Make a quick buck from corporate blogging? Puhleze!

Corporate Blogging is one of those things like apple pies, koala bear and motherhood.

It’s difficult to argue against them as they are potentially good for you.

The reality, however, is that very, very few people or businesses are successful at corporate blogging, let alone make money from it.

The reasons are many but one of the main ones is that corporations, especially the ones in Indonesia, are culturally unequipped to start a corporate blog. They are too formal, 20th Century and conservative to get their feet wet in the informal, everything goes world of blogging.

The other major reason is that most corporations do not have a unique point of view that would serve as the underpinning of their postings. Just think about it – if you cannot articulate a distinct point of view what would you have to say about anything.

The other reasons that impede corporate blogging are legal compliance and the command-and-control structure of the decision making process within the corporations.

But even if you manage to surmount all these obstacles you’d be a fool to try t make money out of corporate blogging. The notion is as ridiculous as expecting the existing corporate communications department to be a profit center.

Corporate blogging, when done well, benefits the organization by giving them one competitive advantage: though leadership. Done well, it adds to the credibility of the organization and, consequently, builds trust in its products or services.It builds goodwill, it builds trust and from there you can eventually sell more or charge more for your goods and services. Corporate Blogging is many things, but never ever a get-rich-quick scheme.

It was therefore amusing to see JAC offering a workshop on Corporate blogging with the promise that if you dish out Rp750,000, you could be on your way to start a corporate blog and from there be able to “make money and get customers.”

Participants at the workshop would be well advised to ask of JAC some questions before they invest in this workshop:

1. Who’s conducting the workshop? Is he someone with an online presence (Say, one of the top bloggers in Indonesia Matters‘ blog listing)?
2. Why doesn’t JAC practice what they preach and set up a blog of their own? (That’s because Unspun can’t find their blog. There’s no blog URL in their email ad, a Google search does not get you a URL so are they into corporate blogging at all?)
3. But this is the best part: try clicking to the JAC website from Google search and what do you get? A Malware Warning. ROFL