Corporate Blogging: A New Marketing Communication Tools for Companies

With the recent global financil crisis breaking up worlds economy, many organization are finding ways or even new approaches to gain customers trust by positioning strong product or service brands into customer's mindset. Apart from the conventional way of attracting customer through million dollars of marketing and advertising either by tv advertisement or newspaper. Organization has moved upstream with the trend of "blogging", it used to be a tools for a person to express personal thoughts but now organizations too have take alternatives in distinguishing itself from other competitor by "corporate blogging".

Blogs is known as entries contribution of an author which posted on a regular basis, these author are commonly known as bloggers. Corporate higher management such as directors, managers seem to own a blogs nowadays, but their focus derive around corporates issue. These corporate blogs are contributed by a few author or maybe more.

Content in the blogs are usually promoting or discuss a new products and services, which encourage viewer to be able to give comment, besides, employees may too be able to provide detail information of a particular product or service being introduced. Some may argue corporate blogs may be biased in distributing the right information but nevertheless it has been a very popular tools in communicating directly with customer.

On the contrary, organization which owns a blog are able to reached out to a broader market compared to other forms of marketing, apart from trying to sell anything an organization also seem more "humane" or friendlier to approach by customer or viewer.

But after all the above statement, is corporate blogging is really that useful or beneficial towards an organization??

Adressing the issue above, benefits of corporate blogging can be identify is the following:-

• Create Transparency

Corporate blogging enable organization to communication with customer by providing comment space for feedback. It creates transparency as to which the form of communication are being delivered in a more casual way rather than a sale person trying to push a products or services. It allows transparency in a certain extend.

• Instant Feedback & Communication

Communication has made easy through chatbox and leaving down comments after each post. Blogger can response to any comment instantly besides, it is the best of handling any complaints or critism as prompt action can be taken to minimise customers dissatisfaction.

• Linkage to other Blogs

As corporate wants to stay at customer top priority list of blogs more visited, frequent post entries ensures corporate blogs are maintained in the top search engines when a person search anything related to the organization or issue addressed by it. Moreover, other blogger will linked corporate blogs in their own blogs expanding wide coverage of customer which might be difficult for organization to do so in advertising alone.

• Less Costly

Corporate blogs are known to save cost as it do not need much resources only active author to post up entries and computers. Organization which has effectively carried out this form of communication tools has realised the potential of utilising it. Besides, its proved to be less costly by maining only one blogs which able to reach wide coverage of target market.

15 Most Popular Corporate Blogs (Technorati ranked) – May 2008
#15. Boeing – Authority: 67
#14. Monster – Authority: 73
#13. Kodak – Authority: 105
#12. Delta – Authority: 252
#11. Yahoo! – Authority: 297
#10. General Motors – Authority: 364
#9. Ask – Authority: 364
#8. LinkedIn – Authority: 591
#7. Digg – Authority: 641
#6. Dell – Authority: 799
#5. Yahoo! Search – Authority: 1130
#4. Facebook – Authority: 1478
#3. Flickr – Authority: 1744
#2. Adobe – Authority: 1797
#1. Google – Authority: 8492

Source: New PR Wiki, http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/top-15-corporate-blogs-ranked-may-2008/

Legal

In today’s modern era of electronic technology, many people want to get their work done faster without much effort. At times, people forget or do not consider the legal and ethical values of their procedures. Therefore it is important for us to have a glance at what is legal in e-commerce. Legal issue in e-commerce is law that is enacted by the government and developed through common law. Laws are mainly strict, legal rules, and governing the act within their jurisdiction. In contrast, ethics are referred as a branch of philosophy that deals with what is right and wrong. Therefore for those companies that is using e-commerce as a medium to conduct business has to adhere to all the legal or ethical issues. Non compliance of this ethical issue can damage the company’s reputation and in worst case it may lead to loss of business.

E- Commerce is also popular not only for doing business but people also use the internet for shopping and banking purposes. Therefore many people do not realized that by using internet their private information may leak to unauthorized party. For example an individual who wish to shop online may just visit a particular website, click on the item that they wish to buy, drag it to the shopping cart and enter their credit card detail. However, this information has to pass through few hands before their transaction can be process. Therefore, websites should provide the customers with choices regarding the use of their personal information, and incorporate security procedures to limit access to customer information by unauthorized parties. Moreover websites should also provide customers with the choice of how much information that they wish to disclose. Beside privacy copy right has also become an important legal issue in e-commerce. For those music industries who do not wish their songs to be copied without proper permission they may enable exploitation of music samples and audio format. Where else software that is available on the internet for free of cost can be transfer without permission from the right holder. For example Napster, MP3 providers and many more.

