Livedoor works to harness blogger potential

The Livedoor influencer programme will set out to harness the potential of 2.5 million bloggers to drive awareness and credibility of participating brands. It is the largest initiative of its kind in Japan, a country with one of the world’s most active blogging communities.

The programme will allow clients direct access to all registered bloggers, who are divided according to their area of interest into 37 groups across 236 categories.

Tetsuya Honda (pictured), managing director of Blue Current Japan, said the system would work in conjunction with more traditional public relations practices. According to Honda, the Omnicom agency’s primary role will be to introduce the service to clients and develop offline promotional events.

Livedoor will source relevant and influential bloggers using a filtering tool. The selected bloggers will be directly approached, updated with product and company information and invited to attend the function, with freedom to post a commentary later on their blog.

Honda added that six clients from a range of sectors had so far signed up to the initiative, but declined to
disclose their identities. Describing it as an educational process, he said the key element for clients to understand was that they could not expect to exercise any influence or regulation over the content of contributing bloggers.

“The key is that we are not controlling bloggers, but controlling our clients,” he said. “If they write negative comments, we do nothing. ”

According to a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun, there are more blogs in Japanese than in any other language, accounting for 37 per cent of all blogs on the internet.

The report noted that most blogs in Japan function as a diary, as opposed to the news focus that often characterises English-language blogs.