When was the last time you saw a Web hosting company that hired a blogger to spread the word about their company? The fact is blogs are making and breaking people and companies Online. Now I am not talking about what I do on my own blog. I no longer work for any Web hosting companies. I am talking about people from the company letting other folks know about updates, news, conversations going on in the background.
Information wants to be free. Sure, many Web hosting companies have message boards where folks can talk back and forth. There is something missing though. Say a Web hosting company tells an employee to start a blog about the company. He or she can start telling clients about how a situation, good or bad, was handled from their perspective. It allows that person to be a fly on the wall during positive happenings in the proverbial office.
The more personal somebody can feel around their Web host, the more likely they are going to want to do more business with them. When working Web hosting support, I always tried to get to know the people, talk with them and see how they were doing. I loved to converse with folks not only about their problem, but about themselves and how they were using the Web hosting we were providing them with. If you could do that on a much bigger scale, and reach twenty people instead of just that one, I don`t see where there is a bad side.
It is the fastest way to spread the word. That is the reason many Web hosting companies are scared of it. All it takes is one negative experience to start up a thirty page rant that makes a Web hosting company look bad. There might be some bad that filters into the blog, but hopefully if you are a good company, you will be able to answer that with ten good notes, fixes or other things that can get you on the public`s good side again. Syndication is key into all of this too. People do not even have to go to your Web site to find out what is going on. All they would have to do is start up their RSS feed reader of choice, and there you go. They could add it to their My Yahoo! page as well. The possibilities are endless.
People do not want to do business with a faceless company that cares more about looking good than looking human. I believe people want a Web host that they feel they could go have a cup of coffee with. In a business where personality is overlooked, a human face on your product could carve you out a big enough niche to really make a mark on the Web hosting world.