As one of the main reasons why Rakuten has come to this decision, they said, “Now that Yahoo Japan is using Google’s search technology, we can fasten the search speed by 40% by skipping Yahoo Japan, and working with Google directly. “

This, “when you are in the middle of it, it seems as if that’s the norm” definitely works against you when you do the keyword research. The phrase “monitoring system” may have gazillion search volume, but it’s safe to say that most of them are not your target market if you are selling the “Network Monitoring System” designed for big corporations. Average people imagine “Home Security System” when they hear “monitoring systems”. Your product may be used to build the “security cameras”, but when people search for the “security cameras”, they are not looking for a part that goes inside.

I understand that you may not want to use those paid tools especially if you are a small business owner and just starting this “Internet thing”. But remember, just because Google’s keyword tool suggested doesn’t mean that you should include the word/phrase in your campaign. By bidding on words and phrases that are not really targeted to your market, you’d find yourself paying Google way too much money for no return.

Actually, there are lots of data available from different markets. But if you speak (read/write) in English, you typically see the information available only in English. This is probably why, my article, which was in English, was well received in US and other non-Japanese speakers.
Btw, I also received lots of Re-Tweets and comments from the search marketers in Japan. Thank you!!

This definitely encouraged me to write more about the Internet market in Japan and Asia. Good news is that SEMPO’s (sempo.org) Education Committee is now working to create International Learning Center that provides archive of information from around the world. Both Education Committee and APAC Committee offer monthly webinar for free, too.
Some conferences now provide sessions related to International market, which is a great opportunities for people to learn and ask questions to the market specialists. I’m speaking at International Marketing Forum next Friday, which is a part of Connected Marketing Week held along the SES San Francisco. This conference is specialized in International Online Marketing with sessions like “Search and Social Around The World” and “International Social Media Marketing”. If you are involved in Global Search Marketing or Global Social Media Campaigns, you should not miss this.

Mr. Takashima, president of Dentsu said that Internet was the only advertising medium that had the growth in YOY sales. Dentsu aim to develop new market together with its sales force and newly established Internet Advertising subsidiary. For Hakuhodo DY, Internet-sales was also the only advertising mediums, which had the growth among 5 media including TV and newspaper.

There are already so many digital advertising companies in Japan some with good understanding of new technologies. It is becoming tougher and tougher for an ad company to take a good percentage of the market share in Japan.

As you can see, my presentation shows bunch of numbers, which don’t mean much to you unless you were in the audience. Here’s what I talked about.

Market:
94 million Internet users
75.3% Penetration rate
4% access Internet from TV and gaming devices
73.4% on Broad Band
90% of 13-49 yrs old are on Internet
64% of people in 50s are on Internet
99% of businesses are on Internet
51% of businesses have E-commerce site

E-Commerce:
54% of PC users have shopped online – $35.85 billion market
31% of mobile users have shopped online – $7.85 billion market

Web:
78 million Internet users from PC
31% of businesses advertise online – $4.5 billion market
JP domain and file name
ccTLD in Japanese characters become available in 2010

Search:
Yahoo Japan (53%) vs Google Japan (47%)
Both engines give keyword assist (as shown on slide)
Review what shows up in the keyword assist when selecting target keywords
Vertical search engines such as Yahoo Shopping, Rakuten Travel, etc. are very popular.

Mobile:
74 million mobile Internet users
50% use filtering – some sites may not be seen via mobile
$1.3 billion spent on mobile ads in 2008
Each mobile company has own set of official websites including official search engine – Create a mobile site that is optimized for multiple engines.

Social media:
Most social media sites are available for both PC and mobile web
30% of businesses have blog or social media account/page
10% of businesses advertise on social media sites
mixi, gree and mbga are the 3 largest SNS in Japan. Each has unique user profile, so target SNS that is strong against your target market age/gender.

Tools:
Western made tools often times don’t work with double byte characters, but many tools are now available in multi-lingual. Select the tools that works for all of your target markets.

