Women Who Inspire: Motoko Hunt



By Eleanor Hong

(Photo Courtesy of ajpr.com)

NAME: 
Motoko Hunt

AGE:
 49

OCCUPATION: 
Search Marketing Consultant; President and Founder of AJPR

WHO SHE IS: You’ve heard of Google, Bing and Facebook  but have you ever heard of
 Baidu, Naver, Goo or Mixi?
 Motoko Hunt breaks the myth that Google has all the answers and that 
all your friends are on Facebook. Hunt is proving that there’s a 
bigger world out there for search and social media. She’s one of the search
 industry’s leading international digital marketing experts, with over 
20 years of experience in the Japanese and Asian online market. She 
advises multi-national brands on how to target a global audience, and has been trailblazing her own search
consultancy since 1998. She’s one of the few researchers that’s able to
 analyze multilingual search engines and social media platforms — and
 she can translate and explain it all in Japanese. 
Motoko speaks at leading digital conferences around the world, blogs and 
contributes to industry publications such as ClickZ,
 Multilingual-Search.com and MarkeZine. She’s also on the
 Board of Directors for SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional
 Organization) and recipient of the organization’s presidential award.

WHY SHE INSPIRES ME: Motoko Hunt amazes me because she can kick it with data geeks (she could put Shelton on The Big Bang Theory to shame). Motoko is a search-marketing ninja and one of the few women who handles international search for global clients. While all of us that work in digital have crossed industries or taken different paths in working online, Motoko has carved herself a niche in a male-dominated section of the industry. Her clients include big brands, as well as semi-conductor manufacturers. She can break down what’s hot in Asia and speak marketing and analytics lingo while taking cultural differences into consideration. And her personality is always so bright and light-hearted; she’s the kind of person you can grab a beer with after a panel session in Berlin. Motoko is a supportive and nurturing mentor, hosts monthly get-togethers with local digital-brand geeks, and welcomes any debate on what’s in the secret sauce to the Internet’s next big algorithm.