As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the middle of doing some fairly extensive research on how different brands are using Twitter – and I’ve been using what I find to be an interesting 2 x 2 to break out four types of approaches. To continue with this research, I’ve started delving into how different companies are managing multiple different accounts on Twitter. I’m currently looking at the usual suspects for this – Dell, WholeFoods, and Zappos in particular – and I thought I’d share a few VERY early insights from what I see with Whole Foods.
Any way you slice it, Whole Foods has been one of the leading companies when it comes to using Twitter. If you check out twitterholic (which profiles the top Twitter users), Whole Foods Market is currently sitting in the #30 spot overall, and is clearly the most popular company (outside of select media outlets) on the site with around 650,000 followers at time of writing. But they also have over 40 other accounts – and what interests me the most is how their “integrated” Twitter strategy is working across these many touch points.
As a starting point, it’s important to point out that while Whole Foods has multiple accounts, the primary one – @wholefoods – is the only one that really matters right now. While it has around 650,000 followers, all of the other accounts I’ve found (primarily through the list provided from the company) combine for a little over 13,000 followers. That’s roughly 2%, which is in line with what we’ve seen from many other companies leveraging multiple accounts. So while I think the integrated model is the way of the future, it’s important that we don’t get too far ahead of ourselves in estimating the importance of multiple accounts.
This primary account falls squarely in the brand/conversation quadrant of the matrix, with a conversation ratio of around 95% when I last checked (number of messages that start with an @reply). In short, it’s typically used to respond to individual questions or concerns in a conversational manner, with some interesting twists (like a free gift card for the best @wholefoods tweet of the week) having been used to stimulate engagement. If you just cruise around the their tweets over the last few days you’ll get a good feel for what it is all about.
So now moving beyond this primary account, WholeFoods breaks out their other accounts into three sections – Topical (recipes, cheese expert), Metro Areas (Houston, NYC), and Individual Stores (about 40 of them so far). I’ve also found one other interesting Twitter account that has emerged – WFnorcalmoms, which is a group of Northern California moms who work for Whole Foods, sharing information with fellow moms about healthy foods, products for babies and kids, etc. While I’ve mentioned how all are far, far less popular than the main account, there is an extraordinary amount of variance within the group.
The most popular one so far is WholeRecipes (from the Topical list), which has over 5,000 followers (i.e. almost 1/2 of the combined followers outside the main account). It’s an automated feed of the latest recipes from Whole Food Markets, and by extension operates quite differently than the primary account. For starters, there is a lot less activity – a tweet every day or two, versus multiple daily responses (which is a good thing – the value of numerous recipes daily would be low). More interestingly to me, while the primary account is mainly conversational, this one is pure broadcast – not an @reply to be seen – so it falls in a totally different part of the matrix (brand + broadcast).
The other account on the Topical list is WFMCheese, where WFM’s cheese fanatic (and Global Cheese Buyer) tweets about her love for… wait for it… cheese. From the accounts on the list, it is by far the most distinct because it is a more personality-centric account – focused on Cathy Strange’s thoughts on her particular passion. She has a little over 400 followers right now (roughly the 6th most popular account). While many other companies have numerous accounts in the personality section of the matrix (either conversational or broadcast), WFM only has this one foray.
The third and fourth most popular accounts for Whole Foods are Metro Areas – Houston and New York City. While one might assume that the NYC account would have more followers, Houston has over 1,700 followers, while NYC has around 1,100. Not surprisingly, there is quite an activity difference between the two. NYC has done 74 total updates, while Houston has had 657. And while I’m not sure how long each account has been up yet, the daily activity from Houston is much higher – 20 posts since May 14th for Houston, versus 20 posts since May 6th for NYC, for example. I haven’t ran all of the numbers yet so don’t quote me no this, but it also appears to be more conversational (a lot more @replies), and a lot more “personal” / local – a fair bit of activity around the Rockets games, for example.
Then there are the store accounts, of which there are roughly 40. As a blanket statement, they all tend to be in the brand/ broadcast corner of the matrix, sharing information on particular deals available in the given location. The two most popular, which might surprise some people, are Columbus and Nashville. As of yet, I have no idea why (in comparison to the other store accounts) – if anyone knows please let me in on the secret. Across all of the accounts follower numbers range from 15 to 457, which is both a lot of variance, and another sign of how relatively small these follower numbers are versus the 650,000+ for the main account. But I suspect these store-specific accounts have a lot of potential, and digging into the differences could yield some interesting insights – which I hope to get to another time. The only other thing I’ll note now is that Whole Food’s naming convention for store accounts seems to be all over the map – WFM_(location), WFM(location), WholeFoods(location), (location)WFM, and some real outliers like IdealMarket. Not sure that this really matters – as the expectation is that each individual would probably only follow their particular local outlet – but interesting none the less.
Finally, there is that WFnorcalmom account. While still relatively unpopular, it has all the making of a cool wikinomics-related story – a group of interested Whole Food employees /moms coming together to share information that could help people achieve a more (for lack of a better term) “aspirational” goal. In other words, while most of the other accounts generally focus on Whole Foods specifically, and the store accounts in particular focus on specific deals related to the store (i.e. transaction focused), this accounts is more about helping people be better moms. It’s will be an interesting one to watch.
So that’s just a bit of an early-stage information dump on all kinds of different accounts Whole Foods has up there. Given that Whole Foods is one of the most successful companies in terms of leveraging Twitter with their main account, monitoring how their multiple accounts evolve will likely yield some interesting insights over time. I really like the two topical accounts – particularly how the recipe one offers clear value to followers while leveraging a broadcast model (in contrast to the conversational style of the main account), and the cheese expert can connect with people on a more personal level while helping elevate the company’s reputation in terms of top quality produce. Unsure about the store accounts, but will be watching them closely – particularly to see how interested people are in following the deals the stores tend to broadcast, in relation to the conversations being had through the main account. Will also be interested in seeing whether the Northern California Moms model continues to grow – and what other types of groups might emerge. At some other time I’ll probably also talk about their use of Twitter within the context of an overall social media strategy, as the company seeks to tell the Whole Story.
And of course, I’d love to hear any thoughts people might have on how Whole Foods is using Twitter, other accounts that might have emerged I don’t know about, and any other companies worth looking into…
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