Seihaku’s Blogmarketing Bible

The most powerful weapon of a customer, in a modern age where all kinds of media and information that surrounds us are spreading fast, is the resource of “interest”. An interest is a limited resource and is influenced by stamina, time, concentration environments of individuals. Eventually, due to this scarcity, an interest is regarded as an important asset, and is dealt with as a keyword in many industries of Internet.

In the book, “The Attention Economy“, published 2001 by HBS Press; the lead researchers at Accenture, Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, states on the importance of “interests”. What fuels economy yet does not grow or expand? What element limits the business expansion in areas of web pages; business plan/strategy; books and articles; marketing projects; partnerships and alliances? - The answer is people’s “interests”.

Interests makes it easy to start a business and approach customers and market. People’s interests are essential in building a web site, designing advertisements, and in establishing strategies. The biggest problem for corporates is not in the communication bandwidth, but in the bandwidth of the people. The described term band denotes the existence of limitation, essential in corporate management.

Interests emerge in various ways according to differences in generation, gender, locations which brings about the introduction of segment strategy in securing the customer keywords. Segment strategy itemizes customers, sorts them accordingly by properties and responds to various types of customer. It is applied in many fields as the media develops to enter the age of overflowing information.

Segmented customers or not; the important factor in the survival of blog marketing is the customer interest. Creating endless Internet troll contents can be seen as a gruesome struggle to collect customer interests. The easiest way to collect customer interests, a limited resource, is to stand on the sidewalk of a high traffic street. In order words, advertising on a high traffic location such as Naver. The problem is the related cost which may not be formidable and a continued clicks cannot be guaranteed unless you can keep the exposed contents interesting enough. Many corporates homepages are as such and for this reason, are likely to advertise for a limited time such as through events and promotions.

What’s important is that the customer interest has become a scarce resource. The writers of “Attention Economy” stresses: “Understanding and managing human interests is the critical key to business success.” Let those bloggers who plan and work on blog marketing remember that.

Let’s take a look at the Naver’s user agreement (as of June 16th, 2007).

Section 8 (User postings)

1. All postings uploaded by users including: articles, photos, various files and links replies to other people’s blog, and articles posted on blog management bulletin boards.
2. All damages and problems cause due to the information uploaded by users are sole reliability of users themselves and company is not liable, unless done on purpose.
3. User may not post any contents that violates public discipline, good morals or manners; copyright laws or are a violation of privacy. Any consequences thereof due to such violation is solely liability of the user.
4. Company may delete, move or deny any posting or data without prior consent if deemed in violation of blog service administration.

1. Contents that are a defamation, desecration to other user or third party.
2. Posting of contents that violates public discipline, good morals or manners; information leading to sexual contents, such as posting shapes, figures, sounds, or movies or links leading to it.
3. Private political opinions or religious views that are deemed unsuitable to the service offered by the company.
4. Contents that promote illegal copies or hacking.
5. Contents that are of commercial nature for profit making.
6. Contents objectively related to crime.
7. Contents violating other user or third party’s privacy or copyrights.
8. Contents that are against the set policy by the company or the bulletin nature.
9. Contents that violates other related governing laws.

Section 9 (Copyright regarding posts)

1. Copyrights and intellectual ownership of all contents created by the company belongs to the company. Any company created contents in the process of user’s usage of company services cannot be used in profit making or transferred to third party by means of copy, transfer, publication, distribution and so on.
2. Copyrights to the created posts goes to the corresponding user creator.
3. Company may copy, display, transmit or distribute user created contents within Naver service, without prior consent by the user for the purpose of managing, displaying, transmit distribution and marketing, within the boundaries of related copyright law. Minimal necessary editing can be performed for the use in quotation or marketing.
4. If a company wants to use the user created contents in any other means posted on clause 3 of the same article, companies must obtain prior user consent through telephone, fax or email.
5. If a user canceled his membership, all posts recorded in the accounts are deleted, except for postings that have been scrapped by other users.
6. When an objection is presented in conjunction with a copyright violation, defamation, or sexual obscenity; company may temporarily delete the related post and may only re-post the relating article only when the legal issues have been resolved between the related parties and the company has been submitted a petition.

