Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Internal blogs refer to blogs within the organization that operate behind a firewall. Some organizations have only a single blog to update employees about the latest news and changes implemented. This is far easier to manage, control and ensure that the content adheres to the corporate policies. Some enterprises allow employees to form blogs and share their ideas, though such practices are harder to control. Blogs improve communication, increase knowledge and clear doubts instantly and hence are necessary tools.

External blogs are made available on the Internet and can be viewed by anyone. It helps you to communicate with your customer. If you have a voice, you don't appear to be a nameless and faceless corporate entity. Customers like dealing with people and a blog helps your customer feel like they are buying from a real person. It gives you a chance to share information and news with your customers. It's a great vehicle to drive information to your client base without pushing information at them too aggressively. They choose to read your blog and choose to find out about your company. They can also choose to comment and they can help spread the word. Blogs get syndicated and people do social bookmarking with them as well. Your blog is ideal for viral marketing!

Your blog should be optimized for your keywords just as much as your website is in order to attract the right audience. Blog posts should give value to readers and encourage participation. You can also use your corporate blog to announce contests, special discounts and to get feedback from your customer base. Besides that, it can drive traffic, get you more customers, increase customer satisfaction and improve your SEO rankings.

An example of corporate blogging is Google blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com. Google use its blog to make new announcements, get reviews about its products etc. It announced a push to get advertisers and publishers to utilize video ads. Google said they will sell both “InVideo” ads, where a video ad appears at the bottom of a video, as well as text overlay ads that put text below a video. The InVideo ads are paid on a CPM basis, while the text overlay ads are paid on a CPC basis.

Example of a Local E-Commerce Site

Nowadays, there are a lot of e-commerce site that enable the online users to purchase goods or services. The example of local e-commerce site that i would like to introduce to all of you is BlincBlinc site (http://www.blincblinc.com).

Blincblinc.com is an online boutique that is established in year 2006 in Malaysia. They emphasize in credibility, efficiency as well as quality assurance. The major types of products that we can get in this site are fashion jewelry, hair accessories, bags, clothing and so on. These products can be view through the online catalogue. The catalogue includes the pictures, information and prices of the products.

Besides the online catalogue services, they also provide search engine. This can make the users easier to find certain products. In addition, this site also provide few types of currencies so that it is more convenient for the user from others country. Then, we also can find few links in the site that can give users a lot of information about this site.

We need to sign in to purchase the products in this site. Then, we browse through the online products catalogue or use the search engine to find the products that we want. After we locate the products that we want, we just need to click add to cart button. Then the products will appear in the shopping cart. We can view our selected products or alter the quantity of the products. After confirm the products that we want to purchased, we will need to make payment either trough online or offline payment. Then, we need to inform them by email, sms, fax or call after the payment was made. Finally, we can choose the delivery methods that are through delivery or self pick-up.

The download speeds in this site are quite fast. The site layout is white colour so that it is easier to be match with the site design. The colour and font that are selected also matched the layout of the site.

Besides having Blincblinc.com, this site also have a BlincBlinc lounge that is located in 3rd Mile Square, Jalan Kelang Lama. In this lounge, the customers can seek for assistance if they need help when they online shopping in Blincblinc.com. Other than that, this lounge will be a waiting area for customers who choose self pick-up of their products.

Here are some examples of the online catalogue available in this site:

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

E-Government, also known as electronic government, refers to the use of internet technology as a platform in exchanging the information, providing services and transacting with citizens, businesses, and government. It can be applied by the legislature, judiciary, or administration, in order to improve internal efficiency, the delivery of public services as well as the processes of democratic governance.

Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri Malaysia (LHDN) had introduced e-filling, an application which enables taxpayers to submit their Tax Return Forms electronically. In order to submit the tax return forms via internet, a digital signature is required. To facilitate this, LHDN had provided free Digital Certificates to all taxpayers. For more information can visit to https://e.hasil.org.my/ or email to e_filing@hasil.org.my.

However, there are some common problems faced by the consumers:

(a) The system may be corrupted during the peak season

(b) IT knowledge is required for the taxpayer

(c) Certain software is needed when using e-filling

In order to encourage more citizens to use the e-government applications, government must increase the public’s awareness through advertisements or organizing some workshops at public places. Besides that, government also can launch some campaign to promote the benefits of the e-government applications in order to rebuild public confidence on e-government applications.

Note to prevent e-auction fraud

Auction is a market mechanism by which a seller place an offer to sell an product and buyer made bid sequentially and competitively until a final price is reach. This is the traditional way to bid for a product, but for nowadays technology, auction can be done online that is E-auction. There are fews of popular e-auction around the world. For example is ebay and the most e-auction website for Malaysia is lelong.com.

Although it is convenient for consumer to bid online but there will have some fraud detected:

• Fake photo and misleading description.
• Bid shielding. Having fake bidders bid at a very high price then later pull out at the last minutes.
  
• Fake Escrow system.
• Shilling. Placing fake bids on auction items to artificially jack up the bidding price.

There are some notes for consumer to take notes that prevent from the e-auction fraud:

(a) User identity verification. For example phone number, driving license number and house address number. To verify the user identity, the voluntary program will encourage the user to supply some information for verification.

(b) Escrow services. Both buyer and seller in a deal are protected with an independent third party. Buyer mails the payment to escrow services which verify the payment and alert the seller when everything checks out.