Here’s a list of advertising sales per media in Aug 2009 (from Aug 2008):

Total advertising sales – US$3.82billion (-12.3%)

• Newspaper: US$350.96million (-4.6%)
• Magazine: US$101.18million (-27%)
• TV: US$1.1billion (-16.6%)
• Radio: US$59.0million (-11.8%)
• Internet: US$146.7million (+0.4%)

Since then, several organizations such as Internet Associations in Japan have been discussing to set up Japanese Internet Domain Name Conference. The conference is now officially working with 16 organizations including Japan Lawyers Associations, TCA and Ministry of Internal Affairs. The main purpose of the conference is to set the regulations and standards for new Japanese ccTLD related issues, and to select contractors in Japan.

Currently available ccTLDs such as “xx.co.jp” and “xx.jp” (any Japanese characters can go in the second-level domain – xx) are available. Japanese characters can also be used in directories and file names. But, this new TLD will bring huge opportunities for website owners especially since it looks that “abc.jp” and “abc.(Japanese characters for Japan)” will be treated as different domains. We may see domain such as “hotel.Tokyo” (as shown below) soon.

One of the biggest differences between the ad:tech conferences in Tokyo and other locations was that this one was more focused on the advertising with heavy mass media messaging rather than the digital marketing and the search marketing. You could see strong Dentsu influences to many sessions, which probably shows the current advertising market in Japan.

ad:tech Tokyo was provided in bilingual, English and Japanese, speakers and delegates from Japan, China, Singapore, Australia, UK, US, etc. Many delegates seemed to welcome foreign speakers, which give them a rare opportunity to hear the stories about the overseas market live. All 4 keynote speakers were foreigners, and the room was completely packed with people trying not to miss any words and taking notes.

Contrary to the session program, the exhibit hall was screaming how the search marketing industry was thriving in Japan with many search vendors. Agencies, tool and software companies, etc., they were all busily engaging with delegates.

Google University, Microsoft Advertising and Dentsu each had a separate room where people could learn about their services in detail.

One of the messages I heard through out the conference was “Branding is important”. Some even said, “Don’t worry about the numbers. Go big with branding. Creating the right “image” attached to your brand and products is most important.” This is something you don’t hear at the digital marketing conferences in US.

Not many sessions had concrete numbers, case studies, etc., especially the cost and pricing data. Not much of “how-to” information mentioned by speakers. I was looking forward to hear some of the data especially from mobile sessions as Japan is the leading market in mobile, but the presentations were more focused on the concept of advertising and marketing.

I spoke at two sessions at ad:tech Tokyo. One was the “Latest Trend and Future of SEM” at SEMPO’s sponsored session, and the other was the only “Search Marketing” session at the conference with representatives from Yahoo and Google. The Search Marketing session was a panel discussion form, but we used several slides to give a visual information to supplement the discussion. Yahoo and Google gave the tool and service information, how brands could benefit from the search marketing. I talked about the search marketing trends in US and how the large size corporations were adopting the search marketing into their operation. – I really wish we had more time to talk… hoping that there will be more search related sessions next year!

This was the first conference in Japan that I saw people were on Twitter. The difference was that people tweeted about their comments about the sessions rather than to report what was said. Many people use Twitter as micro-blogging tool at the conferences in US and Europe, but here, it was used to express their feelings and opinions.

Overall, it was a great conferences, and I’d love to see more of these great events in Japan. It is definitely needed to close the gap between the service providers and client’s in their view and knowledge level of search and advertising.

Gairaigo or foreign words are in fact everywhere in Japan, especially so in the IT industry. Japanese see these words on TV and Internet, and hear others use them in the meetings. But, that doesn’t mean most of them know what they are. The funny thing is that according to iShare’s recent survey, nearly 80% said that they choose to go on without finding out the meaning of these words! See some of the top ranking “clueless IT words” from the survey below. This survey was focused on IT related words, but foreign words are everywhere in the life and not limited to IT industry.

