Motoko’s weblog

I wrote an article “Social Media Marketing – The Japanese Way” for ClickZ earlier this month. The article received more than 300 re-tweets in 3 days (currently has 350+), and it got me thinking how little information about non-US market is available, even in the world of “Internet”, which supposed to connect everyone, everywhere.

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, Continue Reading »

One of the biggest search industry conferences, Search Engine Strategies New York will be held next week (March 23-25), and this year, I will be speaking at 2 sessions:
- Managing a Global SEO Campaign on March 23 from 12:45pm
- Crossing Boarders: Global Site Clinic on March 25 from 4pm

Me and 4 other Global SEO experts will share the knowledge, experiences and case studies at the Global SEO session. Don’t worry, 5 of us have coordinated the content of our presentations so that you won’t hear the same thing from each of us. Instead, you’ll learn different topic from different angles from both agency and in-house operation.

I’m also looking forward to the Global Site Clinic session, which I will be on a panel with (who else?) Bill Hunt. I did this session in London last month, which turned out to be a very interesting session for everyone from already have global sites with some concerns to the business owners who are considering of using website to reach overseas markets.

See you in New York!

I’ve been providing Japanese Search Marketing services to US and European companies since 1998. Because Japan has been one of the most advanced market online where people actually drop money (Japan is the second largest e-commerce market in the world) since the early years of Internet, regardless of the size of the business, Japan has been one of the attractive online market for foreign businesses. What’s interesting and troubling at the same time is that the type of inquiries I receive haven’t changed much for the past 10 years. There are 4 groups of inquiries:

1. We have a website in English (or one of the European languages), and want Japanese website created and optimized. Don’t know much about how to go about it, and open to suggestions. Oh, and interested in doing PPC campaign, too.
2. We just create a Japanese website, and need someone to optimize it. Will send you the English keyword list for SEO and PPC campaign.
3. We have a Japanese website and our in-house team is managing it. Experiencing some problems and can really use outside help to guide them to the next level.
4. We want to target Japanese market, but our English site should do just fine.  Continue Reading »

I had a pleasure of being interviewed by Eric Friedman of Marketing.fm. I had fun talking about International search marketing including SEO, SEM & Social Media, and a little bit about my background.

Please visit the post “Interview with Motoko Hunt about Search Around the World & SES Chicago 2008“.