Here is a good article about leveraging social media to generate sales from Search Engine Watch.
The article brings up a point that I had not thought about prior to reading this.
Everytime someone comments on a blog post they’re showing interest in particular product, topic, service, etc.
You can harvest that data either by aggregating the contacts e-mail addresses and sending them updated content related to their past interests as indicated by their comments or by updating them on more recent comments by other users (like PRBlogger does) and commenting on the thread yourself with new developments.