The survey reminded me of one of my friends in Japan who tried to set up PPC account management tool for her online shop. She told me that even though it was in “Japanese”, she had no idea what those words in tabs and options were. Foreign words in Katakana may look cool, modern, and easy to translate… well, no translation involved really since you just write it with Katakana that sounds similar to the original words. Translators can say it’s now written in Japanese, but that doesn’t mean it’s written in the way that most Japanese could understand. Is this a good product, or good customer relation???

Top IT words that many Japanese don’t understand – secretly:

(add-on)

(intranet)

(affiliate)

SSL

(bluetooth)

(interface)

(router)

(cookie)

(domain)

*Words inside ( ) are written with Katakana in Japan, but shown here in English for the convenience of our English-speakeing readers.

For those who have been considering to tap into Japanese market, but haven’t found data to help make the decision, here are some of the fact about Japanese market:

• Japan is the 3rd largest country in the world with highest number of Internet users
• 74% of Japanese population are on Internet
• Japan is the 3rd in the world with highest Internet broadbank subscribers
• Japanese is the 4th popular languages used on Internet (Other popular languages such as English, Chinese and Spanish are spoken in multiple countries.)
• Japan is the 2nd largest E-commerce market in the world
• Japan is the leading market in mobile-commerce and social networking market in the world

Top search engines in Japan:

• Yahoo Japan
• Google Japan

Top PPC advertising service providers in Japan:

• Overture (Serving Yahoo Japan and other sites)
• Google AdWords (Serving Google Japan and other sites)

* Data per ComScore, eMarketer and MITI

Q: Did you use Online Advertising services?

2008: Yes – 64.3%, No – 35.7%

2007: Yes – 63.0%, No – 37.0%

The report also shows that 11% of online advertisers in 2007 did not advertise online in 2008, while 12.3% started to use online advertising services in 2008.

The report did not show the detail of the businesses (size, type of business, type of advertising services used, etc.), but it sounded that they were big advertisers, who probably allocated more online advertising budget for display ads.

Let’s take a look at top 10 popular sites (by number of accesses) to advertise in 2008 in Japan.

1. mixi – mixi news ad box
2. mixi – branding banner
3. mixi – area branding banner
4. DreamNews – top banner
5. MoCovideo – top banner
6. soraejp – entry promotion banner
7. mixi – Ashiato (footprints)
8. Christian today – top banner
9. mixi – rotation text
10. Starcosme – text

It looks like mixi was the winner in 2008, and most of the ads made the list were banner ads. You hear that Yahoo Japan is one of the most popular sites in Japan all the time, but they didn’t make the list. So, why are banner ads doing well in Japan?

As mentioned, these businesses participated in the survey were large sized companies who could afford the banner ads expenses, and because of the size of the company, they probably felt that they should use the display ads regardless to the ads performance. It’s considered more as a branding tool just like TV ads. However, display ads actually performs well in Japan according to one study.

Q: Which ads do you most likely to click, display ads or text ads? (internet.japan.com / goo research, 100%=1082)

Graphic/Flash ads – 45.8% (495)

Text ads – 30% (327)

This doesn’t mean that text ads are not welcomed and don’t perform well in Japan. Well targeted keywords with creative ad copies perform really well for our clients at much lower cost compared to most of the banner ads. You do need to spend more time to create and maintaine the PPC campaigns, though. It is a fact that there aren’t much information/data about the overall online advertising market in Japan, which is badly needed. The good news for us is that 5 companies (Microsoft, Yahoo Japan, NTT Resonant, All About Japan and Video Research Interactive) have formed a group to conduct “Internet Advertising Value Index Project” in late 2008. They plan to publish a series of market reports in 2009.

**********     **********     **********

Interview: Motoko Hunt (Founder, Japanese Search Marketing Strategist)

One of the more enjoyable things we get to do on the ‘Digital Marketing Inner Circle” is interview interesting people I meet and get to know by being involved with the industry. This interview is with Motoko Hunt, Founder and Japanese Search Marketing Strategist. Born and raised in Japan, Motoko is now the chair of SEMPO Asia and has been the co-chair of SEMPO Japan since 2005.  She’s been active in this industry for at least ten years and seen a lot of changes happen.  Over the years she has found her niche in Japanese Search Marketing, including SEO and Paid campaign. I was fortunate to be able to take of her time and posed a number of questions to her.

