Sunday, July 6, 2008

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

As the internet services becoming more and more important in our daily life, many of the companies start using internet to communicate with its customers rather than still following the traditional way. One of the famous and new communication tools for the companies is corporate blogging. Corporate blogging is a communication tool key connects with the public – the customers, business partners, shareholders, creditors and suppliers – to increase awareness about what is going on for a particular company. Corporate blog is an aid to the company as it is published with the support of an organisation to reach its goals. Within the company, corporate blog act as a tool for collaboration and knowledge management among the employees whereas it servers as a communication tool outside the organization between the company and its potential customers and the important target groups.
In the real corporate world, many of the company started to use corporate blogging system. Example, Google not only using its corporate blogging system to effectively communicate with others to improve its employee relations, customer relation and business processes but also providing blog services – Google Apps (online collaboration suite) – for other companies. Many of the small and medium seized businesses use Google Apps as their communication tools within and outsite the company . It gives positive outsome to those company that implement Google Apps as it not help the company to save cost but also provide a better and greater flexibility in the daily operation functions.

Corporate blogging provides many advantages to the company such as it allows the company or the employees to directly communicate with others both within the company (among the employees in disseminate and explain strategy) and outside the company (sending necessary information to the customers, shareholders, creditors etc); low cost; giving opportunity for others answer in written form as well as publish pictures and most importantly, it is beneficial to the company if the corporate blogging system has a positive effect on the company’s reputation. However, everything has pros and cons. While company is using the corporate blogging, it causes some problems to the company. For instance, many corporate blogs do not look like corporate blog as the employees are not professional enough to use formal communication language in corporate blogging system as they include many of their unprofessional tones; time consuming, many of the employees still prefer to meet the customers directly as they have most to say to the customers but do not have time to type it out. Besides this, corporate blogging system is always a system that easy to start and hard to maintain as it need the company to update the blog from time to time. If company does not update it frequently, it will damages company reputation instead of enhancing its reputation.
As a conclusion, company must be able to handle the corporate blogging system well because the outcome of the system, either positive or negative outcome, is very much depends on how the company run the system.

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

Prevention methods of E-auction

User Identify verification- eBay uses the services of Equifax to verify user identities for a $ 5 fee. Verified eBay User, a voluntary program, encourage users to supply eBay with information for online verification. By offering their Social Security number, driver‘s license number, and date of birth, user can qualify for the highest level of verification on eBay.

Authentication Service- Product authentication is a way of determining whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. Authentication is a very difficult to perform because it relies on the expertise of the authentication. Because of their training and experience, expert can often detect counterfeits based on subtle details. However, two expert authentications may have different opinion about the authenticity of the same item eBay has links to companies that provide this specialized service.

Feedback Forum-The eBay allows registered buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputation. It provides users with the ability to comment on their experience with other individuals.

Physical Inspection-Providing for a physical inspection can eliminate many problems. This is especially true collector’s item. When the seller and buyer are in the same vicinity, it is easy to arrange for such inspection. EBay offers inspection services on a regional basis, so buyer can arrange for nearby inspection.

Escrow Service-For item valued at more than $200 or when either the buyer or seller feels the need for additional security. eBay recommend escrow service. With an easy –to-access link to third party escrow service, both partners in a deal are protected. The buyers mail the payment to the escrow service, which verifies the payment and alerts the seller when everything checks out. At the point, the seller ships the goods to the buyer. After an agreed-upon inspection period, the buyer notifies the service, which then sends a check to the seller, eBay , Yahoo! , and other large online auction sites provide their own escrow services. For the detail on how service work for auction, see aunction.yahoo.com and ftc.gov