Epik High opened its site mapthesoul.com since a growing number of its fans use diverse social networking media. In other words, the innovative attempt to escape the traditional distribution and management system was based on the needs of the group’s fans and customers. Epik High’s official website is crucial because the group needs to communicate with the world, mass media, and its fans. The website can be accessed in English as well as Korean.

There are eight sections on the site: news, schedule, artist, blog, mapNOW, mapTV, one, concert, and shop on the website. Epik High put social networking platforms such as a blog, YouTube, and a micro-blog into its official website. In the blog section, each member of the band and its staff has an individual blog. Each member writes about a personal view of the group’s work. Fans will find information about how the group produced its music, difficulties during the production, opinions of music, and an introduction to the album. Some of them write about their daily life, such as the places they go or what they did with their girlfriends. Fans can comment on what they read. In the mapNow section, they share messages from me2Day (http://www.me2day.net), the Korean micro-blogging site similar to Twitter. When they write a message, many of their fans reply.

They post video clips of their daily lives or behind-the-scenes views of their appearances on the broadcast TV program posted on YouTube. At the mapTV section, people can see all the video clips the group has posted on YouTube and write their opinions about the video clips. This was a great tool for introducing the group’s website.

Jieun Oh, a fan of the TV program, said, “I am a crazy fan of Infinity Challenge, the famous Korean variety show. Last August, Epik High was on the show and sang a song written just for the show. The song grabbed the attention of the public. When Epik High announced that they would post a song for free download on their website, the website crashed because there were so many visitors. I was one of them. From the moment I first heard about the website, I have been visiting to listen to the group’s music and read the band members’ thoughts.”

In the one section, people write their opinions and Epik High replies. This gives Epik High a direct line to what people think of the group’s music and concerts. Many people have asked them to hold a Christmas concert through the one section. Jiyun Kim, who is a fan of Epik High, said, “I knew that they had stopped production of their official album until DJ Tukutz returned from army service. However, I really hope that they hold a Christmas concert, which they do every year.” Finally, Epik High announced that they would do as their fans asked.

The group’s play for independence seems to be working. Since they began selling their albums only through their website, local sales of the album have greatly decreased compared to when they sold it by traditional way. However, sales to people in other countries have increased more than 10 times, and the group has also progressed in selling its music worldwide by offering the album through iTunes. Group members insist that the biggest thing they have earned is “communication.” Epik High said, “We really wanted to directly communicate with our fans, but if we had been under contract with a company, they would have prohibited doing that. We communicate with fans 24/7 on our site, mapthesoul.com.”

This is a great example of using social networking media, a two-way communication channel to share ideas or thoughts with a target audience. Social networking media is not a tool for delivering a message but for deriving empathy and understanding through conversations with one’s target audience.

            In September of this year, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University held an on-campus panel event with four women professors who have widely followed and respected blogs (easternblot.net, Bitch Ph.D, Tenured Radical, and Oh! Industry).  The blog topics range from science to pop culture to politics and feminism. 

            The panel, entitled “A Blog of her Own,” was advertised as a dialogue about what it’s like to be and how to become a feminist blogger.  It seemed, then, natural to expect that the event would relay the key challenges and lessons learned when blogging about feminist causes.  The reality, however, was that the audience clearly had markedly different anxieties and they were eager to have their questions answered.

            After brief presentations from the bloggers, the question and answer session began.  As more and more questions were asked, I soon realized that the students in attendance were not at all concerned about the panel’s original subject.   Rather, they were very curious to know whether blogging has made it more difficult for professors to obtain tenure at their respective universities or not.  Over and over again the students asked if remaining anonymous on one’s blog is the best way to go about it if you want tenure.            

          Margaret Soltan, a professor at George Washington University and respected blogger (University Diaries) who was not on that day’s panel says that, when asked, “I generally discourage junior faculty from blogging if they feel at all uncertain about their tenure prospects…basically I’d say the thing to do is wait until you get tenure and then let it rip.”  Accordingly, it seems like blogging does have the potential to negatively impact your future in academia.

            The writer of Bitch Ph.D. explained that she had been anonymous for three years before revealing her identity to the public.  She still did not overtly reveal it on the site itself (which is why I will respect her privacy here) because she believes that the woman on the blog has her own persona.  Yet, even though she was relieved to have made her identity public, Bitch Ph.D. claimed that she has been more careful about writing about her private life since doing it, but that it was because she did not want to hurt people.  She also said that keeping the blog has had no negative repercussions on her personal life.

            Professor Claire Potter of Wesleyan University, who already has tenure and is the author of the three-year old blog Tenured Radical, said that she came out of the closet six months into blogging because “remaining anonymous led me to make unwanted ethical compromises.”  At the panel, she described herself as a contemporary historian without rules, which she claimed threatened the university.  However, the sentiments of the university, said Potter, were not a serious professional concern of hers.   Of course Potter’s contrarian sentiments make perfect sense coming from someone who already had tenure before she began her blog.  

