Blogging can be complicated, so you want to make sure you’re doing things right.

We asked our Social Media Examiner writers “What’s the single biggest mistake bloggers make and why?” Read their answers carefully to see how you can improve your blogging to get the results you want.

Get Off to a Good Start!

Mistake #1: Not understanding your audience

Charlene Kingston @SocialMediaDIY

The biggest mistake bloggers make is to misunderstand who their audience is. I see many blogs where the bloggers clearly understand the topic, but they fail to connect to their audience with their posts.

Bloggers must understand the problems facing their audience and what the audience already knows about the topic to craft posts that deliver useful information. Otherwise, the posts include the wrong information or exclude the right information, making them too complex or too elementary. Or, the posts fail to explain the problem being solved, and the reader can’t put the information into context. Either way, the post is full of information that the reader can’t put into use.

Charlene Kingston, author of the Social Media DIY Workshop.

Mistake #2: Not having a strong niche

Peter Wylie @threeshipsmedia

The biggest mistake bloggers make is trying to be everything to everybody, or even three or four things to three or four different groups. You can’t overestimate the benefits of focus, and the more clearly and tightly defined your mission for blogging is, the more likely you are to develop a niche following that is equally as focused, passionate and valuable.

For instance, if a banking blogger is especially interested in lead generation for small business lending, he shouldn’t waste time and energy also trying to write about the mortgage market. Instead, he should focus that energy on niches and interesting topics within small business lending. How do loans differ for convenience stores versus restaurants? What are the different small business loan options for different businesses?

This doesn’t pigeonhole the blogger; it just means the wealth of topics is more specific, and ultimately more interesting and informative, to a smaller group of people.

Peter Wylie, lead researcher for Three Ships Media.

Mistake #3: Covering too many topics

Stephanie Gehman @airport_girl

I believe the single biggest mistake bloggers make is covering too many topics. Many bloggers want to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, so they write about a myriad of topics.

The problem with this is that the scope of the blog can become lost and possibly disengage the audience. Defining a few key areas that a blog’s posts will cover can finely hone the content and laser-focus the knowledge and expertise of the blogger.

Stephanie Gehman, marketing manager for Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania.

Establish Good Practices

Mistake #4: Inconsistency

Jay Baer @jaybaer

The single biggest mistake bloggers make is inconsistency, both in quality and in publication frequency. The tricky part is that these two elements of success often work as opposing forces.

The notion that you should blog “when you have something to say” makes sense on the surface, but unless you establish and adhere to a publication schedule or a level of frequency (daily, three times per week, etc.) it becomes VERY easy to eventually tell yourself, “well, I don’t REALLY have anything to say today, so I’ll just skip it.” That’s how your publication frequency drops from five per week to three to one to occasional blogging. The blogs that are successful over the long haul are those that make publishing routine, not based on daily inspiration.

But making publishing routine does not mean, “let’s just throw up a garbage post because I have committed to writing three per week.” Quality always trumps frequency (with the possible exception of SEO). Five mediocre posts per week will not get you as far as two outstanding posts per week.

That balance between the need to be consistently publishing and the need for consistent quality is the key to successful long-term blogging.

Jay Baer, author of the popular blog Convince & Convert and the book The Now Revolution.

Mistake #5: Not committing to the process

Rich Brooks @therichbrooks

Oh, there are so many mistakes business bloggers make. If I had to choose just one, it would be not committing to the process. Too many people get into blogging thinking that it will have an instant impact on their business. Their search engine visibility and inbound traffic will skyrocket, and they’ll be sleeping on a bed of $100 bills.

However, unlike pay-per-click advertising, constructing a blog that builds your business takes time and effort. I tell people to plan on writing two to three posts per week for six months to get the results they’re hoping for… more if they’re in a competitive industry.

This means more than just writing, however; you also need to write keyword-rich posts with persuasive, compelling titles that will be read, linked to and shared on social media sites.