Tips for avoiding e-Commerce Consumer Fraud

Check unusual “Ship To” Addresses – be aware for request to send merchandise as a gift to an unknown address because thieves often use this trick to ship the product to another destination whereby they can pick up the product without being notice by others.

Identify Big Spenders – excessive fees are paid by thieves to ship product quickly. This thieves are also know to be big ticket purchases whereby they will use stolen card, receive the merchandise and resell it at higher price to make a huge profit out of the sale.

Secure Payment Gateways - Securing your payment gateway is referring to the “behind the scenes” transfer of personal information between your transactions pages (the page where the order is placed), the merchant account (your bank) and the credit card company. This is one of the most important components requires the acceptance of credit cards for your e-Commerce business. In order to protect their client and have a secure gateway it is important to have credit card processing services which can be expensive but no e-Commerce business can actually operate without it.

In my opinion there are many ways to secure an online transaction. It all depends on the business operators whether they are willing to spend a little more in order to provide a secure online transaction to their customers.

References

http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/ECommerce_-_Legal_and_Ethical_Issues

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v4i49_nasir.html

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

The internet is a very powerful communication tool in trade. The business transactions conducted through the internet for example such as e-commerce is a faster and more efficient because traders can reduce operational cost as well as transaction and delivery time. E-government is a form of e-commerce where the “service provider” is e-government and the “clients” are the citizens and the private operators. The implementation of e-government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)

The best four directions that it could go for its implementation is:

• Securing APEC-wide commitment
  
• Enhancing Government IT infrastructure and implementing proper IT
  Management practices
  
• Enhancing training and culture management
  
• Implementing e-Government projects

E-government is being used as a tool for better government. The implementations so far in Malaysia are:

• Electronic Labor Exchange (elx), the domain is http://www.elx.gov.my/
• Project Monitoring System (PMS)
• Electronic Services Directory (eservices)
• E-syariah
• Electronic Procurement (eP) project
• Human Resource Management Information System(HRMIS)
• Electronic filing of income tax return
• Voter information
• SMS alert on e-gov services
• Online renewal of driving license

The benefits of implementing e-government are:

• Improves efficiency since the use f information technology enables improvement in mass processing tasks and public administration operations.
  
• Generate saving in on data collection and transmission
  
• Help to achieve specific outcomes
  
• Create a better communication between government and citizens
  

E-government Malaysia is now at ranked at 25th out of 32 countries in terms of e-government usage growth. In addition, a survey done by the market information group has proved that e-government usage has increased into 15% in 2003 compared to 12% in year 2002. In my opinion, even though the e-government has spread well and use by many organizations for their purpose but still there is low percentage of usage rate among the citizens in Malaysia. These could be due to less usage of internet application among the nations especially in the not developed area such as Sabah and Sarawak. Another possible reason that it is hardly applied by organizations is the difficulties of automating manual office systems while also facing the same challenges on online security and system integration which all other economies are wrestling with now.

However, the problems faced with e-government implementation are:

• Concern more on security if doing transactions over the internet and thus resulted in low usage of e-government services.
  
• Most of them are not aware of it yet
  
• Also because of language barrier. Most of them still prefer Malay Language.

http://www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article1%20-%20Full.pdf
http://www.apec.org/apec/documents_reports/senior_officials_meetings/2002.MedialibDownload.v1.html?url=/etc/medialib/apec_media_library/downloads/som/mtg/2002/word.Par.0083.File.v1.1

A discussion on E-Learning offered in Malaysia universities: Pros and Cons from the student perspective

The advanced technologies nowadays can bring everything to our homes, everything that we need to use daily, such as books, clothes, news and even foods and "knowledge". We can learning at home, at any places, as long as there can online. That is what i want to discuss --Electronic Learning or Networked Learning. Electronic Learning (E-Learning) is a term for all types of technology-enchanced learning (TEL), where techonlogy is used to support the learning process. Often the medium of instruction is through computer technology, particularly involving digital technologies. E-Learning has been defined as pedagogy empowered by digital technology. (Wikipedia)

E-Learning has become more and more convenient and popular in Malaysia. Almost every universities in Malaysia has the E-Learning service. E-Learning has shown its great advantages through its accessibility to all student irrespective of their residence. E-Classes help students to communicate with their tutors and lecturers, get information regarding their subjects and access teaching materials through E-Liabilies, for example UTAR has a web based learning environment (WBLE), which students can get the latest lecture notes and tutorial question from it.

From a student perspective, it is very useful and helpful, because we can save the time to print out the softcopies, we can read it as long as we have a computer and online service is provided. We can have the teaching materials for a whole semester at one time instead of waiting for the hardcopies that photostated and distributed by our leader. The most interesting thing is we not need to attend the classes in the particular university or college which our courses are taking from. We can save a lot of money since we not need to pay the transportation fees, accommodation fees and the daily fees. We can save the high study fees as well.

