Japanese firms that make automobiles, high-tech gadgets, game software and beauty products have begun to reach out to bloggers in the hope that they’ll promote products and create online buzz. The recognition by commercial firms is just another sign that Japan is becoming a nation of bloggers. Japanese language blogs account for 37 percent of the entire blogosphere, a tad higher than the total blogs in English, according to Technorati. “Personal blogs can be the most powerful media” since it can convey credibility, says Tetsuya Honda, a marketing consultant who runs BlueCurrent Japan. A recent study by Nikkei Research of Tokyo shows that nearly 40 percent of blog readers say they have bought at least one product after reading about it on a blog.
The pioneer in this practice is Nissan Motor. Last year it invited about 100 popular bloggers to its head office for the launch of its new car, Skyline. (A Google search on the event turned up nearly 14,000 Web pages, in addition to the company’s official blog.) One blogger posted a sound file of the “vroom!” of Nissan’s latest engine, along with photos. “Let me show you how cool it is. Beautiful,” he writes.
Nike Japan has skillfully been running its own popular blog along with its official social-networking Web site, where runners share their jogging experiences wearing Nike’s shoes and using running-aide service Nike+. Spurred in part by the feedback it has received from readers of the Web sites, Nike has expanded its new line of running-shoe models from two to 20 over the past year.
Fortunately for businesses, Japanese blog entries tend to read like personal diaries or reviews of products, says Nobuhiro Seki, general manager of Six Apart, which introduced blog software to Japan. People talk in detail about what they ate, bought, read and watched on television, and often do so passionately. Nearly half a million blog entries on products (excluding those on politics and social issues) are written each day, according to Blog Watcher. Firms are taking notice now in part because of Web sites that rank bloggers, making it possible to identify the most influential. In addition, in recent months software tools that analyze blog postings for trends and changing preferences have become available for businesses. Blogs are “a frontier of product feedback,” says Ichiro Kiyota, marketing director at Six Apart.
Many firms remain cautious about courting bloggers, for good reason: it can backfire. NTT DoCoMo, for example, was forced to close its own social-networking site last year after its failure to respond quickly to users’ comments led to complaints. But the use of blogs by businesses to promote their products is spreading in Japan. Nearly 15 percent of companies of all sizes have already installed blogs on their Web sites; the number is expected to grow, says Seki. Encouraging bloggers can be a gamble, but when it works, it works well.
