Whole Foods Market Blog Review

As a part of living a healthy lifestyle, I enjoy eating fresh, organically produced foods on a regular basis. In recent years many wonderful stores have come into the business of natural and organic foods. One of my favorite stores to shop at is Whole Foods Market. The atmosphere, the food and the people make Whole Foods a wonderful shopping experience. I like Whole Foods Market because it is dedicated to selling the highest quality of products while providing extraordinary customer service. I decided to review the company’s Whole Green Blog for as an assignment for my Advanced PR Writing class to see how well the company is represented by its employees. I am curious to see if the values and convictions of Whole Foods are reflected through its blog.

Using blog-grading criteria developed by businessandblogging.com, I reviewed the Whole Foods blog in a number of important areas and then scored it out of 80 points.

Overall, I rate this blog: Good

On a scale of 1 – 10:

• Ease of finding: 10 – The Whole Foods blog is easily accessible. I was able to type in “Whole Foods blog” into Google and The Whole Green Blog was the first link that appeared. The blog link is also listed on the main Whole Foods home page. It is a well-identified link at the bottom of the site, which takes you to all Whole Foods blogs.

• Frequency: 4 – The Whole Green Blog has one post per week. There were some weeks where there were two posts; however, those weeks were not frequent.

• Engaging writing: 8 – The style of writing varies from entry to entry because different Whole Foods employees contribute their ideas to this blog. However, all the entries are well-written, engaging and establish a clear message. The writing style of the blog is very casual, which makes it easy for Whole Foods consumers to relate to such a large corporation.

• Relevant: 9 – The blog is directly relevant to the ideals of Whole Foods Market and its shoppers. However, what makes this blog interesting to read are the posts that don’t discuss the business aspect of the company, but focus more on environmental topics. Most of the posts have a personal feel, which builds a closer connection with the community of Whole Foods shoppers.

• Focused: 9 – The blog is very focused on environmentally friendly topics such as sustainability, renewable energy, recycling and many others. The blog updates readers about new ways to live a “greener” life. Every post discusses a different issue that ties in with the central message of Whole Foods Market.

• Honest: 10 – The blog focuses on “green” issues, which I believe to be accurate and honest. Since the blog does not discuss the company’s financial information and focuses more on human interest stories, there is less of a push for the blog to be dishonest. The writers of the blog are clearly identified, which gives this blog credibility.

• Interactive: 10 – The Whole Foods Blog provides a space to comment on each blog entry. The blog encourages feedback, and even gives out prizes to randomly selected comments each month. Then the blog turns those comments into featured postings. There are valuable website links as well as video links included in the posts, which adds to the blog’s overall interactivity.

• Responsive: 5 – Even though the blog encourages bloggers to post their comments by providing incentives, it doesn’t look like the writers of the blog comment back on their postings. The fact that the blog allows its readers to leave comments suggests that it is making an effort to address the readers’ questions and concerns.

I also want to give The Whole Green Blog 5 bonus points for including many valuable links in the blog posts. These links made the blog a lot more interactive. Another feature that this blog received extra points for was the simplicity of accessing all of the blog’s archives.

Whole Food’s blog scored 65 out of 80 points according to businessandblogging.com’s blog-grading criteria. Even though the blog was very encouraging for comments, I would have liked to see more feedback from the employees that posted the comments. From a public relations standpoint, this blog is well done and is focused on the core values that Whole Foods Market portrays in its stores.