Corporate blogging: a new marketing communication tool for companies

What is corporate blogging?

A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. There are two types of corporate blogging; they are Internal Blogs and External Blogs.

An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view and check for any latest updates from the company.

An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services, to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues.

Example of corporate blog success.

According to research of NewPR Wiki, there was 58 (11.6%) of the Fortune 500 were blogging as of 17/5/2008. One of the successful blogs is Amazon Web Services Blog by Amazon.com that about Amazon web services, products, tools and developer information. It helps to improve the communication and its customer services, attract more people to consume and discuss new products online. Corporate blogging provides a clear mind map or editorial guidelines of overall marketing or communication strategy to its employees and third parties with organization communication plan and media mix. Besides that, it encourages employee participation in contribution of expertise, free discussion of issues or topics and deal with it, collective intelligence, be a direct communication between various layers of an organization and shares their views with others employees, teams or spokespersons publicly.

Advantages of corporate blogging
1. Easier communication between leaders and customers, suppliers and employees.
2. Build a stronger relationships and loyalty with customers.
3. Can share their ideas freely with an honest opinion.
4. Can build company’s reputation.

Disadvantages of corporate blogging
1. Hard to maintain because there is always new things to add on in the blog.
2. Time consuming to write a blog which may lead to high cost.
3. Public comment might affect the company reputation.

In conclusion, corporate blogging is getting important for corporation to deliver the message privately or publicly since it has brought many pros even thought the cons come along with it.

For the additional information, please refer those links:
1. http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/28/news/companies/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm
2. http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Resources/CEOBlogsList
3.http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/the-5-types-of-corporate-blogs-with-examples/
4.http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/06/30/most-corporate-blogs-are-unimaginative-failures/

MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEM IN MALAYSIA: IT’S POTENTIAL AND CONSUMERS’ ADOPTION STRATEGIES

What is mobile payment system?
Mobile payment is the collection of money from a consumer via a mobile device such as their mobile phone, Smartphone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or any electronic devices. Mobile payment can be used to purchase any number of digital goods and physical good liked ringtones, games, and even booking cinema ticket or air ticket. The mobile payments available in Malaysia are Telemoney and Mobile Money. There are four primary models for mobile payment which are:
a) Premim SMS based on transactional payments- payment through SMS text message
b) Direct Mobile Biling- uses mobile biling option to check at an e-commerce site
c) Mobile web payments (WAP)- uses web pages displayed to installed in mobile phone to make a payment
d) Near Field Communication- paying for purchases made in physical stores or transportation services.

MOBILE PAYMENT IN MALAYSIA

Telemoney
This is the first mobile payment service via multi channel access for internet and wireless transaction. GSM phone is used and identify the number then connect it to a credit card, debit card or bank account.

Mobile Money
This is a PIN- based mobile payment solution designed by MM International Sdn. Bhd. To address the limitation of cash, cheque and credit cards. User can registered anywhere by using a mobile phone.

POTENTIAL OF MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEM

1) Improved user convenience
Mobile payment provides a more convenient way to pay for their bills, just by a few clicks on mobile device, the user may be able to make payment through their mobile. Instead of make payment by going to the particular place, as the mobile payment is operating 24 hours a day, the user can make payment at anytime, anywhere they want, they can even make payment either at home or their office. Thus, this can eliminates the hassle to queue up just to pay for the bills and therefore can save user’s time.

2) Security privacy and trust
Mobile payment ensures private and secure transmissions. By using mobile payment, the personal details and payment history of the user are protected. Moreover, users account is protected from hacker or terrorists because the users need to key in passwords in order to login to their account.

3) Simplicity
User does not need to go through sophisticated steps in order to make payment by their mobile device. They just have to activate their telephones by logging into websites. After registering their mobile telephone numbers, they can enjoy the services, after registering it, there just a few clicks and they are able to make payment through their mobile device.

CONSUMERS’ ADOPTION STRATEGIES
1.Educate consumers about mobile payments, how to use and introduce its functions (e.g. bill payment, mobile purchase)
2.Enchance security and confidence to mobile users
3.Collaborate with more banks and companies to widen the ability to pay via mobile at the same time it helps to increased customer’s satisfaction and confidence
4.Maintain customer’s loyalty

Electronic currency

Electronic currency
Electronic currency (also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic money, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer(EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

While electronic money has been an interesting problem for cryptography, the use of digital cash has been relatively low-scale. One rare success has been Hong Kong's Octopus card system, which started as a transit payment system and has grown into a widely used electronic cash system. Singapore also has an electronic money implementation for its public transportation system (commuter trains, bus, etc), which is very similar to Hong Kong's Octopus card and based on the same type of card (FeliCa). There are also one implementation is in the Netherlands, known as Chipknip.

Paystone
Founded in 2001, Paystone has operations in the United States, Canada and the Philippines with International cash out capabilities in many other countries.

Paystone provides an inexpensive online payment method without the risk of chargebacks from fraudulent credit card use. Paystone can efficiently handle small financial transactions (micropayments) as low as $0.25. The ability to process micropayments opens a whole new world for entrepreneurs of all sizes. A small business or individual now has a method of generating revenue from their website quickly, easily and inexpensively. This makes a whole new range of content available to personal account holders. The large online merchant can also realize the full benefits of the Paystone solution to expand and increase the profitability of their business.

In addition to payments Paystone also provides an email money transfer option. A Paystone account holder can send funds to the email address of anyone in many countries around the world. The recipient of the funds signs up for Paystone and can cash out the money to their local bank account. For companies sending a large volume of payments they can access our GroupPay© feature to send many individuals money all at once

Bitpass
BitPass, the easiest and most complete way to buy and sell premium content online, works with leading media publishers, communities, portals and content providers to multiply their return on content assets while maximizing distribution and generating a better return on every customer.

For merchants looking to monetize content for distribution on the Web, BitPass offers both modular and end-to-end solutions to combat digital piracy, enable subscriptions and pay-per-view access, effectively merchandise and reward consumers, facilitate single-click payments, and simplify content operations.

For Consumers, BitPass created the universal buyer account, which synergies with the merchant offering and provides proprietary features that make it easy to search for, buy and organize premium content in a single place.

Payloadz
PayLoadz, Inc. is located in the heart of New York City's Grammercy District at 23rd and Park Avenue. This close proximity to the legendary Silicon Alley gives us access to an impressive pool of talent, resources, and also reminds us of the lessons learned during the dot-com fallout.

Payloanz are a new media development firm specializing in providing solutions for merchants and the community of developers. Founded in 1996 as a web development company Superfreaker Studios has grown to become one of the forefront developers utilizing Macromedia development products.

The solution that Payloanz created here has been developed with the years of experience and intimate knowledge and familiarity with the PayPal payment system. It is simple enough for anyone to use and works seamlessly with PayPal account to enable to offer digital goods available for sale from web site or online auctions.