---

The article 3 in Section 8 seems like a very irrational clause. Freedom in expressing political and religious option is a basic right of a democratic society, yet it is a misjudgment on naver’s side to post such a clause in stating that they can delete contents of such nature.The clause to look closely is the clause 5 of article 4 in section 8. For advertising, it is an obvious agreement considering the aspect of contents quality but it can be very ambiguous as th what is a commercial usage. Eventually, Naver will sort contents into commerical and non-commerical, utterly segregating commercialism, bares its intention of absorbing any commercial contents into their advertising contents. It is predictable that other portals will likely to follow this type of strategy, and in this point of view, blog contents strategy must be that of non-commercial marketing.The clause 7 of article 4 in section 8 will be a delightful clause to contents creators. So far, the emphasis was on contents themselves, regardless of scraps. But from now on, by specifying its creator along with the contents, contents creator’s brand and blogs of original creator will rise together. Eventually, in future, they’ll be able to distinguish between scrapped contents from the original contents through filtering of search engines; and this will make the value creators shine even more.Article 2 of Section 9 notifies that the blogger owns the copyrigh but the article 3, right below it, seems quite risky. In other words, it states that Naver can make use of blogger’s contents without any limitations, including content edits, under the condition that they provide the blog space and exposure to search engines for free. If so, copyright is no more than a scarecrow, and legally stated copyright laws have no meaning.

Then how should a blog marketer respond?
Copyright law is currently progressing and there’s a room for new changes once the FTA is adopted. Even so, creating new contents is important rather than scrapping and there is a need to create a defensive network of blogs that goes beyond the boundaries of portal sites such as Naver or other search engines.

Surviving in a conflict versus a mega portal like ‘Naver’ in a realistic sense; and to avoid being deleted of entire contents in an account cancellation as mentioned in article 5 of section 9, you would need a backup blog to say the least. Making a legal reference standard at this point, where the blog copyrights have gone extreme, has no real meaning so rather than focusing on the copyrights, the branding strategy of blogs is ideal in regards to notify that copyrights belong to contents creators.

Rather than declaring a war with Naver or other portal in Korean market, seek to coexist and position yourselves in a niche market where the portals cannot infringe upon. This will secure your perpetuation to maintain your value and become a strength for you to develop.

Copyright: Now is a time to be smart, not to use it against the portals.

Blog contents design, a simplified form of web design yet different in how it puts up a single content on one page instead of numerous contents on many pages. Tracing back to the origin of blog design, you will eventually reach books and magazines. The basic designs of books, magazines or inserts, in which its sizes and materials were influenced by monitors and resolutions, eventually led to today’s blog contents design.

Of course, various UI designs were created in between. For example, UI design of portal sites are arranged by sorting the significant and insignificant among many contents in a detailed and organized way; UI design of google basically shows the search result in a brief, simple way. Eventually, the essential in UI design is how to present an identity in a most effective way and essence of it comes down to people’s visual habit.

Men’s habit is like an automated process that habituates through an extended period of experiences. It applies equally in viewing books, magazines, portal sites and blogs. In other words, looking at a web page, a man’s eye moves naturally and according to its moving sight, an information get recorded in the brain. We need to carefully examine the UI design of blog contents at this point.

Naver, utilizes an eye-tracking system, that can track eye movements, to perform analysis on sector concentrations, and prices its advertising cost based on its data. But, blog contents UI design, which the focus is on the exposure of single contents, has to be different. Customizing blog design to make it splendid, and organizing various information and design in fancy ways may give you an upper edge in terms of visual effects, but can cause you problem in terms of concentration competency.

In other words, blog design, composed of articles that must be understood according to a logical flow, it is better to use neutral colors; plain, simple layouts; and type faces that are highly visible and readable. And most of all, you need to take extra care in making sure the eye movement flows as naturally as possible. On the contrary, for blogs that are exposed to the teens, you should maximize visual effects; minimize texts so that scrolling won’t be necessary; try various experimental typography; and use sensual colors.

In the end, various visual identities, from the standpoint of consumers, to an extent in which learning isn’t required, should be centered around contents, and approached in a diverse and fun way. If a innovative design is applied in order to differentiate itself in a visual aspect, a consumer may think that the focus of a blogger is in the visuals, not the contents, so it is essential that you find the right balance.

The development of blog contents has to be influenced by blog interface design and it is most important to apply the concept that makes contents look good, as well as maintaining uniformity in design. When your contents are scrapped, only the inner designs of the contents are exposed to other consumers, so you should focus more on contents design edits that composes the article, pictures, movies and other individual contents source design instead of background designs.

In blog marketing, blog contents design is more important than UI design and bloggers should have keen design sense.