E-Learning also provided student time flexibility, you can download the teaching materials whenever you want, or when you can online. It is not a matter and nobody will punish you because of attend the class without lecturer notes. A student can send his query at any time when he can get access to the internet. So, because of these, E-Learning is very popular among students that living in the developing countries.

However, everything has its good and bad sides, E-Learning as well. The cons of E-Learning obviously is the non-motivated or laziness of a student. Lack of face-to-face communication between a teacher and a student will lead to misunderstanding, it is because a teacer might not understand what the student need and interest for. Besides that, a student will be too free since nobody can control him and he can simply be lazy and demotivated. It might result a low scope of the student's knowledge. Hence, the final result might not so encouraging.

For some student who living in rural areas, such as Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysia. The places might not have the onlie service and those students even do not have a computer and do not know how to use computer, E-Learning becomes an unreasonable service to them, so it is unfair to the student who living in the rural areas.

Reference:

1.) http://www.articlealley.com/article_78603_45.html

2.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_learning

Mobile Payment System in Malaysia: Its Potential & Consumer Adoption Strategies

Mobile Payment System

Vast changing pace of technologies has drastically alter how business operate and how service are being provided. Adoption of technologies has made transaction convenient to consumer. Adapting to the continuous innovation of technologies has create competitive advantages to organization which adopts it.

There is various types of payment system in Malaysia, one of the current and newly introduced system is Mobile Payment system. Mobile Payment are simply defined as payment which is made over mobile devices. Malaysia first introduced mobile payment was in 2001 with the name "TeleMoney", was being managed by System@Work company.

Collaborated with Hong Leong Bank facilitating on settlement of payment and handling payment service in Malaysia. In order to use this service, the only requirement needed was GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and an active account with TeleMoney which consist personal identification verification. Any user which has GSM mobile phone and credit card or debit card are eligible to use this form of service.

Besides, System@Work are working with few companies such as Celcom to expand the field of mobile payment which will replace conventional method of settling payment.

In 2009, Maxis has launched NFC (Near Field Communication) in Malaysia, with this new technology enables consumer to make purchases convenient by using mobile phones. FastTap service is newly introduced using NFC embedded into mobile phones for instances Nokia.

Its Potential in Malaysian Market

BNM (Bank Negara Malaysia) foresee the potential of venturing into mobile payment as the new industry, survey shows more than 80% of Malaysian population is subscribed to phone services. Technologies embedded into mobile phones has brought it into the next level apart from the conventional way of only performing voice communications now mobile phones can take picture as well as surfing the Internet. People tend to adopt to this feature easily and it creates an opportunity of business in mobile payment.

On the other hand, another reason of potential is survey conducted by BNM has shown 97% of sample being surveyed has a bank account which bring means to the availability of encouraging bank user to adopt mobile payment as its convenient and less costly to perform.

High percentage of mobile phone subscriber and bank account user provide ideal platform of starting or introducing mobile payment to consumer as their personal payment system.

Consumer Adoption Strategies

Mobile payment has yet to achieve wide acceptance of its service which may due to several factor. BNM stated only 1.8% of the whole Malaysia population of 25 million are currently utilising this service. In order to encourage user to adopt mobile payment there is several ways which may need to prioritize.

The need to collaborate with industry player in area such as common payment messaging format, authentification and securities. Through ensuring having common payment format it enables consumer and merchant to perform transaction easily and less hassle. This involves more cost effective and convenient which draws larger target group to use this service. Consumer will want service and login in which requires less rigidity but at the same time they are ensured their personal information are well protected.

On the contrary, organization must look into the needs of consumer payment preference. Where consumer expectation of service being received plays huge impact on how consumer preceived the system to be efficiency in providing what it has claimed to give or merely an alternative of types of payment.

Therefore its important to educate consumer of mobile payment and features in in it which consumer can fully utilise to the full extend. It involves creating awareness of the existance in market. On the other hand, its also crucial to ensure that consumer felt save when using mobile payment system by increasing their confident level towards performing transaction through mobile phones.

Credit Card Debt: Causes and Prevention

Credit card debt is a burgeoning problem to all. Debt is all around us and getting worse every day. The fact is that through credit card debt is expensive to fund with high interest rate and that there is nearly always some form of credit-usage fee in our account statement. For your information, debt is divided into two groups which are good debt and bad debt. Good debt is such as buying an item like a house or mortgage that will increase in value and followed by bad debt such as 50 “flat screen television you bought on your credit card and are paying the minimum balance on.

