March 11, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In the last few weeks, Rackspace (rackspace.com), one of the archetypal managed hosting companies, has – without a great deal of fanfare – begun promoting its message through a corporate blog on the company’s website over the past few weeks.
Rackspace, it is well documented, is very much about its message, and very recently dropped the “managed hosting” from its name to better reflect its new focus of what it considers “IT hosting.” The blog, naturally, is a new means for the company to broadcast its message, which boils down to the oft-repeated “fanatical support” motto for the company.
“In fact,” said a note about the blog from Rackspace’s PR folks, “last week, Rackspace announced the company’s Fanatical Support Promise, a significant stride toward the Customers for Life goal that includes a service level agreement customers won’t find anywhere else in the hosting industry.”
The corporate blog has become a popular form of unmediated expression in the hosting business, with early entries like LunarPages making blogging an important part of their business and, more recently, more notably corporate organizations like The Planet getting into the blogging mix.
In the several weeks since the blog’s launch, from February 25′s “welcome to the blog” post to Monday’s “data center efficiency” note, a variety of employees from the company have used the venue to discuss a range of Rackspace matters that fall mostly into the “fanatical support” category – literally, and not surprisingly, a category in the blog.
According to its “about” section, the Rackspace blog operates according to a set of principles: “To provide unique, individual perspectives on what’s going on at Rackspace and in the world; To post user comments, except for those comments that are off-topic, and/or denigrating offensive; To reply to comments promptly, when appropriate; To be respectful when disagreeing with others’ opinions.”
The principles aren’t particularly exciting stuff, but the blog itself appears to be quite well executed so far, in terms of being more than just marketing boilerplate – though there is a healthy sprinkling of that.
