The Blog

Why Blog?

• Posted by Joshua on May 14th, 2007 filed in Uncategorized

Good question. Why should PowWeb Blog?

Besides the obvious “Why not!” exclamation, blogging is just one more way for us to be transparent to the world and more importantly, our customers (no offense to the rest of world).

Well, you might ask, why be transparent? Besides the fact that everyone is doing it, there’s an opportunity for us to show you that we’re real people running an honest-to-goodness business.

I’ll even go as far as to say that we’re blogging with the bottom line of attracting more customers.

What’s so wrong with that? I say nothing. It actually makes a lot sense. PowWeb is a web-based business on the verge of the next greatest dot-com boom! We face the challenge of not only the typical hurdles of being a growing shared web hosting company, but also the reality that we’ve now got to try and appeal to whole new generation of internet users; a generation that demands openness, acknowledgement, and a clear response to majority rule.

Reaching the point where we we’re comfortable enough to have a blog was no easy task, and I certainly don’t take credit for coming up with the idea. In fact, there were a handful of people before me who experienced the exact same set of apprehensive reactions any time the phrase “company blog” was uttered. So why the change of heart?

I suppose that my persistence over the past year has paid off. Of course, the glossy 15.04 copy of Wired Magazine that landed on my desk a few weeks ago certainly helped.

It actually created quite the buzz around the office.

I was particularly anxious to see the issue in the flesh as it was only the second time I had ever come up with a creative concept for one of our bigger magazine ad buys. And after having my original “We’ve Augmented” concept rejected (featuring a busty hosting beauty strategically voicing her excitement over our recent disk space upgrades), I was anticipating the response we would see from the seemingly-less risqué runner-up concept.

This issue seemed to pack quite the punch in the content sector as well. Wouldn’t you know it, the issue’s main feature was an article over company transparency and blogging entitled The See-Through CEO.

Just when I started to tame my tyrannical ramblings - *ahem* I mean professional persuasion techniques, to convince many of these old-school webbers the importance of company blogging, one of pop-cultures premier sources on what’s new in technology publishes a headline article favoring company transparency through blogging.

The article helped many of us immensely. It proved that company transparency through blogging was a real concern among our peers, but one that should be faced with boldness and tactfulness. We needed to know that being this open wasn’t going to turn our world up side down and ultimately lead to our demise. Alas, the time for PowWeb to take the blogging plunge has arrived.

My final thoughts on the whole thing?

If you blog it, they will come.