This document outlines Whole Foods Market's 2017 social media strategy. The objectives are to increase brand awareness, sales, and customer relationships through social media. The strategy includes assessing current performance on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram; increasing posted content like videos; and identifying key dates and roles. Progress will be measured by growth in social followers, engagement, and website traffic from these channels over two months.

1. WHOLE FOODS
MARKET
Social Media Strategy
By, Maggie Mitchell

2. Table
Of
Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Social MediaAudit
A. Social Media Assessment
B. Traffic SourcesAssessment
C. Customer DemographicsAssessment
D. Competitor Assessment
3. Social MediaObjectives
4. Online Brand Persona andVoice
5. Strategies andTools
6. Key Dates andTiming
7. Social Media Roles and Responsibilities
8. Social Media Policy
9. Critical Response Plan
10. Measurement and Reporting Results

3. Executive
Summary
• The Social Media Strategy forWhole Foods Market in
2017 is to increase traffic/expand our community in all
of our stores.
• Our main goal is to increase sales and build stronger
relationships with our customers.
• Strategies/Tactics:
– We will implement a plan for consumer engagement and on
social media platforms
– We will increase brand awareness through
advertisement/social media

4. Social Media
Audit
In the following slides you will see an audit
ofWhole Foods Market.This audit will
include an assessment of social media
networks, web traffic, audience
demographics and a competitor analysis.

5. Social Media Assessment
data as of October 8, 2015
Social Network URL
Follower
Count Average Weekly Activity Average Engagement Rate
Twitter
https://twitter.com/WholeFo
ods 4.86 M 13 posts per week 2%
Facebook
https:/www.facebook.com/W
holeFoods/ 4,074,982 4 posts peer week 3%
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/
wholefoods/?hl=en 2.4M 6 posts peer week
Average interactions per post =
2000
Linkedln
https://www.linkedin.com/co
mpany/157353/ 207,745 1 post every 2 months 0%
As of right now, the highest follower count / weekly activity takes place onTwitter. On the other hand,
Whole Foods Market hasn’t posted on their LinkedIn account in months. In my opinion, they should
deactivate their LinkedIn account.

6. Website Traffic Sources Assessment
Timeframe: August 2015 - present
Source Volume % of Overall Traffic Conversion Rate
Twitter 2000 unique visits 25% 2.20%
Facebook 4000 unique visits 14% 4%
Instagram No data No data No data
Linkedln 500 unique visits 5% 0.01%
Facebook andTwitter are the two biggest social media networks that drive traffic/ conversation between
Whole Foods Market and the customers. Even though you can’t precisely track the conversation rate and
overall traffic on Instagram, doesn’t dismiss the fact that Whole Foods is relevant on Instagram. Again,
LinkedIn is far behind the rest, so I believe Whole Foods should consider getting rid of this platform.

7. Audience Demographics Assessment
Survey Distributed in August/September via email and text message. Total
application responses: 1250
Age Distribution
Gender
Distribution
Primary Social
Network
Secondary Social
Network Primary Need
Secondary
Need
10% 18-30 60% Female 60% Female 45%Twitter
Buying food that is
organic and
nourishing for their
body.
Getting food
to provide for
their family
60% 31-40 40% Male 40% Male 30% Instagram
20% 41-55 60% Facebook 20% Facebook
1o% 56-80 15% Instagram
40%Twitter
The majority of the respondents were from the age group 31-40. As one may have guessed Facebook is
their primary social network withTwitter close behind. According to the survey, the primary need is to
consume food that is organic and nourishing for their body.

8. Competitor Assessment
Competitor Name Social Media Profile Strengths Weaknesses
Publix FB: Publix975
Lots of followers and each post
has a visual to catch the attention
of the viewers/customers. Not a lot of interactions between customers.
Lucky's Market TW: @luckysmarket
Lots of visuals with tweets. Have
a good balance between
promoting themselves and what
is going on each month.
Don't tweet /interact enough with customers.
Need to up their tweets per week.
Fresh Market IG: thefreshmarket
Great Instagram posts of freshly
made food from usingThe Fresh
Market Produce. Inspires people
to go out and shop.
Not enough posts per week and also not enough
store photos or "real life" content. Ex: people
shopping in store, pictures of fresh produce.
Above are three ofWhole Foods Market biggest competitor on/off social media. One thing that these three companies all
have in common on social media is that they do a good job promoting their brands very well with the help of visuals.
Specifically, Fresh Market’s Instagram does a great job inspiring its customers to go out and shop. However, these three
brands also lack on social media when it comes to engaging with customers.

9. Social Media
Objectives
• The main focus of our social media strategy is to
increase sales and build stronger relationships with our
customers.
• SpecificObjectives:
– Increase brand awareness on all social media platforms by
30% by October of 2018.
• Implement a hashtag unique toWhole Foods on all social media
platforms
– Increase the use of videos on Instagram, Facebook and
Twitter by 65% by October of 2018.
– Increase “Live” videos on Facebook of Whole Foods shopping
and participating in theWhole Foods community.

