Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Hi, everyone. Today i will talk about corporate blogging, which is a powerful new marketing communication tool for companies in Malaysia. First and for most, what is corporate blogging? Well, Corporate blog is actually a web blog used and published by an organisation to achieve its organisational goals. Corporate blogs usually classified into external or internal corporate blog. Nowadays, 89% of the companies' blogs are mainly for external communication. Most of the weblog are used as a marketing tool and not so much as a tool to get a conversation going within the companies, for internal communication or for community building. The picture above is Debbie Weill singing for the promotion of corporate blogging.

How does really corporate blogging functions as a marketing communication tool? Well, corporate blogging will typically improve the marketing techniques by allowing companies to talk to their clients or customers directly, and also allowing companies to listen to what customers are saying. Companies can understand and study their customers satisfaction towards the companies' performances or services through corporate blogging. Therefore, corporate blogging is very useful and reliable because it interacts directly between the companies and the customers.

Somehow, there are very few companies tend to use corporate blogging as a new marketing communication tool even though, they recognized that blogs are a very significant, effective, and efficient communication tool. This is due to a lack of knowledge about corporate blogging, a fear of risk, and repercussions.

Thank you.

A review of a post on Legal from My E-Commerce blog

Today, we will discuss a post on My Ecommerce about legal. The post discuss about the United Kingdom Government intends to propose a new law that to cut the internet connection of illegal downloader.

According to information, around 6 million people download files illegally in UK. This fact heavily affects the revenue of such entertainment and creative industries. They lost million of money due to illegal download.

Besides, all Internet Service Provider (ISP) should support and help to enforce this new law. Any ISP failed to enforce these rules could be prosecuted, and those customers suspected of making illegal downloads would made available to the courts.

Although this new rules would benefit some industries, but I doubt that implementing this rules may face some problem. First of all, I doubt that ISP is possible and able to monitor their client’s internet access, monitor what website they visit, what data they are downloading, and every single packet of data transferred. And how ISP determine which website is illegal platform.

Although ISP has the technology or technique to obtain these data, can it proceed to monitor client. Those actions relate to the privacy of client, and they should be protected under data protection law. Furthermore, ISP may incur more expenses on this further action in order to enforce new rules.

Referred link:

1. (http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Legal)

2. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7240234.stm)

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

-Government in Malaysia is quite new. This huge E-Government started in 1997 with the launch of the MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor). This online service started to become more popular these 3 years. We can see how the government is always promoting the E-Government these years through various types of media. The website for the government is http://www.gov.my/. Inside the webpage, we can view a lot of services that provided by the government including the online services. The e-government in Malaysia provided quite a lot of services such as e-Filling, Renewing Road Tax, Driving License online and e-Perolehan. All these services provide a lot of convenience to the citizens. They can use those applications through internet without having the trouble to go out of their house and queue up to perform these services.

However, the government should improve the E-Government they are currently using in order to attract more customers or citizens. There are a few of troubles that faced by the citizens while they are trying to use the E-Government. First of all, the E-Government is not very user-friendly. Senior citizens who are not expert in technology materials may find it hard to perform the E-Government service. Besides that, there are few complains that I heard is that the respond from the E-Government is not very effective and cannot compare with some private institutions. Below is one of the webpage from the government website, which shows some online services.

In order to encourage more citizens to use the E-government, the government should firstly solve the problems that encountered by most of the citizens while they are using the webpage. Other than that, the government can provide some offers which are available through the e-government. Lastly the government can explain to the citizens about the benefits of using E-government.



Link:
Electronic Commerce: From Vision To Fulfillment-Awad, E. M. (2007)
E-Business and E-Commerce Management-Chaffey, D. (2007)
http://www.gov.my/eServiceCenter/eServiceApplicationPortfolio/ServiceApplicationPortfolio.aspx?Form=0

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

Auctions are common in markets where the goods sold are valuable or when their prices can't be easily determined. The process of an auction aims to find a fair price for the goods by identifying buyers who need them the most. Such auctions are called forward auctions. In forward auctions buyers compete with each other by placing bids for the goods to be sold. Electronic auction (e-auctions) is auctions conducted through online.

There are some prevention methods for e-auction frauds such as:

• Escrow services. An escrow service is a licensed and regulated company that collects, holds, and sends a buyer's money to a seller according to instructions agreed on by both the buyer and seller. Typically, once the buyer receives and approves the item from the seller within an agreed time frame, the escrow service then sends the payment to the seller.

• Authentication service. Product authentication is a way of determining whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. Authentication is very difficult to perform because it relies on the expertise of the authenticators. Based on their training and experience, experts can often detect counterfeits based on subtle details. However, two expert authenticators may have different opinions about the authenticity of the same item.

• Verification system. Through verification, third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purposes. This is a way of tracking an item if it changes ownership in the future.

• Feedback Forum. Feedback Forum allows registered buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with other individuals.

• Appraisal services. Appraisers use a variety of methods to appraise items, including expert assessment of authenticity and condition and reviewing what comparable items have sold for in the marketplace in recent months. An appraised value is usually accurate at the time of appraisal but may change over time as an item becomes more or less popular in the marketplace.

Referred link :

http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/payment-escrow.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/260/267260/online_appendices/Turban-Appendix2A.pdf