Corporate blog: the new marketing communicating tool for companies

Corporate blog is an effective communicate medium that used by organization to meet their organization goals. Corporate blog enable organization to interact with customer more directly and respond immediately to their question.

There are few TYPE of corporate blog:

Internal blog
This is the blog where just can access through the organization intranet by any employee.

External blog
This kind of blog is publicly. It’s usually used by organization when there is a release of new product and responds to the customer question.

CEO blog
This is the discussion blog among the CEO

Steve Rubel , a vice president of client services at CooperKatz& Co is an expert in blogging and he has suggested a FOUR step formula :

1. find influencers in the subject matter.

2. Listen to people, recognize their needs, and subscribe to other blogs to better understand the customer

3. engage people in dialogue through email and have a blog to join in the discussion

4. give people authority, which helps bloggers achieve their goals while creating loyalty customers

Advantages :

deliver a company message to customer more directly

get faster feedback from customer through blog

enable organization more understand the customer needs

more participation of employee in discussion

Disadvantages:

employee may reveal too much organization information to customer

hard to predict the reaction of the customer

hard to manage : debate between customer and employee

A blog of car company

A review from a post on E-tailing from My E-commerce blog

A REVIEW on a POST on

E-TAILING from

MY E- COMMERCE BLOG

http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/e-Tailing

From the link above,to the ecommerce’s blog, we can know that many offline businesses have started to move their step into electronic retailing (e-tailing). E-tailing simply mean retailing conducted over the internet, online. The e-tailing most likely is sale of goods and services to individuals (B2C). E-tailing has become a competitive advantage to the business as the internet became so important and popular nowadays. An example of e-tailing is the Amazon.com which is also the king of retailing. Amazon has continuously expanding and enhancing their product selection from books to electronic product to other nonretail activities. Some special features such as amazon allows customer to send and receive email to the book author has retain the loyalty of the customer.

From the blog, we can see that various business, even fisherman in Tanjung Dawai also go to e-tailing. We can’t deny that internet already play an important role in business. It also increases the standard of living of the fisherman while benefit them in term of profit.

In order to survive in e-tailing, it’s not just creating a website online and do then carrying out the business. It must also provide some special services or features in order to differentiate their website from other. From the example, we can see that online shopping is being top of the e-tailing market. However, many consumers are worrying about the size of clothes that they purchased does not fit them . To overcome this problem myShape.com allow consumer to purchase personalised clothing collection matched with their style and fit preferences and body dimensions.

E-tailing can enhance your business. Business in the offline market can consider starting their business online. Online market is globalisation and we can attract many customer. In additon, setting up a webpages is much more easier compare with open a physical outlet. However, from our opinion, physical market is equally important for us. For example, Dell which is well known as selling personal computer and laptop through online is already conducting their business in the offline market. As some consumer will be more confident and convincing in the product in the offline market. Offline market reduces the fraud and other security issues in the internet. Moreover, it also reduces the unemployment rate. Therefore, the better way is to make a combination in your business through physical market and online market.

A review on a post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce blog http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Security

After review the blog, it has alerted me to be more careful when performing the online activities. When we switch on our personal computer or laptop and connect to the internet and perform some online activities, there is always a risk that our computer will be hacked, vulnerable to viruses, worm or Trojan. In e-commerce world, actions should be taken to prevent computer from these threats as it involves business mainly in the online world. Neglect in internet security can lead to loss of personal data or hacker will hack to the company database to steal the information that is crucial to the company. First, we should be familiar with the threat and attack in order to protect our computer from threats.

There are two main types of attack and threats. One is known as technical attack and the other one is known as non technical attack. The example of the non-technical threat is ‘phising’ which the attacker will use the social pressure to trick the user to reveal their personal information such as credit card or bank account number. This technique is usually involved by sending e-mail to trick the user. For example, the attacker will send a bank notice that have been manipulated and states that they need the user’s information to safeguard their account due to certain reason. Then the user will provide their personal data with no doubt as it looks real.

