Seihaku’s Blogmarketing Bible

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.

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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.

The influence of copyrights on blog contents is predicted to be immense and this will cause an opportunity for the creative content creators to reap great reflective profit and also be re-evaluated. Especially the bloggers who have been inducing clicks by diligently scrapping contents will face its downfall and be forced to limit its scrap functions or at least to minimize. Traditionally, Koreans prefer following or to imitate others and therefore it is a great risk for them to start something new and different. Being different from others, a value which only I can create will have great competitiveness in accordance with copyright and the FTA which will soon come into effect and its future potential will definitely grow bigger.

The current copyright works just enough to discriminate disputes rather than to protect its creator. But it will have greater pressure once the Korean-American FTA starts to come into effect. In the end, future potential will be secured by the ownership of private contents and furthermore its ability in being able to be recognized as a global contents, not just local(Korea), will influence and therefore change the course of man’s life. The future of contents is pretty bright considering there are many people who connect to the Internet but only a few creates a UCC contents. Eventually, a more objective evaluation standards need to be built by changing the conventional standards: click figures. So that many creators will survive.

Bloggers will have a foundation to reap greater profit due to copyright and also gain a rise in social status because of its scarcity. The reason we need to focus on the essential called blog contents is that shortcuts don’t exist in blog contents. The amount of information easily obtained will reduce greatly owing to copyright but instead work to raise the costs of reviewers or benchmarkers. Also for the corporates, they will purchase and use these specific reviews or benchmark data for their advertising or marketing and this situation will be welcomed by customers who prefer comparison ads.

Global corporations will take over the markets on the programs and utilities and Korean programmers will survive in the niche market only. And those strong locals who specializes in “Korean like” contents will face mergers by global corporations through M&A or underwriting of stocks. Overall, the Internet industry will be under the direct influence of American.

What would be a blog that has a value in a future environment? The first task is to create a local content rather than a global content. Like Naver who seized the locals, a blog content based on the local culture can earn the continuous interests and love of customers. Also it is likely to become the initial proposal target of foreign global corporates which is a plus. Where can you find an inexpensive marketing firm like individual bloggers? Of course, individual bloggers are exceptions but we mean the corporate blogger who are doing blog marketing so make sure there’s no misunderstanding here.

Copyright and FTA will provide great opportunities to bloggers who are awake. Those who have their eyes open, do you see?

Truly, what is a profitable blog?

I can’t help but to ask seriously. What do you think is a profitable blog? And why do you think so?

A fascinating question so many Korean bloggers think: “What is a profitable blog?”. Even till now, many clever bloggers are looking for the answer to the question.

Corporates are posting similar contents on numerous blogs in order to expose itself more to web searches. In the process, many blogs are created to post the related contents, yet in most cases they are just created; but fail to manage it constantly. This is due to the misunderstanding of the blog’s fundamental property. Blog contents are hard to maintain from a conventional corporate marketing approach because the essence of blog contents isn’t advertising or marketing even though it may sound paradoxical.

If you observe personal blogs, contents are created quite steadily but they are limited to personal interests or even yet, just a collection of other contents through scrapping. In other words, we are at a stage where it’s difficult to verify the ability of a blogger to just pay and demand a specific blogger to create contents and furthermore at a point where the basic unit costs haven’t been determined yet. An this is precisely the big obstacle that’s stopping corporates from proceeding with blog marketing. On the blogger’s standpoint, it is also difficult to raise the contents standard to a level that the corporates are demanding, due to lack of experience in ad agency planning. It isn’t also as easy as you think to just create quality contents steadily that incorporates the works of storyteller, copywriter, photographer, copyrights to music, movie editing and so on.

Eventually, only a few bloggers will be creating corporate contents due to the realistic issues. Especially, the bloggers who were successful in producing an outcome will be evaluated highly. Only those will be treated as ones who can create added value; in other words, a profitable blogger.

Empas are promoting business blogs and naver made a separate section called ‘brand blog’, revealing its expectation of the blog market. What’s important to observe here is that there is a house called ‘corporate blog’, yet it’s but an empty house upon entering.

Naver’s brand blog? Did you really think it would work?