Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies by katrina

Definition of corporate blogging from Wikipedia is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads which enables readers to easily read recent posts without actually visiting the blog, which is very useful for low-volume blogs. Many of us could be led to assume corporate blogging and business blogging were pretty much the same, which is NOT the case. Corporate Blogging is merely a small portion of Business Blogging. Business Blogging encompasses a lot more: A person living off their blog falls into that area. Marketing agencies that publish ads on public web blogs just the same. So do media companies publishing ads supported blog networks. Business blogging is everything to do with the question:"How can we make money out of the blogging phenomenon?" Corporate blogging:

• Provide product-supporting information to clients and prospect without a lot of sales messages.

• The blog does function as a brochure (talking about benefits and features of the products or service)
• Allow users of the product to post feedback
• Use links to take visitors to appropriate web pages on the company's site

For example: McDonald’s blog focuses on their corporate social responsibility. It presents the fast food chain's corporate social responsibility initiatives, from their employment practices, packaging and purchasing.

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

Various countries, including Malaysia, are implementing electronic government, generally known as “e-government”. The status of e-government implementation in Malaysia is widely discussed as to the potential of e-government implementation towards the public and business. The implementation of e-government was initiated by the introduction of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in 1996.

One of the e-government that had been introduced in Malaysia is Electronic Procurement (eP) Project. As for the Electronic Procurement (eP) project, the aim is to re-engineer, automate and transform current procurement system. The project would cover central contract, tender, and the direct purchase. Besides that, the use of eP will increase transparency, saves time and money while encourage suppliers to go electronic and join K-Economy.

The electronic procurement project has taken off with the introduction of ePerolehan and can be accessed at www.eperolehan.com.my. It is the government’s initiate to take its procurement exercises inline. With ePerolehan, all suppliers can obtain tender documents and submit bids on the internet. The suppliers are equipped with smartcards that enable them to transact with the ePerolehan system. Two modules in ePerolehan system are central contract and direct purchase, and have been fully functional and used by the government in its procurement exercise.

With the introduction of ePerolehan system, it hopes that the system could streamline the processes and procedures as well as improve efficiency and productivity, while lowering the government’s operational cost over time. For the suppliers, it could translate into new market, additional revenue and higher margins. Besides that, ePerolehan allows supplier to present their products on the internet, receive, manage and process purchase orders and eventually receive payment from government agencies via internet.

This project started in year 1999 and as of 2006, total active registered suppliers is 92,106 where 26,054 enable suppliers. The Direct Purchase(DP) Catalogue increased by 33.4% and enable suppliers increased by 193% since July 2004. This shows that the implementation of the E-Procurement had been adopted by the suppliers.

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

Have u ever downloaded movies, music online? If your answer is yes and yet very often, you might have to pay attention to the latest law imposed by UK government.

Since the problem of illegal download is getting worse and caused millions of money is lose in copyrights. To solve the problem of illegal download through internet, UK government is now working on a new law, to have these illegal downloader’s internet connection to be cut off.

To sharpen the impacts of this law, The Times suggested that broadband firms which fail to enforce the rules could be prosecuted. This would be a very good way to prevent illegal downloading if able to obtain supports from these broadband firms.

Whether or not this law can be imposed successfully is still depends on many factors. Firstly, will these broadband firms cooperate with as it might affect their company sales. Second, how accuracy is the judgment, can it be rely by public? Thirdly, the method of punishments and whether will it be able to fulfill the objective of this law or not.

Conclusively, we should not download all these illegal stuffs from internet to avoid being sued for copyright issues. Although you might say that, the costs is cheap for me to download straightly from net, but we must think twice before doing so, since the law imposed on this issue is getting strict.

Reference: http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/2008/02/uk-to-get-tough-with-illegal-downloader.html

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

Auction

Market mechanism by which buyers make bids and sellers place offers; characterized by the competitive and dynamic nature by which the final price is reached

Electronic Auctions (e-auctions)

Auctions conducted online

Although e-auction has it benefits but there are also things that we need to prevent.

There is several type of e-auction fraud:

• · Bid shielding – having fake (phantom/ghost) bidders bid a very high price and then later pull out at the last minutes

• · Shilling – placing fake bids on auction items to artificially jack up bidding price

• · Fake photo and misleading description

• · Improper grading techniques

• · Selling reproductions

• · Failure to pay

• · Failure to pay to the auction house

• · Inflated shipping and handling cost

• · Failure to ship mechanism

• · Loss and damage claims

• · Switch and return

• · Other frauds, e.g. sale of stolen goods, the use of fake ids, selling to multiple buyers.

Internet auction fraud were non-delivery of items, misrepresentation of items' value, stealing of goods from an online merchant through the involvement of a third party (triangulation), adding extra charges once bidding was completed (fee stacking), the sale of black-market goods, multiple bidding by the same buyer under different accounts or aliases, and false bidding by the seller (shill bidding).

Protecting Against E-Auctions Fraud:

• · User id verification

• · Authentication service

• · Grading services

• · Feedback

• · Insurances policy

• · Escrow services

• · Nonpayment punishment

• · Appraisal

• · Physical

• · Verification

references:http://www.crimcheck.com/background-check-news/whats-internet-auction-fraud-and-how-do-i-prevent-it