in late February.

We have been and continue to operate at a loss since our P-Rep rewards earned to date have come nowhere close to offsetting our expenses 😅 😅 😅; looking back, we made the decisions that we did with the belief that over time, our hard work + efforts would help Icon Pilipinas earn more votes from ICONists 🙏 and eventually get our team over the “start up” hurdle (one that likely most P-Reps have to/will have to initially overcome).

Moving forward from here, we definitely want to continue running our marketing ad campaigns MOST AGGRESSIVELY, however, we know that we have to face reality at some point, and this means paying back debt, and also saving up for the 5% bond requirement (which will be implemented later this year once IISS 3.0 changes take effect).

P-Rep Ranking

At the conclusion of April, Icon Pilipinas was ranked #49 among global P-Reps on the ICON network.

Icon Pilipinas ranking

At month’s end, Icon Pilipinas had racked up ~778,813 total votes.

Icon Pilipinas votes

Previously, we were ranked #63 and had ~345,901 total votes.

To be perfectly honest with all ICONists, our short/medium-term goal is to break into the top 40 of all P-Rep teams!

Gotta have goals…

We sincerely hope that after reporting this month’s transparency report, ICONists will agree that we’ve been a very productive P-Rep team that is well-deserving of all votes we’ve received to date.

Icon Pilipinas is most passionate about ICON (this is the ONLY blockchain project we focus on!) and we are dedicated to working as hard as we possibly can to help accelerate growth and mainstream adoption.

Thanks for reading. Salamat po!

You can learn more about ICON Pinas by following us here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IconPinas/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqkwvlG2636SqqtjOYAxOhQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/IconPinas

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iconpinas

Telegram: https://t.me/icon_pinas

Medium: https://iconpinas.medium.com/

Disclaimer: Cryptocurrencies are EXTREMELY volatile! These assets are also very speculative in nature, and no one should ever buy any without first conducting their own thorough research + due diligence. Never put any more capital at risk than you can comfortably afford to lose all of!

As ALWAYS, proceed most carefully, and if you have any questions, please consult a professional financial advisor.