Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Blogging is experiencing explosive growth, starting with a few hundred in the year 2001 and reaching over 28 million in early year 2006. Each day, 1.5 million new entries are added to the internet.

Corporate blogging is an online phenomena providing the opportunity for employees at a levels of an organization to communicate with each other and to form communities around products, projects, and similar interests.

Corporate blogging also provide global access, they allow for a collaboration between company and clients, and provide integration with other traditional communication tools.

With corporate blogs, companies will be able to reach new audiences, and build stronger relationships with existing customers. It also allow new ways for companies to market new products and strategies and connect on a deeper level with their audiences.

There are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.

Internal blogs exists behind the firewall. It is accessible only from within the company’s network, which is a weblog that any employee can view. Internal blog encourage employee participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence and direct communication between employees and managers.

External blogs are made available on internet for the world to read. These are intended for marketing and developing a community based around the company products or brand. It offers a forum for company to communicate with the public.

Examples of the corporate blogs implementation and its effect:

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sun has been successful blogging both internally and externally. Their internal blog acts as an information management tool for researchers and developers.

Sun’s external blog is a forum for Chief Operations Officer Jonathan Schwartz to discuss his views on the technology industry. The blog is updated every few days and includes Mr. Schwartz’s opinion on industry happenings, Sun’s ideas and other news.

This blog is famous for giving a personal look into the mind and job of an executive at a major corporation.

http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/


Macromedia
The Macromedia blogs are an example of how to utilize blogs beyond marketing. Developers at Macromedia use an external blog with comments to keep in touch with end users. Through their blogs, these developers disseminate information about new features in their products and how to best take advantage of included features.

They also receive feedback on current and future initiatives. This helps them quickly respond to bugs users may find and allows them to develop the product features their users want and need.

Macromedia blogs also allow the developers to discuss their daily thoughts and activities. This gives users a window into the company, and fosters trust and friendship between the company and its customers.

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/


Pros and cons of corporate blogs
Advantages of corporate blogging
Following are some beneficial points of corporate blogging:
1. Managers can communicate directly with customers, suppliers and investors,
as well as employees, helping disseminate and explain strategy.

2. Compared with conference or printed memos to all staff, corporate blogs
are highly cost effective.

3. Corporate blogs give the company managers an opportunity to answer critics
in a controlled forum.

4. Corporate blogs are ideal for internal collaboration being a workspace where
project members can keep each other updated without wasting time writing
reports or searching the outlook inbox.

5. Sharing ideas freely in an honest voice brings the corporate blogging a new
connections and generate trust which will lead to more business
opportunities.

6. People are far more likely to give great feedback if they know someone
specific is listening. The power of these feedback loops can generate big
benefits to the company.

Disadvantages of corporate blogging
Following are some drawbacks of corporate blogging:
1. Corporate blogs can be tricky to drag public comment out of a company
without first routing through the sanitizing filter of a press office.

2. There is a risk that an ill-judged comment in corporate blogs could be
seized upon by the media or disgruntled investors.

3. Manage corporate blogs poorly can damage the reputation of the company.
such as blogs are not updated.

4. Poorly written corporate blogs can look fake and confuse the reader.

5. Corporate blogs make many companies look like disorganizations, with
multiple tones and opinions.

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

Auction is a market mechanism where buyers make bids and sellers place offers to sell the products. The auctions will be held as the products are either valuable or when the prices of goods cannot be easily determined.

Whereas e-auction is auction conducts online where sellers use Internet-based software to bid against each other online and in real time against a published specification.

As the auction items are very unique, antique or used in many cases. The buyers may not look through or check the items that may be defective. However, sellers or buyers may conduct fraud. Some examples of fraud include bid shielding, shilling, fake photos and misleading descriptions, selling reproductions and so on.

There following are some preventions for the auctioneer to take notes to antifraud:
1. Authentication service.
Some products may be defective or may be fake thus the authenticators are able to determine whether the item is genuine and described appropriately.

2. Grading service.
The use of grading is to identify the physical condition of an item, such as “bad quality” or “mint condition”. It can differentiate the items that being graded. Different items have different grading systems.

3. Verification.
With verification, neutral third parties will identify and evaluate the condition of an item through various methods. For instance, some collectors own their item “DNA tagged” for identification purposes and provide a way of tracking an item.

4. Feedback forum.
The buyers and sellers are allowed to build up their online trading reputations. The users are able to comment on their experience with other people.

5. Insurance policy.
For instance, eBay, the Internet auctioneer offers insurance underwritten by Lloyd’s of London. The program provided with no cost to the eBay users.

