These days, you can’t go anywhere on the Web without bumping into a corporate weblog. Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft all rely on blogs to put a friendly, human face on their massive corporate operations.

This article provides a brief survey of how some Web hosts are using blogs improve their outreach and tech support services.

These days, you can’t go anywhere on the Web without bumping into a corporate weblog. Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft all rely on blogs to put a friendly, human face on their massive corporate operations. With their casual, conversational tone and built-in comment and trackback systems, blogs are a cheap and effective way to network with both customers and peers. But for some reason blogging has been slow to catch on in the Web hosting world.

However, there are a handful of Web hosting companies that are harnessing the power of weblogs to make their companies more efficient.

Scott Beale is one of the founders of Laughing Squid (http://laughingsquid.com) in San Francisco. He runs two blogs for the hosting company and sees the practice as an easy way to reduce stress on technical support services and connect with customers.

Blog Marketing

“How do you choose between all those thousands of web hosts?” asks Beale from his office in San Francisco, California. “They all have similar plans and similar web sites. The blog makes it seem less corporate and more human. It makes a big difference, I think.”

The crew at Laughing Squid sees their blog less as a marketing tool and more as a means of community outreach which happens to have marketing benefits. Their site announces local art shows and Web events, tech news and cultural issues.

Another big advocate of blog marketing (and now, podcasting) is the CEO of GoDaddy.com, Bob Parsons. Parsons runs a personal blog (http://www.bobparsons.com) where he writes about lessons he’s learned as an entrepreneur and just about anything else that’s on his mind. In his first post in December 2004, Parsons writes, “the reasons I went ahead and started to do this are threefold; I want to promote the Internet, I am an entrepreneur by nature, and I have opinions and don’t mind telling you about them.”

Parsons also plugs GoDaddy’s hosting services on his podcast and satellite radio show, “Life Online with Bob Parsons.” In “Life Online,” Parsons speaks candidly about issues affecting the hosting industry and other trends on the Web. In a recent episode on blog marketing, Parsons said, “some [of my blog articles] go over pretty good, some are warmly received, and some I take a beating over. Sometimes it’s helped me take a look at our business from a different perspective.”

Parsons continued by touting his blog as, “the most actively read blog for any CEO in the world. The reason it is that way is because I’m pretty fearless about what I have to say.”

But blogs aren’t just for venting. They can also play a crucial role to Web hosts if the unimaginable happens.

Status Blogging

Server status blogs (or “status blogs”) are a great way for hosting companies to expand their knowledge base and keep customers abreast of technical issues. An off-site blog is superior to e-mail for two reasons. Firstly, blogs are “opt-in” and customers are not harassed with emails every time disk-space is expanded or a server is taken off-line for maintenance. Secondly, in the event of a system failure (when emailing is not an option), a blog provides an open line of communication with customers.

“If there’s some catastrophic thing where we have to give updates, it’s great to have an off-site blog because obviously we can’t send email,” says Beale. Take a look at http://laughingsquid.wordpress.com to see an effective status blog at work.