Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

A blog reflects the interests, thoughts and opinions of people. A corporate blog is a blog Indeed, this communication tool enables published by or with the support of an organization to reach that organization's goals.multiple users to post easily their diaries of their thoughts to a website or even displayed it in a chronological way. Those texts are most of the time enriched with external links and opened to be commented by the readers.

People can make use of corporate blog instead of meeting customers or suppliers abroad. If we respectively compare corporate blogs and internet advertising, corporate blog definitely is more credible and reliable as it provides more authentic information, which considerably improves the brand image of the company. The readers or customers of the company will likely feel more involved in the development of products and confidence to the products of the company.

Furthermore, readers or customers do not have to wait for the weekly one page updated or for the monthly magazine as the information is available for everyone at the same time which is time consuming. The spread of the brand image in corporate blog provides even more dimension as compare to magazines advertising.

Moreover, corporate blogs provide a fast way to join the customers' discussions, provide tips and insights or receive feedback. It can give the customers a medium to voice out their opinions, since direct feedback is encouraged through the built-in commenting function.

Therefore, businesses cannot only increase their transparency but close the gap even further by engaging in personal conversations with their readers. Indirectly, corporate blogging play a vital role as a new marketing communication tool for most of the companies to enhance their sales or even maintain the company brand image.

These are some of the successful corporate blogs:

Kodak's Ofoto.com

Ofoto Blog is used to get feedback and resolve issues with Brownie, a new beta Mac application

Bplans.com

Bplans Blog is a great extension of Bplans.com, an informative site for entrepreneurs starting a new business. It's owned by Palo Alto software.

800-CEOREAD

The CEOREAD gives great reviews on the business books sold on the main site.

But there are still some disadvantages of corporate blogging which it can be tricky to drag public comment out of a company without knowing the company thoroughly and make many organizations look like disorganization with multiple tones and opinions. Moreover, if the corporate blogs are poorly written which may lead to reveal incompetence on his part of the writer. In conclusion, there are the pros and cons when conducting the corporate blogging but if the company can cope the disadvantages, there will not be a limitations to them.

Things to Take Note to Prevent E-Auction Fraud when a Consumer Participating in an E-Auction

E-auction, also called reverse auction is an electronic “reverse” auction where suppliers use internet-based software to bid against each other online and in real time against a published specification. E-auction can be based on price alone or can use transformational bidding to an account for other criteria such as quality and delivery.

E-Procurement Scotland (ePS) provides access to electronic auction (E-Auction) functionally through the E-Sourcing Scotland System. This system is an element of the “core” ePS service and is available to any buying organization participating in the programmed.

There are many types of E-Auction fraud. For example, bid shielding, fake photos and misleading description, improper grading technique, selling reproductions, failure to pay, inflated shipping and handling cost, failure to ship merchandise, switch and return and also loss and damage claims.

The largest Internet auctioneer, eBay has introduced several measures in an effort to reduce the fraud.

1. Feedback forum

It set up a forum to allow the buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It also provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with others. All the information and history of any sellers could be acquired through the forum.

2. Escrow Service

Is a licensed and regulated company acted as an independent third party. Buyer mails the payment to escrow services which verifies the payment and alerts the seller when everything checks out.

3. User Verification System

Higher level of verification can be qualify by asked the bidders to offering their IC number, driver’s license number and also date of birth. The voluntary programs encourage users to supply information for online verification.

4. Authentication Service

It is to determine whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. It also very difficult to perform because of their training and experience, experts can detect counterfeits based on subtle detail.

5. Nonpayment Punishment

To help protect sellers, 1^st time nonpayment results in a friendly warning. A sterner warning is issued for a 2^nd time offence, a 30 days suspension for a 3^rd offence, and indefinite suspension for a 4^th offence.

Review on Lelong.com.my

The local e-commerce website is the Lelong at www.lelong.com.my which is a pioneer auction website in Malaysia that provide online trading at a low cost. This e-commerce site had developed from Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) transactions to become Business-to-Consumer (B2C) relationships. Many people have realised the usefulness of using the auction system and are now using our site to trade and grow their business. Approximately 70% of all items posted for auction on our site are sold. So, all users get a chance of obtaining a successful transaction.

Moreover, the interface is very user-friendly and easy to use. The speed of accessing the website is depends on the internet speed that subscribed by the users. Lelong has provides many types of products, such as personal care, books, jewellery and accessories, watches, pens and clocks, clothing, electronic products and etc. It had properly classified all the items in the website which is very convenient to all the users to browse their favorable items. This site even displays the pictures of the items that need to be trade and the price as well. The website is more structured and it is in different languages that can be choosing according to the users’ preference. Furthermore, the buyer wants to get what they pay for and the seller wants to get paid, the Lelong Safetrade can manage every aspects of the settlement process and remove risk from online transaction.

The shopping carts in Lelong are well equipping with the information needed by the buyer which contains others products’ details such as payment methods or shipping method. Moreover, the buyer can search the products that they want easily and the website provides a forum where all the users can share their opinions or any queries.

Most of the Malaysian are prefer to use Lelong.com.my as local E-Commerce site to trade or market their products or services due to it is more convenient compares to physical shops, where it do not need any physical place to store all the products. Furthermore it helps the users to choose more wisely because they can compares the prices before they purchase it or even they can bargain on it.

For further information, click on the links below;

• www.lelong.com.my

• http://help.lelong.com.my/cms/

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

In 1997, the Malaysian Government launched the Electronic Government initiative, generally known as e-Government, to reinvent itself to lead the country into the information age. The vision of Electronic Government is a vision for government, businesses and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens.

The e-Government projects are Electronic Procurement (eP), Project Monitoring System (PMS), Electronic Services Delivery (eServices), Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS), Generic Office Environment (GOE), E-Syariah and Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX).

Other than these seven main projects under e-government flagships, several government agencies has also initiated online services for the public projects, aims to increase the ease and efficiency of public service to the people. Among others were Public Services Portal (myGovernment), e-Tanah, e-Consent, e-Filing, e-Local Government (e-PBT), e-Kehakiman, Custom Information System (SMK), Pensions Online Workflow Environment (POWER), and Training Information System (e-SILA).One of the most successful applications is e-filling.

However, there is slow adoption of E-Government applications due to lack of integration and insufficient engagement of key stakeholders (especially users and citizens). This is because public are not aware of the services. Besides, there is a language barrier because most of the government websites are using Bahasa Malaysia. This may be a problem since some users are more comfortable to using other language like English and Chinese. Next is the issue of privacy and security because users maybe worry about their private personal data and the tax return can see by others.

Suggest ways to encourage more citizens to use the e-government applications. Firstly, government can organize some activities to introduce the e government application and teach the citizen how to use the e government application. For example, increase awareness through TV and radio advertisements, and organizing workshops at shopping malls. Next, government should provide websites with multiple language versions. Finally, government should improve the security and privacy application of e-government to make sure the data will not hack by the hacker.

For more information, visit the link below;

www.gov.my