Most of us are familiar with worms and viruses and these are the type of technical attacks. Besides that, non-technical attack also consists of Denial-of service (DOS) attack, Distributed denial of service (DDoS) and Trojan horse.

☠ Denial-of service (DOS) attack
This is attack uses software by sending a floor of data packets to the user computer with the purpose of overloading its capacity. This can cause the network to shut down and making it impossible for user to access.

☠ Distributed denial of service (DDoS)
It is similar to DOS attack which send request to bombard the system until it not responding. The different of DDos is the attacker will illegally access to several computer and send request while DOS only using one computer.

☠ Trojan horse
This is a program that appear to be useful function as it actually hidden a harmful function that can be harmful for your computer.


What can we do to aVoid those threat and attack?

❤ Access control
The very first thing is to protect the physical asset which is your personal computer, laptop, hand phone and so on. It is also important to determine that who can actually access to the webpage. Besides that, avoid using password that is something related to you and known by other people such as your name or the date of the birthday.
Biometric system such as finger print, iris scanner can also take into consideration as the interest of this system is increasing.

❤ Anti-virus and anti-spyware software
Anti-virus software can scan and protect the system by remove viruses, worm and also Trojan horse while anti- spyware can also removes Trojan horse which often include hidden inside of freeware product and services.

❤Firewall
Firewall act like a filter where the network must pass. It can protect the system against remote login, viruses, spam and others.

❤ Key encryption
This is the process of encrypts the message in the ways that are difficult, expensive and time consuming. This can prevent an unauthorized people to decrypt the message easily.

Failure of Kozmo

E-commerce has brought a lot of benefits. This can be seen that many companies have started their business from physical system to online system. In fact, not every company is successfully moving their business plan to online system. Therefore, Companies need to plan and consider the factors that will affect their plan to moving their business to e-commerce system.



Here is the example of the FAILURE of e-commerce:

kozmo.com was a online company which organized in 1997 by Joseph Park and Yong Kang in New York City . kozmo.com is convenient as it provided many items and products from snack food to DVD. One of its competitive advantage and also where Kozmo.com well known of its delivery system. Kozmo.com will deliver small item by free of charge.Moreover, Kozmo.com promises that they will deliver the product which the consumer orders within an hour. It has attracted many college students which came from middle class base.

Kozmo.com realized that target on the college students does not bring much profit after 4 years. Therefore, it decided to change their targeted group who make up of 76% of his business to people who would likely to order expensive products. Kozmo started to duplicate their categories to 5 main products which are meals, entertainment, drug shop, gift shop and grocery in order to attract customers who are less Internet-savvy. Other than that, Kozmo.com joint with other restaurants to delivered their food as to launch their new plan of ‘ready to eat gourmet meals’.

In April 2001, Kozmo.com FAILED after the collapse of the dot-com bubble. It shutting down the business and laid off its 1100 employees. According to the document of Securities and Exchange Commission, Kozmo.com had made a profit of $3.5 in 1999 but with a net loss of $26.3 million at the end.

The REASONS that Kozmo failed:

BEFORE change their plan:

Costly
Kozmo deliver a small item on free basis. Although it can attract consumer, it is costly as the transportation fee may not be covered. Kozmo has realized this and finally initiated a $10 minimum charge but it also cannot stop it from shutting down its company

Home Delivery System
Although Kozmo delivery system is attractive, but it has been proven that home delivery system is hard to make profit. Example: Webvanalaaa.

AFTER change their plan:

Change Plan
This is the 1 main reason of failure of the Kozmo.com which it changing their target from college student who make up of 76% of his business to upscale consumer.


Restaurant-delivery Service
Kozmo will have to compete over many restaurants that provided delivery service which offered more choice (food) in New York City.

Besides using a success example, a failure example also indicate a good lesson for us to learn. From this Kozmo.dom, we can learn that planning is an important starting point to conduct the business in e-commerce. We must look and think at the several aspect or results instead on just rely on one competitive advantage. Delivery system can be a competitive advantage but it also can make your business going to a downturn in this case.