Q: How did you become involved in the search industry?

Back in mid 90’s, I used to localize US companies websites and handing their online marketing such as site registrations, banner ads and press releases targeting Japanese market. As the market shifted and technology advanced, I started to focus on the SEO/SEM, and established AJPR in 1998.

Q: How can you use search to benefit smaller clients?

Apart from the budget size and maybe the manpower, the great thing about the search marketing is that it’s a fair game to everyone regardless of the company size. The search marketing can expand their market reach (from local to nationwide or even worldwide), improve the communication with their existing and potential clients, and help business owners to make an efficient and smarter decisions on investment. I believe that the search is the most effective marketing tool for your money, if you execute it right.

Q: Do you think it’s more difficult to keep up with industry trends in search marketing than it was a year ago? Why or why not?

I don’t think it’s more difficult, but I think that the type of the changes in trends are different in recent years compared to what we experienced in past. Up until a few years ago, the trends were mostly about the engines and the search. Now, integration of the different marketing outlets (web, search, social media, press releases, off line ads, etc) became more important than ever. It’s not just about SEO or Paid campaigns anymore. It’s like, “Ok, we have some experiences with the search marketing, and know how it can benefit us. Now it’s the time to coordinate it with other marketing outlets to create a campaign that will really benefit the business.”

Q: Tell us about a successful search marketing campaign that you’ve run…what made it work? What made it fun? How did it benefit the client?

One of the success stories of my clients is that they increased the conversion rate from the website by 130% within 6 months after the campaign started. We optimized the site to rank within top 3 in both Yahoo Japan and Google Japan with 95% of their target keywords, improved the landing page content and the internal linking. The fun part was being able to show the great results in ranking, increasing number of accesses to the site from search, and the conversion rate to the client to make them happy and to feel that they made the right choice to invest in the search marketing.

Q: How important is it to be “visible” in the industry these days?

Very important even if you are only targeting the local market. Various survey results show that most people search the web to obtain the information about the services or products that they plan to purchase. More visible you are in search, better chance you have to interact with the potential customers to influence their buying decision. Even in the markets where people still transact off-line, they do research online. I think visibility in the industry is very important.  Many potential customers tend to gravitate to “industry experts” they see at the various conferences.  Even more important is to have your thought leadership represented with blogs and articles.

Q: How does link building fit into social media? Does PPC fit in at all with what you do?

I don’t like using social media as a link building platform to improve your PR. When people use it to build links, it often leads to link spam, and destroy the user experience. If the users don’t like what they experienced there, they won’t come back, and it would defeats the whole purpose of “social media”. The links to your site/pages in social media really become valuable when the links are put on the page content such as blog body from a relevant site, and not in the comment section. The paid campaign could bring some successes through both keyword match and the content match on social media sites. Be selective with which social media sites to run your content match campaign.

Q: Have you used any “questionable” techniques in search marketing?

Nope. I don’t chase the algorithm, either.

Q: What industry trend leaves you cold and why?

Not a particular trend, but when a new trend comes in town, many people stop what they were doing and start to chase that new trend. It frustrates me. New trend simply means there is one more thing that you may need to consider. Those companies have successful website and the paid campaign know the importance of covering the basics and of having a solid project goal.

Q: What is the best part of your workday and why?

End of the day? LOL. One of the best part of my workday is to reporting the improved results to the clients. SEO and SEM are continuous efforts as the market changes and your competitors always improving their sites and campaigns, it’s very important to be able to bring the continuous improvements to all aspects of the success measurements such as ranking, conversion rates, and saving client’s money.

Q: What advice would you give to young women trying to make a name for themselves in SEO right now?

I’ll give the same advice that I give to my son and daughter. Whatever you decide to do, work hard and study hard to become very good at what you do. There’s no short cut. Networking definitely helps especially in this industry, but if you don’t have the knowledge and the skills, you won’t go much far. Believe in yourself, motivate yourself and push yourself. You are your best cheerleader!  A blog is often a great way to start making a name for yourself.  If your ideas resonate with people they will follow you and the more you are followed the greater your exposure.

