You've probably heard all these terms a lot lately. You wonder about what these technologies? What value do you offer? If you are not aware of these new applications and how they are affecting online sales interactions then read this brief further.

Do these technologies impact you? To be honest, it's too early to tell - but awareness drives innovation and maybe your team will develop an idea or application that really changes a part of its e-commerce business.

Here's the rundown:

Blogs

What:

Probably the best known of the three, blogs allow everyday people to quickly develop a website and distribute any type of content they want. Many web entrepreneurs use this functionality to develop online stores in niche markets, while the popularity of the quest to defeat the largest retailers in the specific conditions in the market.

When Blogs makes sense to target online communities. Certain blog authors develop a base of large numbers of unique visitors, therefore, the site becomes a target market for viral marketing. By integrating your brand image within the user experience in that specific blog, an online marketer are able to actually marketing segment before converting someone as a customer.

If care:

If you have a very unique value proposition, or sell at a very specific segment of customers or high value blogs can be a great way to increase brand awareness in general. You better you can connect with their customers and provide details of current sales and promotions being offered.

Podcast

What:

Pocasting is just called mobile video broadcasting - Apple's marketing / development team did a great job with the brand of your device to a type of emerging media! Like traditional radio and television, mobile video broadcasting delivers branded content in either a paid / free environment, the mobile MP3 player anyone (Apple currently only has video, but that will change shortly.) Retailers can use this communication channel to further connect its customers with promotional events during the broadcast of special programming to meet a need for concern.

If care:

Not really. Until increasing the penetration of video podcasting is still a limited channel for advertising. The best application right now would be a segment of online digital content is delivered to an opt-in list. As technology advances, it can potentially do this from its current exclusion from the page of your website and not from Apple's iTunes platform.

RSS

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, is a method for electronic content distribution. RSS is transmitted via the Internet, but what makes it unique is that you need the efforts of the discharge by the final recipient of the content. It streams instateneously. Consumers can have news readers on their computers, either integrated into a emal client, or an aggregated web application such as News Gator, and are able to obtain information concerning their interests.

Already gaining momentum in the travel industry and in comparison shopping engines, RSS seems to be a valuable way to push news, offers and infomrmation to customers. Travel companies are able to provide a source of transmission of last-minute deals on airfare to segments of their customers without the customer having to open an e-mail or visit a website.

If care:

Depends on the nature of your business. Do you consistently offer new prices? Are you new pieces to your assortment consistently? Do you have a customer base is extremely loyal that you want to get to the courier? If so, RSS may another channel to help build your brand.