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 importance of design in blog marketing can’t never be stressed too much. Let’s look at the optimized design for blog marketing and how they differ from other designs. Interface design, a branch of study researching how humans and computers can communicate in a most convenient and effective way, will definitely be one of the fast developing field. This domain of design, which used to be the closed space of experts, is being somewhat equalized due to the introduction of computers and analyzing its effectiveness in today’s blog design will be quite significant.

Looking at the development of homepage designs, you notice that there’s a direction in which everything is evolving - straight shape to curved shape, primary colors to complex neutral images, 2d to 3d and flash animations, and it isn’t too hard to predict that these process is mostly applied also in blog design. Today’s blog skin are open in many ways and as time comes, more and more skins will be developed and applied, even animation skins. Besides, you can apply widgets, which are tools that can accomplish numerous functions, on the page flank. You can easily predict that world class blog that are excellent in graphic value can be created.

Then, general netizen response will likely be to use these convenient functions to decorate their blogs and portals who provide free blog platforms will try to sell accessorized items to make profit. Eventually, general public will be accustomed to one joy of decorating blogs and will probably concentrate on scrapping cool, trendy contents that goes with the skin rather then using their own photos, movies or write their own article. This trend signifies the use of blog as a personal diary, instead of a channel of information.

But, a marketing blog design should not be splendid or brilliant. A blog skin that bears more weight than a important product or brand contents turns the priority around and it acts as an obstacle to disturb the visual flow to the customer to read and understand the information. Especially if the level of perfection of the pictures, photos or movie contents are poor, the product in turn looks poor and valueless.

In other words, a marketing blog should ideally use a light, colorless tone as its background skin so that its inner contents can show better and easy to read. Blog design should use and maintain a design that is one level below than the contents so that is should be intuitive and easy to understand and desirably use an organized, elaborate structure.

Blog isn’t a space for advertising, so it must avoid strong primary colors or bign, bold type faces, but instead use light, neutral background colors and designs. These blog interface designs are most effective when a fundamental design is maintained with slight changes, contrary to desires wanting to put bells and whistles on personal blogs.

Adjusting the level of blog design isn’t to stand out but to provide comfort and reliability to customers on their first impression.

Blog marketing isn’t a method to raise the brand of an individual blogger.

There is a clear standard in differentiating an amateur from a professional and is by asking the reason they do marketing for; is it for a person or for a firm? In fact, there exists a certain rule in raising the brand of an individual blogger which can be summarized by the how they scrap and organize contents that are related to them, that they like and that they need which are followed by diligent replies and trackbacks.

Of course, more than 90% of bloggers are repeating this process and are currently using this way to increase the number of clicks. Their purpose is the maximize the click figures, so they work hard all over various troll contents, replies and bulletin boards. At first look, it may seem like they seized the world of blogs, but confusion will follow as they verify its search result quality.

But the role of a blog marketer in proceeding a corporate blog marketing is to maximize the value of the corporate as a medium in between corporates and customers. Blog marketer must continually create new values and stories that are product related, but it is most important in this process to create contents for the customers, not for the corporate.

Blog which people don’t turn to have no meaning to their existence and marketing cannot be done in such situation. Therefore, a blog marketer must stand from a client’s point of view and create a content that maximizes the client’s profit in order to draw the customer interest. In this aspect they may confront the corporate PR department because the corporate PR department must act to block all things that may act as a negative to their corporate image which is the reason they must keep close watch on anti-corporate content creation through blog marketing.

But on the customer’s point of view, the existence of a blog that create contents regardless of profit or corporate values are quite gratifying. In fact, such are what makes a blog marketer difficult because blog marketing must incorporate the maximization of customer profit instead of just maximizing corporate profit, which is the reason corporates fail in creating a blog marketing team.

A strategy that brands an individual includes are sining, voice imitations or other personal talents that are produce on UCC or pictures by posting on portals. This is method many bloggers have tried and trying and there is nothing special to it.

Blog marketing isn’t a mechanical process of conveying as is the corporate advertising or its marketing materials through a medium called blog. You must understand deeply that it’s a process of creating a new value by re-processing the corporate and its product and its contents must be concentrated to maximize the value of corporate and the customers.

Let’s ask again.
Where is today’s blog heading to?