Blogs seem to be losing their flare as they are overtaken by quicker sharing alternatives. A recent New York Times article explored this topic, noting that social networking sites such as Facebook andTwitter allow users to post quick updates to an engaged audience.

Amongst the social networking giants, blogging online still has a place. Blogs can thrive by leaning on Facebook and Twitter to gain readership and to market themselves.

Lee Rainie, director of the Internet and American Life Project feels that blogging is just changing with the times.

“The act of telling your story and sharing part of your life with somebody is alive and well, even more so than at the dawn of blogging,” Rainie said in the Times article. “It’s just morphing onto other platforms.”

Toni Schnieder, chief executive of Automattic, the company that commercializes the WordPress blogging software, believes that the relationship between blogs and social networking sites is a win-win.

“Bloggers often use Facebook and Twitter to promote their blog posts to a wider audience,” Schnieder said in the NYT. “Rather than being competitors, they are complementary. At this point, anyone who is taking blogging seriously—they’re using several mediums to get a large amount of their traffic.”

Bloggers are not just spilling their guts into social networking sites for their health, they use Facebook andTwitter for marketing. According to SEOMOZ, links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on rankings and search engine optimization for the blogs.

“The quantity of clicks, retweets, licks, etc could certainly impact how much weight is given to the link,” reports SEOMOZ.

In hopes to make their content more valuable, SocialBeat reports that 87 percent of bloggers use Facebook, while 78 percent use Twitter.

Of this number, 52 percent of professional bloggers write for a blog they do not own. These bloggers report forbusiness social networking sites, in which 58 percent of bloggers have had prospective clients read their blog and purchase products or services, according to SocialBeat.

In the end, blogs for business have a one-up on alternative social networking solutions because they allow space for a large amount of intelligent information. Elisa Camahort Page, co-founder of BlogHer, a women’s blog network, feels that blogs are still the most informative.

“If you’re looking for substantive conversation, you turn to blogs,” Camahor Page said in the NYT. “You aren’t going to find it on Facebook, and you aren’t going to find it in 140 characters on Twitter.”

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