            Some professors, however, like Alexandra Vasquez, an associate professor at Princeton University and co-author of Oh! Industry, do not have to rebel against the university system because their blogs are openly supported by their institutions.  Due to this, Vasquez, who has yet to obtain tenure, does not let her pursuit of it bar her from expressing her opinions about academia.  Vasquez believes that her blog is “a necessary outside” from matters like promotions and career.

            Another concern non-tenured bloggers may have is that their non-academic blogs will be perceived as trivial and unsuitable for a person trying to make their career in academia.  According to Soltan, “there will always be faculty who – even with the enormous success and even prestige of many blogs these days – see blogging as trivial, dumb, self-indulgent, non-serious, non-scholarly, a waste of time, weird, etc.”  She says that “some faculty, in other words, will just be hostile,” no matter what the blog is about or how it is presented.

            So what is the answer for blogging professors? All in all, the event panelists, each of whom had different blogging stories when it came to revealing their identities, all agreed that revealing themselves to the public has actually made things easier for them in the end.  They women agreed that each blogger must make their own decision as to how their relationship will be between their blog and their career. 

            The situation for bloggers in academia is only one example of the complex challenges we all face in today’s world, with our personal lives becoming increasingly exposed to the general public online.  And while we don’t want to constantly be monitoring our online profiles because our future employers might opt to check us out on there, we also don’t want to end up jobless for that reason either.  There is no real answer for any of us, academic or not.  The only truth is that we’re all still learning about the Internet’s power on our daily lives and we’ll just have to keep playing the cards until we get it right.

“One of the biggest Korean nonprofit organizations, Good Neighbors, could be a good example of how to effectively use Internet media to achieve goals,” said Juny Lee, the director of Edelman Korea. Juny Lee works in digital PR, specializing in developing diverse new media communications.

Established in 1991, Good Neighbors Korea was the first South Korean nonprofit organization to have general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Good Neighbors has committed to transform the world into a place where no one suffers from starvation. It seeks to build a harmonious global community by respecting the dignity of human beings suffering from poverty, disaster, and pressure, and assist them in leading independent lives.

Good Neighbors manages diverse online communication channels, including a website, an e-newsletter, UCC video clip channels, and a blog. When people visit Good Neighbors’s official website, they are easily able to find a variety of resources related to Good Neighbors’s campaign, including a donation website, a photo gallery, and cyworld (the Korean version of Facebook). The most distinguished aspects of Good Neighbors’s online promotion are these diverse online communication channels that are directly connected to each other.

Good Neighbors has an official blog named “Good bus’s travel diary”; this resource is an interactive, user-centered tool to share information. Through “Good bus’s travel diary”, readers have shared stories about people in diverse countries who need aid, and good neighbors who help unfortunate people. On June 1^st, 2009, Good Neighbors launched a new online campaign to raise funds for a 10-year-old girl named Young-Ju who takes care of seven families. Good Neighbors produced a video clip about Young-Ju’s daily life and sent it to readers via “Fly Hope”, the organization’s e-newsletter. On June 9^th, 2009, bloggers on “Good bus’s travel diary” posted Young-Ju’s video clip on the blog to share it with more people.

“We realized that there are limitations in using photos or  articles to communicate the situation of children who need  aid. Therefore, we internally produce and edit video clips so  we can show people the situation, and we provide links the  video clips through our e-newsletter, ‘Fly Hope’,” said  Kyungsook Lim, a manager for online promotion at Good  Neighbors.

Good Neighbors announced that their new online strategy  produced great results. The video clip ranked as the best clip  on the “Daum TV Pot”, the second-largest portal in Korea.  53,163 people have viewed the clip as of October 10, 2009.  113,937 bloggers visited “Good bus’s travel diary” over the  course of June 9-10. 3,575 people visited the “Donation Start”  website, which is linked with the blog post. The video clip exploded on the main page of popular Korean portal websites such as T Story and Daum View. Good Neighbors succeeded in raising 1.3 million won to support Young-Ju.

“The Young-Ju campaign’s success reflects the impact of a huge network, which is linked with the blogosphere,” said Juny Lee. ‘Blogosphere’ is a term to describe the way in which blogs act as community or social network. Since numerous blogs are closely connected with each other, bloggers can read other bloggers’ posts, link and reply to their blogs, and referring others to certain posts or blogs.

“The campaign showed the power of the link, because the blog post did not remain just a post. Rather, that post was shared with additional content networks and drew the interest of other bloggers who sympathized with the post,” said Juny Lee.

Juny Lee insists that Good Neighbors successfully built a new communication approach to appeal to a target audience through the sharing of stories. Good Neighbors delivered the Young-Ju story not only via the e-newsletter, but also the blog, a tool that allows interactive communication and linking. In addition, Good Neighbors did not simply write up a story about a child in need of aid, they produced a video clip filming the daily life of such a child. This technique caused people to realize that children needed their help.

Juny Lee states that content and the conversation of brands or services has created social media space as the primary communication paradigm for target audiences. Every organization should follow the example of Good Neighbors and create new communication strategies using new social media.