These are all good points, and not just for Japanese people, but I think all of us have experienced the same frustrations at some point in time. I see issues like #2 (heavy image files), #4 (PDF file), “#10 (contact info) and #20 (English menus) all the time when I review localized corporate websites.

1. The site content has not been updated for months
People are looking for fresh content. There’s no excuses for corporate websites for not updating the site regularly. What year is the copyright on your site?

2. Using image files that are too big/heavy
Keep in mind that when you are in Japan, it takes longer to download the sites hosted outside Japan. Even though many of them are on broadband, I still hear people complaining about timing out when download pages and especially the files.

3. Websites with “under construction” pages
The site/page shouldn’t go live until it’s completed!

4. PDF file opens/downloads when click the link
It is very annoying, when you are expecting to go to another page, but file starts to download instead. I’ve seen some “localized” websites using this function, avoiding to deal with pages with double byte characters, I guess, but chances are, they cancel the download and leave the site. By the way, handling Japanese characters is not complicated at all.

5. Everything is in Flash (especially on index page)
All flash index page with no “skip intro” or any text links to other pages are like traps, and out of the question! Many non-Japanese corporate sites forget to localize flash content into Japanese.

6. Pop Up windows
Some pop-ups actually improve the usability, but don’t over do it.

7. Keep clicking the links, but can never get to the information looking for
It’s like the never ending automated phone greeting, isn’t it? You click a link hoping to see the information page, but next page has more links for you to select. In some cases, the link brings you back to the page you’ve been already, or want you to e-mail them for information. I bet some of the site owners never actually used their sites.

8. No pages with product/service list
I guess they are not in business to sell their products or services. )

9. Site suddenly makes noise or plays music without warning
We don’t need websites to work as an alarm clock. People in Japan have desks right next to each other without partitions in many offices in Japan. Loud beeping sound from the website when your boss is on an important call could mean a pay-cut or another unpaid overtime.

10. No contact information
It speaks loudly how important the customers are to the corporate, doesn’t it? If you are afraid of SPAM, at least set up a contact form.

11. Can’t identify what the site is about
I don’t think that the site owner knows it, either. LOL
Poorly translated sites often have this problem. Don’t trust the translators. Don’t let your friend who speaks in Japanese translate the content. Being Japanese or able to speak in Japanese doesn’t mean that he/she is a good writer/editor.

12. No product/service information on site
The era of website functioning as a corporate brochure ended long ago!

13. Site changes the browser size
Don’t control my browser. I can adjust the size IF I want to.

14. No on-site search
Especially with a large site, where it’s difficult to find the information, the on-site search is very important. If you set up a on-site search, be sure to check some of the search results to make sure that the pages you want people to see shows up in the results. By the way, don’t think that it’s easy to find the information on your site. People don’t know how your site is set up as well as you do.

15. Map of office location is not clear
They pretend that they want people to visit the office, but not really?

16. Using harsh colors (bright yellow, red, etc.)
The soft/comfort colors are “IN” in Japan now. Change the color scheme for Japanese site.

17. Small text
I saw a guy using magnifying glass to read message on his Blackberry. Hope I’ll never have to put a magnifying glass on my PC monitor. It’s just sad… Hate getting old. lol
Many Japanese websites now offer buttons to change the text size on their site.

18. Official corporate blogs with too many inside jokes and stories
Official corporate blogs are not office cafeteria, and should stick with the topics suitable for public audience.

19. No right click
Another example of site owners worrying too much about protecting themselves and forgetting about the usability. Remember, the right click has more functions than to grab images.

20. Site menus in English
If you are serious about going after the Japanese market, show 100% commitment. Things like English menus only tell the visitors that you are not serious about their business. I hope I won’t see another site with contents on image files (translated text on image files) either… but chances are I will find them.

As said, all the issues are reasonable and would’ve been prevented if they create the sites with users in mind. Once the people come to your site, the usability of the site could make or brake the success of your web business.