Rich Brooks, president of Flyte New Media and author of The 11 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Bloggers Make (free report, email registration required).

Mistake #6: Focusing on quantity instead of quality

Dag Holmboe @dagh

I think a lot of bloggers focus on quantity versus quality and I think this is the biggest mistake. There is this theory that states that you need to blog a few times a week to make your blog always seem fresh; both from the perspective of human consumption and also from a search engine perspective. The advantage is a gain in quantity—perhaps also a gain in page rank—but there is a loss in quality.

A good, in-depth blog post takes time to research, write and edit. Unless you’re a larger company with a team of professional writers, there’s not enough time in the day to do this well; thus there are a lot of blogs with underperforming material.

Dag Holmboe, CEO of Klurig Analytics.

Mistake #7: Writing for yourself, not your audience

Jim Lodico @jlcommunication

Although it might be cathartic to opine on your latest thoughts of the moment, if it isn’t of value to your audience, your audience won’t read it.

Readers are selfish. They want information they can use. Find a way to provide it.

Jim Lodico, copywriter and marketing consultant.

Mistake #8: Making it all about you

Linda Coles @bluebanana20

Are you that interesting? A celebrity perhaps? If the answer is no, stop writing about yourself and write about something that your readers will find useful, interesting or entertaining.

Sure, put your own personality into your content or add a post or two about something that has happened to you and is noteworthy, but write about interesting stuff.

Linda Coles of Blue Banana.

Hone Your Craft

Mistake #9: Bad writing

Corina Mackay @corinamackay

A blogger’s objective is the same as any other writer: to find (and keep) readers. The more readers, the better. Having said this, there is one sure-fire way to turn off regular and potential readers: bad writing.

With the ease and accessibility of creating a blog nowadays, the importance of good writing in getting published has all but disappeared—online, at least. I cringe in disgust when I find typos in a $30 hardcover book from the bookstore, or a newspaper or journal article. Yet it’s not uncommon to find formatting, spelling and grammatical errors littered throughout blog posts and articles published online.

Not only do these mistakes make a post difficult and unpleasant to read, they make the point harder to get across, and ultimately leave the reader with a less-than-professional opinion of the blogger. Of course, good writing is more than grammatically correct sentences that have been spell-checked.

Good writing is concise, has a point to it and is accessible (in other words, easy to read and understand). But I would argue that half of the battle to gain readers comes down to simple, lazy mistakes that are easily fixed. Use spell-check; take time to research ideas, facts and concepts you’re not sure about; and most importantly, read over your work before posting. This can make a huge difference.

Corina Mackay, an entertainment-based social media manager and writer.

Mistake #10: Failing to engage readers with a compelling headline

Jeff Korhan @jeffkorhan

The biggest mistake bloggers make is failing to engage readers with a compelling title and an opening statement or question that supports it. Think of the title as the label of a package, one that will only be opened if the label clearly or cleverly describes what’s inside.

Once the package is opened, the first few lines have to hook the reader again by delivering on the promise of the label. When both the title and opening work together, the remaining content is willingly consumed.

Jeff Korhan, professional speaker, consultant and columnist on new media and small business marketing.

Mistake #11: Going it alone

Debbie Hemley @dhemley

What do I mean by that? I think bloggers have the ability to be great storytellers, but sometimes they cut themselves short. They think they have to generate the whole story themselves and fail to use blogging as a way of reporting.

Bloggers need to ask questions and go after a story. Bloggers should follow their instincts and interests. They should feel like they can reach out to other bloggers and people who have commented on posts. Contact companies directly. Ask an author if he or she can do a Q & A. Go behind the scenes, dig deeper.

Simply stated, bloggers will write better pieces and generate more interest when they look for the special angle and break free as writers, reporters and researchers. Bloggers needn’t go it alone. Instead, they should ask themselves what they hope to achieve in a post and go after the material. Like what you’re doing here, Cindy!

