Whole foods' BlogWhole Foods Market makes use of a multiple blogs. Whole Foods' CEOs John Mackey and Walter Robb each have their own blogs in addition to a general daily blog 'the whole story'. John Mackey's blog focuses a lot on capitalism and promotion of a book he co-authored called Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, but seems to have little to do with Whole Foods specifically. Walter Robb's blog focuses more on the corporate and business side of Whole Foods. His blog is likely to appeal to investors and employees, but probably not customers. The 'Whole Story" blog is what one would expect Whole Foods' blog to be, focusing primarily on food and recipes. The posts seem well written, and there is regular feedback in the comments section from a moderator. On the other hand, there are occasional hiccups, like a misspelled word or a broken link, that leads me to believe that Whole Foods does not put an emphasis on their blog. Additionally, the moderator's replies often seem vague and impersonal, as if they could have been automatically generated by a bot. I think that the 'Whole Story' blog would be vastly improved by letting the moderator have a personality. If Whole Foods wants an audience invested in their social media, they need their blog to feel personal, not like a corporate bulletin board. Whole Foods Blog http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story | Blogs 101The very fist blog is supposed to be "Justin's Links", created in 1994. If you visit his blog, you can see early interviews with him discussing his blog, which provides an interesting insight on what the creator thought of the technology, as well as some delicious 90's nostalgia. Now there are a variety of different types of blogs. There are MABs (Multiple Author Blogs) such as Gizmodo. There are microblogs, like Twitter. There are blogs operated by individuals and blogs operated by companies. Despite the diversity, there are a few characteristics of a 'typical' blog.
It is this last point that I think is the most important for someone to have an effective blog. If you want to sustain an interested audience, you must interact with them. A short history of blogs by nymag.com http://nymag.com/news/media/15971/ The first blog "Justin's Links" http://links.net/ |