(c) Feedback forum. It allow the buyer and seller to build up their online trading reputation. It provide users with ability to comment on their experience with other.

Credit Card Debts: Causes and Prevention

Everyone who owns a credit card knows that it is best to use a credit card only when urgent need arises. Use of the credit card for leisure more often than not, becomes an addiction and uncontrollable. Such a situation can often result in the creation of debts for the credit card user.

There are several causes lead to credit card debts such as:
1) Interest on interest

The main reason of credit card debts is paying interest on interest. Most of the card holders do not pay the full amount on time. This then accumulates a god awful amount of interest. The larger the balances, the larger the amount need to be repaid as you have to pay the principal amount plus a certain level of interest on it.

2) Online shopping

The opportunity to shop online has made this problem all the more severe as it is through credit cards only that the purchase are made on the internet. People do not need to spend their "real money" by paying through credit cards. People will spend continuously without noticing the risk of credit card debts as they are only required to pay a minimum payments every month.

3) Low minimum payments
Relatively low minimum payments make it easy to spend more money than you have available.

It is attractive as you are only required to pay a minimum payments every month. The balances will be carried forward and accumulated. This make the credit card debts problem arises.

4) Attractive benefits for credit card application

Credit card offers come in on a daily basis in the mailbox and it has been made way too easy for people to get credit cards. Credit card issuers also can easily approach you especially in shopping centres. Credit card applicants are always allured by the attractive conditions such as 0% interest and no annual fee. Thus, this make credit card holders always spend for the things not needed as many shops are available for easy payments.

Once created, it is not easy to get rid of credit card debts. However, there are few ways help to prevent the credit card debts such as the following:

1) Do not carry balances

If you have this habit of carrying forward your balance owed to the credit card company to the next month, it is better that you stop using your credit cards altogether. You can submit it back to the agency or cut it down to prevent any usage on urge as well.

2) Put a stop to solicitations

Off all the offers that come to your way for platinum cards etc, choose just one or two that can help you manage your debts and just stop entertaining the rest of them. You can even talk to the three main credit agencies and remove your name from the list of credit offers. The three agencies are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

3) Pay off more than the minimum amount

Set up a minimum amount for yourself when you repay the money owed to credit card agencies. People usually get stuck in debts and carry balances due to the urge of paying only the minimum amount mentioned by them. However, you should try to paying off as much as you can, so that the debts are removed quickly.

4) Turn to family for loan

This is one of the lowest cost way to pay off your debts. Asking for a loan from friends and family will get you a favourable interest rate as well. Make sure that all the details are done in writing so that the future is secure for both parties involved.

In conclusion, credit cards should be used for emergencies only, unless you plan on paying the entire balance off immediately. Never pay the minimum amount due unless you truly cant afford anymore. This is because it will lead to credit card debts.

The application of pre-paid cash card

Prepaid cash cards are a recent phenomenon. They have exploded in popularity across America over the last 10 years and are now taking off in Malaysia also. The concept of the prepaid cash card is basically same with the prepaid mobile phone SIM card. A prepaid card looks like a credit or debit card, and gives users the ability to purchase products and services with a card but with a crucial difference is that user can only spend the balance that has been preloaded onto the card. This means there is no risk of running into debt as it has no credit or overdraft facility.

Money can be reload on o the prepaid card by cash at bank, post office or at any Payzone that appoint by the company. When using the card to purchase, the prepaid card works like the credit card. But the difference with the credit card is just that the the total amount that the user purchase will be taken off from the card immediately and the transaction is complete.



The popular pre-paid cash card that use among Malaysian is Touch'nGo Card. Touch ‘n Go uses contactless smartcard technology. The card looks similar to a credit card. User can continue using the card as long as it is pre-loaded with electronic cash. User can reload the card at toll plazas, train stations, Automated Teller Machines, Cash Deposit Machines, Petrol kiosks and at authorised third party outlets.




Other than that, in Hong Kong, Octopus card is the most popular. Debuted in 1997, the Octopus Card instantly became widely used in the public in Hong Kong, as it simplified the transportation payment process to take only a couple of seconds. The usage of the card is can pay the public transport fees, as well as retailers who accept the card such as convenient stores or restaurants.

Mobile Payment Systems in Malaysia: Its Potentials and Consumers' Adoption Strategies

Mobile payment systems are processing a payment for goods or services through a mobile device such as mobile phone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or other mobile devices.

There are two primary methods for mobile payment that are:
(a) premium SMS based transactional payments
In this method, the consumer sends payment through an SMS text message and the charges will applied to the phone bills. When the consumers make a payment, the consumer and the seller will be informed with the success of payment. Then, the seller will send the goods or provide the services to the consumer. The goods and services provided are not physical goods or services. The items are such as wallpaper and ring tones.

(b) mobile web payments (WAP)
This process replaced the premium SMS based transactional payments. In this method, the consumers can purchase physical goods compare to SMS payment. Consumers use web pages displayed on their phone to make a payment. Below are the steps for payments for this method that i found in a website that being use in Australia:

In Malaysia, the example of mobile payment systems website is Mobile Money (http://www.mobile-money.com/). This website provides physical goods for sale. This website allows everyone to pay anyone, at anytime from anywhere with just one SMS and vice versa. This payment system is very secure and it is a closed loop payment system.