Debbie Hemley, social media consultant and blogger.

Mistake #12: Adding to the noise

Richard Spiegel @crowdtogether

Because social media has what seems like an insatiable thirst for content, it can feel like there’s a black hole consuming as fast as we can create. Don’t fall into the trap where you feel like you’ve got to create content for the sake of creating content. Publishing material indiscriminately that lacks substance adds to the noise and diminishes your credibility.

So how can you keep the quality up while also keeping up a steady flow of material? Take one well-thought-out topic and break it into smaller parts. Not only will this approach give you both quality and quantity, it can be used to stimulate a conversation with your readers.

Start by telling your audience what you’re planning to do; for example, let your readers know this is the “first of a three-part series that will explore…” This simple technique will let your audience know there’s more to come and help to create demand for your next piece. Next, make sure to invite readers to comment or share their thoughts by asking questions or including a survey/poll at the end of your post. Then in your subsequent pieces, show your audience you were listening to what they had to say by referencing or incorporating some of the feedback/input they provided.

Richard Spiegel, founder and CEO of Crowd Together.

Build Your Blog Community

Mistake #13: Only talking about your company, products and services

Janet Aronica @janetaronica

I see that companies talk a lot about themselves—their products or their services—on their blogs and I don’t think that’s the best way to go about it. If potential customers are seeing your blog for the first time, they don’t care about you yet. They care about their problems and how your product or service can solve them. Informative content such as tips/tricks or how-to posts are much more effective.

Whether you’re a furniture company giving home decorating tips, or a B2B marketing analytics software company giving marketing tips, informative content puts the customer first and build trust before the sale. That’s how you build relationships and create a community that will advocate for you.

Additionally, this is how you can rank for the right keywords and phrases that your target audience searches for on Google.

Janet Aronica, director of marketing and community for oneforty and author of a social media blog.

Mistake #14: Not engaging with your readers

Mari Smith @MariSmith

The single biggest mistake bloggers make is not engaging with their readers in the comments section. Creating exceptional content is one thing that certainly can get lots of viral visibility. But I feel that acknowledging and responding to your readers as they comment helps build stronger relationships and more “social equity.” People remember you when you take time to reply.

Granted, this may not always be possible or scalable for larger blogs. But even a few replies to comments indicate to all readers that you do read your comments.

Mari Smith, social media speaker and trainer and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Mistake #15: Not taking time to respond thoughtfully to your blog comments

Ben Pickering @bpicks

The biggest mistake I believe a blogger can make is not to take the time to respond thoughtfully to comments and interact with readers. Interacting by responding to comments and questions is an important way to build readership because readers who are acknowledged are likely to come back.

It seems that some writers approach blogging as a unidirectional means of communicating (i.e., “I have something to tell you”) rather than an active conversation within a community. From the reader’s perspective, an analogy would be attending a lecture that didn’t allow for any question-and-answer period.

Although the content might be quite interesting, the richness often comes through the back and forth with the audience. I have found this to be true, for example, in a recent post on Social Media Examiner. Not only were great questions asked that benefited other readers, but the comments also helped me realize what readers are interested in hearing more about in future posts.

Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta.

Get More Out of Your Blogging

Mistake #16: Not promoting your blog content

Kristi Hines @kikolani

One of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers making is they don’t promote their own content enough. Granted, there are some who go overboard and do nothing but self-promotion, which is not the right way to go.

There is, however, a healthy balance that will get your blog posts the attention they deserve without driving your followers crazy. If you don’t do just that amount, no matter how great your content is, it’s still likely to fail at bringing in traffic. The whole “If you build it, they will come” motto from the movies just doesn’t cut it unless you already have a subscriber list in the thousands. Even at that stage, you may be getting a satisfying amount of traffic to blog posts on your own site, but it will still take extra work to get the same volume of traffic to guest posts and articles that you write as a freelancer on lesser-known sites.

