Ong Hock Chuan – Monetizing blogs and social media in a developing Economy: How Indonesians turn their passion into money-making professions

When it comes to blogging and social media, Indonesia is a very vibrant country. Indonesia is the 3rd most-used language in Wordpress, no. 1 Facebook users in Asia, and no. 6 when it comes to Twitter users growth. But apart from these, a lot of people have found their way making money from their blogs and social media popularity. We have buzzers/influencers, paid to help companies endorse their campaign/product, bloggers are beginning to get invitations to press conference/product launch, social media manager is a "hot" title and lots of companies want to find one. Moreover, people started selling things via Facebook and blogs. Start-up businesses are growing: Koprol (now being acquired by Yahoo!), Disdus (recently acquired by Groupon), Nulisbuku.com (self-publishing), Gantibaju.com (designing shirts), etc. Social media business contributes 7,3% of Indonesia's Gross Domestic Product, according to the Minister of Trade.

Ong has been a journalist for 15 years before moving into PR. In Indonesia, he headed the Ogilvy PR team that won the PR Week award for Asia’s Consultancy of the Year 1999. He was managing director of Ogilvy PR in Singapore before founding Maverick in 2002. Ong specializes in strategy, crisis and issues management and is an accomplished trainer in media handling and crisis management for top executives. He is a Nuffield Press Fellow at Cambridge University and the initiator of Pesta Blogger.