6. Nonpayment punishment.
In order to protect the sellers, a friendly warning is given for the buyers who do not honor their winning bids. For a second-time offense, a sterner warning is issued. Warning will be given continuously until an indefinite suspension level reached.

7. Appraisal services.
These services include assessing the authenticity and condition and reviewing what comparable items have sold for in the marketplace.

8. User identity verification.
For instance, eBay uses the services of Equifax to verify user identities. This program encourages the users to supply eBay with information such as IC number, driver’s licence number, date of birth and so on for online verification.

Review a local e-commerce website

There are many local e-commerce website in Malaysia, i had chosen one lucky website which is http://www.matchmaker.com.my/. This website is to help to look for love /selling love by online, i am know that this is not a new thing in nowadays, but it is quite funny and it raise up a question onmy mind: Can we find our true love through internet?

Definitely, this kind of website would not be in very formal styles, it is vey comfortable and using white and red colour as for their background which meant LovE and PeacE. Beside that, we can see or view lots of the female and male pictures in the front page of the website.

The user can sign up as member for 100% free membership, once the free trial expires, the member may purchase subscription , it categorized into Six months subscription. RM60 or US$16.00 or Twelve months subscription. RM100 or US$27.00 and the prices will never go up. and it is low priced dating website, so there would not have the manpower to handle refunds, and would not offer refunds.

The payment could be made by Credit Card, Cheque, or Direct Bank-in for Malaysia only. the credit card that accepted are American Express, Diner's Club , Discover , JCB , Master Card and Visa.

This website is just available for the existence member but not for the visitor, which meant the visitor could not simply access to the content of the website, so it is quite high confidential and the privacy of the member can be protected.

But it is not user-friendly because i just able to view their FAQ and it does not provide any information about their services and background.

Related to www.matchmaker.com.my

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

E-government is started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by Malaysia Government in 1996. It use information technology and e-commerce to provide citizens and organizations with more convenient access to government information and services and to provide delivery of public services to citizens, business partners, and those working in the public sector.

E-Government services focus on four main customers which are citizens, the business community, government employees and agencies. In E-government system, individuals are able to initiate a request for a particular government service and then receive that government service through the Internet or some computerized mechanism.

Malaysia government website (www.gov.my ) allow user to download various kind of form for any government department application, quick link such as government news, jobs, complaint, weather, policy feedback and many others, resource centre and polling center. This website has dual language such as Bahasa Malaysia and English, so user can choose for the language. There are 4 types of E-government services which are Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B), Government-to-Employee (G2E), and Government-to-Government (G2G).

Internal Revenue Department (IRD), online Tax using Mykey digital signature for companies to sign their C form and submit theirs document electronically to IRD. Mykey is a digital signature embedded into individual’s Mykad. It identifies and authenticates Mykad holders over internet, providing the capability to sign a document.

There is an increment of citizen using E-government in Malaysia as compare to past, which meant citizen willing to adopt this services. Why citizen willing to adopt E-Government in
nowadays?

This is because E-government is a way for public administration to become more open and transparent, and to reinforce democratic participation, more service-oriented, providing personalized and inclusive services to each citizen. E-Services form an emerging field, which is rapidly gaining attention and importance. Citizens are who expect and demand governmental services with a high degree of quality, quantity, and availability in a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, and year-round fashion. Malaysia Governments are developing information systems and electronic services that have the capacity to meet these emerging service needs and demands of citizens and other clients.

Implementation of E-government involved cooperation between government, private sector, and others. The transparency of the skill between 2 sectors enables new product development through high leven creativity and innovation.

Beside that, E-government project is not mere computerization of government. It involved the efforts of the processor, standard and technologies, ICT need to incorporate into a package of modernization, changes and reform that challenge public administration current internal governance framework.

There is some issue like privacy and security is not easy to overcome, as it requires the collaboration of legal, technical, and social prevention and control mechanisms. Furthermore, it is the most concerned by citizens and social groups in general and on government websites specifically. As many of them are concerned about the availability of their personal data such as driving records, property and deed records, on the internet, even if the information is from the public records or the release is for the consideration of public safety and health.

Furthermore, internet security breakdown has become common for many public organizations. Along with the technology development, hackers are able to get into the system and change data and records to seek self interests or to create public crises. Anyway, the privacy issue will continue to be one of the major policy concerns in the future E-government development.

However, Malaysia is keep on improving the core government applications and integrating more services across agencies in order to solve the issues or problem faced by E-government and provide a better services to the citizens in future.

Refer to :
http://www.apdip.net/publications/iespprimers/eprimer-egov.pdf

http://www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article1%20-%20Full.pdf

http://www.pps.fsksm.utm.my/pars2007/pars/pars/before%20correct/information%20system%20management/26)salaheddin.pdf