So if you’re writing great content, don’t feel guilty about promoting it! Your followers want to know about your awesome content as well as the awesome content you share from others. Proper self-promotion is a win-win situation for both you and your audience!

Kristi Hines, author of the popular blog Kikolani and the Ultimate Guide to Blog Post Promotion.

Mistake #17: Not joining a blog community

Elijah Young @elijahryoung

One of the largest mistakes new bloggers make is going about it all alone. There are tons of talented writers who would love to form a community blog based around wonderful content in your niche, which would accelerate your blog’s growth with more promoters and give you a wider social circle to pull from for comments and sharing.

Look at Social Media Examiner as a case study in this. One person’s social circle didn’t make this site the powerhouse that it is today, but a community effort of many. My advice to bloggers is to consolidate for the greater good, so you all can be successful instead of trying to do it all alone.

Elijah R. Young of Fandura.

Mistake #18: Not collaborating with other bloggers in your industry

Stephanie Sammons @stephsammons

The single biggest mistake that I see bloggers making, and that I’ve made myself up until very recently, is not collaborating closely with other bloggers within your industry or profession.

When I first began blogging, I was very skeptical about showcasing or promoting any “potential” competitors, but I was completely mistaken about this. By collaborating with and promoting your peers, everyone benefits from increased traffic and visibility. All boats rise with the tide!

You could put a blogging group together in your local business community, or you could build a group from across the world if you want to! Each group member could agree to comment on blog posts of group members as well as promote posts through social media sites.

Remember, there’s enough business to go around, and you need to have an abundance mentality in order to be a truly successful blogger. I plan to spend a lot more time figuring out ways to promote other bloggers who work within my industry or share the same passions and interests. It’s really important that we all help each other grow!

Stephanie Sammons, founder and CEO of Wired Advisor, a turn-key blogging and social media platform for financial professionals.

Mistake #19: Not sharing your expertise

Carla Dewing @CarlaDewing

The single biggest mistake bloggers make is not sharing their expertise with other blogs and other bloggers to build credibility, reputation and trust.

The fastest way to build a community online is to share information. Most bloggers think they’re doing this because they post daily and interact with their community. By far the most common problem bloggers face is attracting loyal readers. But readers don’t come from a void—they come from other authority blogs or sites where great information is shared and syndicated.

What’s lacking is the integration of guest posts into their own blogs, and being a guest author on other blogs. This is how you rapidly build a community of targeted readers—by sharing excellent information from and across a variety of sources, not just your own. Did you know that trust, credibility and a good reputation can be shared too? If you do this, you won’t have to search for readers, they’ll find you!

Carla Dewing of Contrast Media.

#20: Sacrificing keyword-rich titles for cleverness

Jason Miller @JasonMillerCA

Many bloggers sacrifice keyword-rich titles for clever, attention-grabbing headlines they feel might share better socially. However, doing so will ensure a quick trip to social media wasteland and cause your content to be overlooked by its best friend, the search engine.

With a keyword-rich title, your blog post will live on in search indexes and become a resource instead of a flash in the pan. Don’t rely on a magical combination of shares and retweets to carry the torch for your hard work.

If you want to have a catchy title, put your keywords first, add a colon, and write an attention-grabber. Remember, blogging is the social media rug that ties the room together. So make sure you’re getting it the attention it deserves.

Jason Miller, social media marketing manager at Zoomerang.

Mistake #21: Neglecting blog SEO

Tim Ware @hyperarts

Certainly bloggers must make sure they engage with commenters and keep their blogs free from spammy comments. However, the most important thing is that as many people as possible read posts. This means that each post utilizes SEO (search engine optimization) best practices so that it ranks well when the subject matter of the post is Googled. I feel neglecting this is the biggest mistake bloggers can make.