But we rarely see them on Social Networking Sites or blogs. Where do they go and what are they doing on Internet?

NetRatings research shows that “finance” related sites and “news” related sites are very popular among 50+ people in Japan. They also like to visit travel related sites. I’m sure that this trend will change as younger generations who are all over SNS sites grows into the 50s and beyond, but for now, if you are after 50+ market, check out the finance, investments, news and travel sites to see how you can reach them.

goo Research and Internet.com’s survey results show that people started to lose interests in SNS sites about 10 months ago. Since mixi opened in February 2004, has the SNS market in Japan peaked out already? If so, what do SNS sites need to do to survive or even to increase active users?

With my experience, it was fun to be invited and to invite friends to join these sites at the beginning. Till then, I was visiting lots of websites owned by my friends to communicate by posting comments on their BBSs. It was getting to be a lot of work, and was definitely time consuming. When mixi opened in 2004, we invited each other to join so that we can all communicate at one place. It was great. Then we started to join other SNS sites. I’m now registered at 20+ social media sites. Trying to check in and update these sites is like 2003 all over again. Since there aren’t much differences among these SNS sites, you just need 1 or 2 sites where most of your friends and contacts are. And, I’m sure that’s what many SNS users in Japan are thinking. If you are not mixi, differentiating your services from others is the key to success or survival in next 12 months. That fact that many Japanese are now looking into “specialized SNS sites” (i.e., music only, local area specific, or age specific) backs up my point. Sure, these sites may never become as big as mixi or Gree, but they would probably have more active user rate.

According to Yano Financial, “Kuchikomi blog” (word-of-mouth blog) advertising market in Japan grew to more than 3 billion yen market in 2007 from 0.9 billion yen market in 2006. Their another survey shows that more than 80% of net users have actively taken the advise/information they got through “word-of-mouth” on the net. Almost 50% of female in 30s responded that they talk to other people about their experiences and opinions about the products and the services that they purchased. In 2008, success of ad campaign may be up to how well you incorporate word-of-mouth campaign into your cross marketing strategies.

Yahoo Days members aren’t as active as other popular SNSs in Japan such as mixi and Grree, and if and how many users they can maintain and hopefully gain in up coming months are questionable. I’m sure that they’ll add more functions (blog, image and video sharing, etc.) to it, which would make Yahoo Profile even more like a social networking service. However, it would still be another SNS site, and can deny the feel of Yahoo Japan being a follower in this area rather than a leader.

Yahoo Japan’s member database (Yahoo ID holders, Yahoo’s broadband users, Yahoo mobile users, etc.) is huge and is very valuable to many out side businesses. I think the real value of Yahoo Profile would come when they can combine all of these database, and release it to outside vendors.

Late last year, Japanese government put out a statement requesting all the mobile service providers to use a filtering system to stop children under 18 to access certain sites*. And, in early December, Japanese Telecommunications Carriers Association and the service providers such as KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank and Wilcom have agreed to set up the filtering against all of their users under 18 as a default.

40% of Mobaga Town users are teenagers. With the filtering system set by these mobile service providers, teenagers won’t be able to access the site anymore, even though DeNA has been taking serious measures to ensure the safety of young users. I’m sure that the filtering system will be improved in future to have more flexibility, but for now, it will cause not only NeNA, but also other mobile sites some financial issues.

*In addition to adult sites and gambling sites, SNS sites are on the black list.

According to the survey, BBS (bulletin board services), Net auction and surprisingly the Video sharing lost some popularity in 2007 from the previous year. And, people think that they’d spend less time on SNS sites in 2008. Also, it shows that Online shopping and Blog-browsing were two of the most popular online activities among the survey participants.

Ok… people shifted from Net auction to Online shopping, and from BBS and video sharing to SNS in this year, and now they want something new. So, what’s the next big thing for Japanese market?

