Seihaku’s Blogmarketing Bible

Looking at the current market situation of Essboard prior to Essboard’s blog contents project course, Chinese imitations were selling illegally at the open market for a price of about 10% and a few domestic firms have found a way to get around the patent on the Essboard, producing similar products to circulate the market.

Essboard, just like established Korean manufacturers, was in an exclusive position at the primary stage of the market. But as many fakes entered the online market, Essboard felt the necessity of online marketing which brought about the introduction of blog marketing. Essboard blogs were set up on 5 different portals including naver, yahoo, empas, daum and paran; and contents of similar nature are posted on each blogs.

Essboard Naver blog categories.

Essboard = anxious to run
Essboard gift
Essboard street interview - Bundang Center Park
Riding Essboard on weekends
Riding Essboard on weekends
Essboard and Shaolin Temple
Essboard and Shaolin Temple
Let’s start… together with Essboard
Essboard and the unidentified Shaolin Monk
Essboaerd contest (Example on United States patents)

Choosing Sun-blocks when riding Essboard
Beauty of curves, representing Korea - Essboard
The great things in common : Essboard and Soccer
Essboard contest in Korea
Essboard’s Technical movie-clip Collection
Essboard’s boyish version
Essboard’s Technical movie-clip
Essboard puzzle
Essboard’s boyish version - sakiroo
Essboard philosophy and the article on Inno design

[Must read] Beware when purchasing Essboard from G-market
What do you eat after Essboard riding?
Essboard - Netherland Story 2
Essboard - Netherland Sketch
Essboard’s disembark on England
Essboard - compulsive purchasing charm
Essboard - Sakiroo’s Europe tour journal
Essboard - 1st workshop
Essboard Manual
Essboard’s living legend

Essboard design contest materials (patent materials)
Essboard’s boyish version - birth of mask
2007 Essboard design contest Korea
Essboard movie clip - Team Demon, United States
Capoeira Subway performance - exciting scene
Essboard extreme sport
Yuna Kim, the moment of blossom
Essboard fake torture project
Essboard appears on “My-nyo-yoo-hee” (TV Drama)
“My-nyo-yoo-hee” Preview - Essboard appearance

How to change Essboard’s deck covers
Stylish Essboard - S/S Collection
Essboard goes to Beijing Korean International School
After donating Essboard to Beijing Korean International School
Exclusive: Essboard Club’s workshop schedule secured
Essboard’s first gift, must have confidence
Essboard with music
Beijing International School Donation Promotion - participated by Lotte Giants
Essboard’s canary Spring colors
Making Essboard with chocolate

Essboard true self - Slalum
Home visit helper - Essboard project
Close to explosion - Thursday Night
Evra, assisting Jisung Park’s 2nd goal, repaying a gift of a Korean fan
Magic by Mike & Mouth - Beat box Essboard
2007 Korean Skateboard review - Baikiki 2
2007 Korean Skateboard review - Baikiki 1
The art of ’stopping’, neither insufficient, nor excedding
Imagination satisfaction - Essboard

Sending Essboard to Louis Saha
Sending Essboard to Edwin van der Sar
Mysterious tao’s new song: Mother
Sending Essboard to Gary Neville
Sending Essboard to Wayne Rooney
Sending Essboard to Patrice Evra
Sending Essboard to Jisung Park
Essboard boyish version countdown!

Essboard’s January Effect
Regarding Seihaku’s Essboard blog
2006 Korean Skateboard review - Trike 2
2006 Korean Skateboard review - Trike 1
Underkorea, now a Essboard family
Beijing International School Donation goods
Essboard’s Rhythm and tempo

Letter sent by the pricipal of Snail School
Gung (palace) S - Essboard
Red Passion 2007 - Essboard
Essboard and Seihaku
Switch - Essboard of the world
Essboard demofilmpje - Essboard of the world
Most beautiful action in the whole world
Essboard mind - smart winter exercise

Gung (palace) S and Essboard story
First day getting on the Essboard
Happy new year - seihaku
Generation consensus - Essboard
About sekhaku’s 2006 review - Essboard
Essboard Accessory backpack
Sakiru, now a Essboard family
2006 Korean Skateboard review - Permgo 2
2006 Korean Skateboard review - Permgo 1
Shall we ride? Shaking on one foot

2006 Korean Skateboard review
About Seihaku’s Skateboard review
Essboard donation to Snail Alternative Culture School
The mindset of ’separate and together’ - Essboard Torsion Bar
Essboard on Christmas!
Eventually, people are the hope and future - Essboard
Essboard Team Demon movie clip
Another start - finding balance!
Attention - Essboarding
Skateboard Beta test promotion - Essboard

Essboard Style
The best gift to children - Essboard
Essboard Personal Interview - Jungsun Hwang
Essboard’s value standard
Essboard brand standard
Essboard’s orange temptation
Essboard girl
Essboard - friend of up-hill
Essboard - shout out to students before exams
Wheel story - Essboard

Cruising on Essboard
Essboard divine descent - a man upholding earth
X-game and Essboard
To Hip hop musicians - Essboard Hip Hop Culture Project
Essboard Story 01
Essboard trend project
Essboard - the power of “yes”
The advantages of Essboard - what I think
Essboard - Hip hop fashion know-how

Regarding Essboard personal interviews
Essboard and Kaori
Seihaku’s Essboard Story
(as of 2007/06/19, 141 contents developed and posted)

Let us talk about the blog marketing of Essboard, the leading manufacturer of Korean Wheel sports industry.

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.