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Whole Foods in Oakland connects with customers through social media
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Social media is still something of a mystery for most businesses, but can be an effective tool to communicate with customers. Whole Foods Oakland is a great example of a local business that's using social media to do just that.
"While Whole Foods corporate is on Twitter, its followers tend to tweet questions that are very store specific," said Liz Bootz, the marketing team leader for Whole Foods Oakland. "In order to address the questions and better communicate with customers on a local level, the marketing team leaders were asked to create local feeds for their stores."
Bootz admitted she was not really a social media person and initially had some anxiety about getting up and running on.jpg)
Twitter. However, with some guidance and advice from a co-worker, she
became familiar with some social media tools and how they worked. On the same day she set up the wfm_oakland feed on Twitter she also created the Whole Foods Market Oakland fan page on Facebook.
Prior to having a presence on Facebook and Twitter, the only external communication the Oakland store had with customers was a monthly email newsletter. A good source of information, it didn't inspire the direct customer to store dialogue that Twitter has. In addition, new specials and events may come into play after the newsletter goes out; using these social media tools, it's become easy to provide fans and followers with the most current information about what will be happening in the store next week, or even that day.
As with any social media vehicle, the question on everyone's mind is - has it been successful?
Whole Foods Customer Service, Whole Foods
"Right now it's hard to measure if people are taking advantage of specials because they heard about them on Twitter," states Bootz. "However when the store hosts events I'm always there, and for the last two 'shopping on a budget' tours we that have been hosted in the store, everyone that participated found out about them through Twitter."
A new outlet for customer service and support has been created through the feed as well. "One of the things I like best about being on Twitter is if a customer has a question, I can tweet the answer to them and provide that information to 200 other customers at the same time," says Bootz.
In terms of what's next for Whole Foods Oakland and social media, the store's Facebook fan page is going to get a lot more attention in the coming months. Plans to post team photo albums are in the works and the creation of product features - which will showcase the favorite products of store team leaders, complete with commentary and photos - will also be added.
The Whole Foods Market in Oakland is located at 230 Bay Place in the Lake Merritt neighborhood.Replace text with your entry.
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