10. Online Brand
Persona and
Voice
• OUR BRAND:
– Brave
– Organic
– Clean
– Systematic
– Risk-taking
• OURTEAM:
– Accommodating
– Helpful
– Kind
– Educated

11. Strategies and
Tools
• Paid:
– Boost Facebook posts and promoted tweets that were considered organically popular. In
turn, this should at least boost our shares/comments by 30% each week.
• Tools:
– Hootsuite
– Buffer
– Kapost
– Photoshop
– YouTube /Vimeo
• Owned:
– In order to achieve brand awareness we will post a hashtag with every tweet,
so our followers/customers can easily find us onTwitter.We will also create a
LiveTwitter chat every Sunday, where our customers can come together and
chat/ask questions.
• Earned:
– Whole Foods Market will create commercials with celebrities, so that they are
able to get their name out in to the public.We will also give our
discounts/coupons via LiveTwitter chat and on Facebook/Instagram weekly.

12. Key Dates and
Timing
• Holiday Dates
– 4th of July
– Labor Day
– Memorial Day
– Thanksgiving
– Easter
– Christmas Eve / Day
– Halloween
• Internal Events
– Oct. 15 – Community Gardening with the Edible Education
Experience
– Oct. 23 – Shop Online and Get Groceries Delivered!
– Oct. 28 – Fall Festival

13. Social Media Roles
and
Responsibilities
• Marketing Director
– Scott Simons
• Social Media Manager
– Jennifer Heal
• Social MediaCoordinator
– Lisa Grimm
• Supporting Social MediaTeam Members
– Maggie Mitchell (customer support)
– Maggie Mitchell (social ads support)

14. Social Media
Policy
• Social media has made a huge impact on businesses.As aWhole Foods Market
employee, customer and supporter it is very important that our team
represents our brand well. Please follow the guidelines listed below:
– Be polite and accommodating
– Be smart
– Even if you disagree, customers are our first priority
– Don’t treat anyone like they are stupid
– Be mature
– Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face
– If you aren’t sure something is appropriate – wait to post it and get a second
opinion.
• Whole Foods Market takes actions on social media extremely seriously. If
anyone goes against our social media policy, which is listed above, corrective
action will take place.This could result in suspension or a loss of employment.
Whole Foods Market will take whatever action deems necessary depending on
the situation. If you have any further questions do not hesitate to reach out.

15. Critical
Response Plan:
Scenario 1 –
A Customer gets
injured in Whole
Foods
• Action Plan
1. Contact Media Manager and/or Contact Director
2. Make sure the accident isn’t out on social media – if it is
assign one person to talk to the media.
3. Post a follow upTweet, explaining what happened (in a few
words) to put everyone’s mind at rest.
4. Stay in the loop and figure out what the next steps need to
be.
• Pre-approved Messaging
– Messaging will depend on what the specific injury/level of injury may be.

16. Critical
Response Plan:
Scenario 2 –
Racial/Offensive
Tweet
• Action Plan
1. Screenshot/ deleteTweet
2. Contact Media Manager and/or Contact Director
3. Figure out how many people it and what the next step needs
to be
4. Follow up tweet, explaining there were no hard feelings
involved
5. Assign one person to talk to the media
• Pre-approved Messaging:
– “On behalf ofThe Whole Foods Market, we apologize if said
anything offensive, those were not our intentions.We respect
all types of people, and again we apologize.God Bless.”

17. Measurement and Reporting Results:
Website Traffic Sources Assessment
Source Volume % of Overall Traffic Conversion Rate
Twitter
2100 unique visits
+10% Growth 45% 2.20%
Facebook
4100 unique visits
+10% Growth 25% 4%
Instagram No data No data No data
Linkedln
505 unique visits
+2.5% Growth 7.5% 0.01%
Quantitative KPIs:
-Reporting period: 2 months
-Date as of: August 1, 2017
Timeframe: Monthly Average, August
2017 to October 2017

18. Measurement and Reporting Results:
Social Network Data Timeframe: as of August 1, 2017
Social Network URL
Follower
Count Average Weekly Activity Average Engagement Rate
Twitter
https://twitter.com/WholeFo
ods
5.0 M
+24% Growth
20 posts per week
+15% Growth 4.5%
Facebook
https:/www.facebook.com/W
holeFoods/
10,000
+5% Growth
12 posts peer week
+300% Growth 6%
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/
wholefoods/?hl=en
3.0M
+10% Growth
12 posts peer week
+50% Growth
Average interactions per post
=3250
Linkedln
https://www.linkedin.com/co
mpany/157353/
500,000
+40% Growth
1 post every 2 months
No change 2%

19. Measurement
and Reporting
Results
• Our Instagram, Facebook andTwitter following have all
grown significantly in its following.According to this
data, we are headed in the right direction to meet our
social media goals.
• We are very happy with our social media team,
considering they have done a wonderful job by
increasing our traffic on all social media sites. For
example, Twitter went from 25% to a whopping 45% of
increased overall traffic. I think something that has
helped us increase our following immensely over the
last two months is the constant communication with
our customers.
• TheWhole Foods Market social media team decided to
take down LinkedIn and use another type of process
when it comes to hiring future employees. In the mean
time, we have decided to put all of our time and
attention into Facebook,Twitter and Instagram.

20. THANKYOU!!!