While I can’t wait to see the next big thing for Japan, I’m thinking that personalization may become the keyword for these existing services to survive and even to grow in Japan, beside “mobile”. While I’m not a big fan of the personalized search, I think personalized SNS and Net auction would bring up their declining popularity. It would be a huge challenge for the providers as it means that they need to come up with different plans, solutions and services for each demographic. But it would worth the investment. Let’s face it, teens have completely different interests and takes on things than people in 40′s. It’s just like I don’t want to receive another vampire invites on facebook. I’m not interested in becoming a zombie, people!

Actually, SNS for limited audiences is already available in Japan. Businesses using it for employees and customers, colleges using it for students and teachers, and local governments using it for residents. And, they are getting great feedbacks from the users. If these services for smaller but very targeted market become more available, it would be a good news to us online marketers, too, as those markets are already defined. Well, maybe it’s my wishful thinking.

Happy holidays!

(Sorry for not posting any new articles here for a while. November has been a really crazy month.)

More information about SES Tokyo 2008.

NetRatings’ reported last year that more than 2 million Japanese were using YouTube as of March 2006. It also showed that Japanese visited more frequently and spent more time on YouTube than any other countries in the world. Having the broad band connection, and more phones with video viewing/recording capability definitely helped Japanese to go YouTube crazy.

Then, Japan’s own video sharing site “NicoNicoDouga” (nicovideo.jp) opened this year, and became the most popular video sharing site in Japan with more than 3.42 million registered users in Sept. 2007. What did make it more appealing to Japanese? The comments function. Instead of just sharing the videos, you can communicate with other users through comments. The site has more of “community” feel than “business” like feel, which is appealing to many users.

Technorati published the blog reports in April 2007. According to the report, Japanese is the number one language used to post blog in the world. (Japanese: 37%, English: 36%, Chinese: 8%, Italian: 5%, Spanish: 3% …) Note that many blogs in Japan are “journal” type blogs talking about their daily lives, etc., but I see that more and more business/information type blogs are created by individual, businesses and organizations.

Back in 90′s, before blogs, videos and social networking sites, Japanese were crazy about creating their own personal web sites. While Japanese worried about privacy and fraud on Internet, they liked sharing their thoughts, experiences, etc., and most of all, they liked to connect to their friends and family on Internet. Visiting friend’s web sites to read their new pages and to leave comments on BBSs in daily basis. Just when we were getting board with doing the daily chores, the SNSs came, and we all jumped on it, particularly “mixi”.

It was great. You could connect and communicate with all web friends at one place. You could also create communities within the communities to “belong” groups that match to your interests. These SNSs are all equipped with blog, photo and video sharing function, as well as reading news, etc. But, the hype has to die down sometime. The latest report shows that page view on mixi went down in August for the first time.

So, what’s the next big thing that meets our needs to belong and to share our opinions, experiences and interests.

In the meantime, blogs and SNSs are finding new audiences in businesses and organizations. They are using it to inform and to communicate with employees and customers. It’s a step up from good-old news letters that only push the information.

More and more people are accessing Internet from their cell phones. In June 2006, research by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication showed that there were more mobile Internet users (approx. 69.23mil) than PC Internet users (approx. 66.01mil) in Japan for the first time in history. It also showed 57% (approx. 48.62mil) of the Internet users (approx. 85.29mil) were using both PC and mobile devices to access Internet. But, does this mean that everyone should put the priority in mobile search and mobile SEM?

That depends on who is your target market, and the type of services and products that you offer. If your target market matches to the demographic of the users of “blog search”, “image/photo search” and “video/music search”, you may want to create a mobile site and start a paid campaign right away. Also, many research shows that books, CDs, tickets and other low cost items ($20 or less/item) are popular items purchased using cell phone. Mobile Internet is convenient especially when you know what you want, but it looks that people still go to PC for some researches and readings when they consider purchasing expensive items.

Keep in mind that average mobile Internet users in Japan are younger than that of PC Internet users. Many Internet users under 25 only access Internet from their cell phone. I think that some of the ways to do well in mobile Internet is to have a site that is more appealing to younger generation, has an easy purchasing process, and has steps to prevent from shopping frauds.