In social media years, blogs are practically ancient. The term "weblog," later shortened to blog, dates all the way back to 1997.

Technorati now tracks more than 112 million blogs, meaning they are clearly no longer "the next big thing." Much of the social media buzz is now devoted to social networks like Facebook, which recently announced its membership had grown to 200 million, and Twitter, a micro-blogging site which attracted 7 million unique visitors in February, according to Nielsen Online. (Micro-blogging is a blogging variant that limits authors to 140-character missives.)

Yet many companies see blogs as a sort of senior statesman of social media, one that is central to their strategies of fostering closer relationships with their customers, rather than a medium with waning influence. In fact, they use newer channels such as Twitter to promote their blogs.

In the early part of the decade, social media activity centered around blogs because “that’s where the conversations were happening,” says Paul Chaney, president of the International Blogging and New Media Association and author of the blog Conversational Media Marketing. “Conversations are more distributed now, but blogs are like a base of operations from which you foray into other channels.”

All of the companies interviewed for this piece support this view. They agree that, compared to channels like Facebook and Twitter, blogs offer companies more ownership and control of their brands. Twitter, with its length limit of 140 characters, doesn’t lend itself to the types of involved discussions that are possible on blogs. Because blogs are also more easily accessed by Google and other search engines, they boost a company’s profile through search engine optimization.

“Our blogs are home base. Whether I am on Facebook or Twitter or any other social site, most of my conversation is still going to happen on the corporate blog,” says Bryan Rhoads, a digital strategist with Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence.

“Companies that are focused on joining conversations with customers are going to communities that already have customer bases and becoming relevant in those conversations,” says Bob Pearson, president of the Blog Council and former vice president of Communities and Conversations at Dell. They can then direct those customers to their blogs, which are “the ultimate story-telling mechanism.”

How do these companies and others position their blogs in an ever-shifting social media landscape?

Dell

The PC manufacturer started a blog program in July of 2006, at the behest of CEO Michael Dell, in response to its then well-documented struggles with declining customer satisfaction levels. The company spent a few months reading “thousands and thousands” of posts before publishing a post of its own. This research not only gave Dell a sense of how to “blogify” content, it helped the company develop a plan for solving the tech support issues for its products.

“You can be as transparent and conversational as possible, but if you don’t get the right people and processes in place that are committed to actually helping customers, it won’t do you a bit of good,” says Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca.

Menchaca typically identifies an owner or co-owners of a blog, who become responsible for that blog’s content. About 100 employees contribute to Dell’s 15 blogs (four of which are in languages other than English), estimates Menchaca.

Some of the keys to the blogs’ success: providing a basic training course for all beginning bloggers, enlisting “passionate” employees, and conducting weekly content meetings during which core bloggers compare notes on relevant activities within Dell, comments of Dell blog readers and trends being discussed in the broader blogosphere.

“We try to balance all three of these content areas,” says Menchaca. “We’re most effective when we strike that balance. If we lean too heavily on what Dell bloggers want to talk about, (the blogs) can become a one-way microphone rather than a conversation.”

Other channels complement blogs rather than compete with them, says Menchaca. Each Dell blog has a complementary Twitter account. Menchaca oversees the account for the Direct2Dell blog, which has nearly 5,000 followers. Popular posts are often “re-Tweeted” (posted on other Twitter accounts). Though that kind of republication can occur via Google Reader or RSS feeds, Menchaca says “there is more sharing” on Twitter.

The biggest challenges around a broad social media strategy involve connecting the various channels, both to “bring content from all of our channels to different audiences as it becomes relevant to them” and to help Dell plumb the decentralized content for insights. It’s also tough simply making time to devote to all of the core channels, says Menchaca.

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