Chris Brogan recently wrote a post about 50 ways marketers can use social media to improve their marketing. A few blogging related ones of note…

Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.

Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.

Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.

Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.

Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.

Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.

Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).

Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers.

Some good tips in there specifically about blogging, and plenty that apply even if not directly.

Universal McCann has released a new report on the impact of social media (such as blogs, social networks, online video) on the media landscape. It surveyed 17,000 Internet users worldwide in March 2008. The report found that social media, in particular blogs, are “becoming a more important part of global media consumption for internet users than some traditional media channels.” The report also found that social media is a global phenomenon (29 countries were surveyed), although there are cultural differences in how people use it.

The report states that “video clips, blogs, podcasts, social networks and RSS are all essential components of the online media diet.” Here are some of the key findings:

Read more at ReadWriteWeb