The causes of Credit Card Debt
Fact of life
It is that credit card holders do not know how to spend wisely. In other words they would have budget prepared in their life for spending.

“Because they are paying me to do it” policy.
Most of us would put our credit card debt into one debt because the credit card issuer is paying you to do it!! A true fact is that nowadays the credit card company has now become competitive that issuers are fighting among themselves to get sign up to their card.

To Entertain
They are certain people who would use credit card for their entertainment purpose such as clubbing, shopping and holidays. These type of expenses is considered to be unnecessary expenses that should be avoided.

Furthermore, prevention has to be done to avoid credit card debt.
Do not spend more than you actually need.
Money has to spend when necessities only and not for luxurious. Besides that, all the money that you save will get rid of the debt.

Settle down payment in either one of the two ways
a) Take the account with the smallest balance and pay it down first. Try to double the payment due but if that is not possible yet, pay as much extra month that you can afford by achieving the goal of paying the smallest account first, you will become more motivated to continue on your quest.
b) Alternatively, take the account with the largest annual percentage rate and work your plan of attack on this bill first. Again, try to double the payment or at least pay as much extra as you can.

Follow the Plan
Keep following the plan until all credit cards have been paid off. Do not use those accounts again to keep the balances at zero.

Extra Effort
Extra Once your bill is paid off, take that some payment you had been making and apply it towards your next credit card. This extra amount, along with the minimum payment due, will really begin to take a chunk off that balance.

http://www.gobalakrishnan.com/malaysia-credit-card-debt-solution/
http://www.streetdirectory.net.my/travel_guide/149697/credit_cards/6_simple_tips_for_credit_card_debt_help.html
http://www.moneyinstructor.com/art/creditconsolidate.asp

E-Tailing

During those days people tend to shop for goods traditionally from one shop to another. However due to the advancement in technology selling and buying of goods and services can be done over the internet by just a simple click. Those who conduct electronic business online are known as electronic tailers. Electronic markets are the institution that allocates all the resources needed by the demanding parties. Trading over the internet are know to be free trading whereby there is no external planning, selection and decision are made freely, and offers are evaluate based on the individual needs. Furthermore electronic market can be seen as form that connects two substantial infrastructures of our information technology. This mature telemetric form has realized the electronic market whereby they contain supply and demand in the form of virtual information objects which are available equally for seller and buyer all over the world. Furthermore, an electronic market also provides affordable services over the internet. Some of these services include product rating (from magazines test reports or rating agencies), interactive product demonstration (software demonstration program), ordering products from an electronic catalogs and many more.

There are five out of eleven most important electronic market models in retailing. The first model is E-shop. This model mainly focuses on promoting the company goods or services and also the possibly to order and pay, electronically also traditionally. Furthermore there are several benefits provided such as lower prices offered, better information, convenience of selecting, buying and delivering and 24 hours availability. The second model is E-procurement. This model is applied by big company that provide wider choices for supplier that provide better quality of goods, lower cost, and many more. Third is E-auction whereby auction is done on the internet accompanied by multimedia presentation of the goods. Furthermore, it also benefits the supplier and buyers whereby it increases efficiency since no physical movement of goods is needed until the deal is establish. Fourth is E-mall. E-mall is a collection of e-shops with well know brand. Normally it is enriched with guaranteed payment method such as www.emb.ch that gives entry to e-shops. Moreover e-malls reduce complexity and cost to be on the web with sophisticated hosting facilities such as additional traffic generated from other e-malls. The last but not least is third party market place that is suitable for companies that wish to leave the Web marketing. This model works when the third party has something in common and offers at least a user interface to the supplier catalogues such as additional features like branding, payment, logistic and many more.

The internet does not only being used to trade online but also to provide specific services such as the online travel. The online travel provide satisfaction to their customers whereby they can book their ticket online without visiting the travels company and also book hotel rooms in advance. The internet service has made many of the customers to be independent whereby they can take greater control over their traveling plans and also compare prices to evaluate which travels company is offering the best price. For example Air Asia is providing these online services in their specially created website. The internet has left a great impact on the travel industry since the travel industry has to change the way they do business from brick and mortar to online business model. By using the internet the travel industry is providing a new service called the 'dynamic packaging' where consumers put together their own holiday packages by purchasing their flight, hotel, or car rentals separately. In conclusion the internet has change the way business is carried out from traditional to modern way of doing business. However the traditional way is still important as certain consumer prefer face to face meeting before any decision or buying or selling is made.

References:

http://www.electronicmarkets.org/issues/volume-5/volume-5-issue-1/v5n1_schmid0.pdf
http://www.electronicmarkets.org/issues/volume-8/volume-8-issue-2/businessmodels0.pdf
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/63-018-x/2006001/4072207-eng.htm