Bloggers should make sure their posts have: 1) a descriptive, keyword-rich title; 2) a “permalink” natural-language and keyword-rich URL; 3) section headers that are descriptive and utilize keywords specific to each section; 4) “anchor” text (the text that is hyperlinked) that contains keywords relevant to what’s being linked to; and, most importantly, 5) self-hosting your blog instead of using Blogger or WordPress.com.

Also, a blog should have an SEO plugin like Headspace for WordPress or in some way be set up so that bloggers can craft their own title and meta description tags for each post. All of these elements should convey the subject matter of the post in a keyword-rich manner, top to bottom.

Tim Ware, owner of HyperArts Web Design.

What other blogging mistakes have you noticed? How would you improve your blogging? Please share your comments in the box below.

Have you ever wondered how a business handles more than a million Twitter fans? Want the inside scoop from the largest retailer on Twitter?

Even if you’re a small business, there’s some great insight to be gained from Marla Erwin, Interactive Art Director for Whole Foods Market. Marla was instrumental in creating Whole Foods’ acclaimed social media program and the results have been phenomenal! For example, in the first year, Twitter.com/Wholefoods gained a million Twitter followers. It has now surpassed 1.75 million people.

If you’re not familiar with Whole Foods, it’s the leading natural and organic food store in the world with nearly 300 locations in North America and the United Kingdom.

Whole Foods Market is the most popular retailer on Twitter and is a leading example of Twitter’s power to build millions of relationships a single customer at a time.  Here are key excerpts from our interview (you can listen to the entire exchange at the end of this article).

Marla Erwin, Whole Foods Market

Mike: Marla, what was the tipping point that got Whole Foods to say, “We need to get involved with the social media thing?“

Marla: As far as timing, mainly it was there. Twitter was getting big. It hadn’t really broken out into the mainstream – full of celebrities and a lot of new sources just yet.

But when we hooked up with it about a year and a half ago, it was clearly going to break out and we thought, “We had better get on this. It’s where people are.”

As someone said at a conference I recently attended, “You want to fish where the fish are.” We realized this is where our customers were going to be.

Mike: What were you hoping to achieve in the beginning?

Marla: We wanted to just connect with people. It’s very easy for people on the outside of a company or an organization to see you as a monolith. You’re a corporate entity or you’re a building or you’re a logo or you’re this giant chain of stores, when really we’re a whole bunch of laid-back people with pretty idealistic visions of what we want to do.

It was a good way for us to communicate that and also to let people know some things about us that maybe they didn’t realize; for example, the philanthropic mission of Whole Foods in terms of our Whole Trade programs and our Local Producer Loan programs and so on.

I feel like social media is falling into buckets right now where people are using it for sales and marketing, people are using it for customer service, or people are using it to establish a corporate personality and corporate culture. We’re trying to do a lot of these things, and depending on the venue, one medium might have a greater percentage of one of those than the other, but they all balance out in the end.

The first thing that we did, even before we got on Twitter or Facebook, was just to incorporate some user-generated content on our website – recipe reviews, product ratings and so on, and comments on our blog.

Mike: How do people get to your blog?

Marla: It’s Blog.WholeFoodsMarket.com. Or if you’re on our main website, just look for links to our blog, which is called “Whole Story.”

The blog has a lot of editorial content, everything from articles on how to conserve and recycle to cooking tips and profiles of some of our local producers.

After the website and the blog, we started with Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is very similar to our blog in that we have a lot of editorial content. It’s a little bit more conversational. We invite engagement more. We ask people, “What do you think?” or “What are some of your ideas?” We try to get more of a conversation going.

On Facebook, unlike Twitter, everyone can see each other’s comments, so it becomes much more of a group conversation.

Twitter we use primarily as a customer service tool. We do promote our blog content and we may mention, “We’re having specials for the holidays,” and that sort of thing. But our number-one focus on Twitter is customer service.

Probably 90% of our output on Twitter, if you go to Twitter.com/wholefoods, is directly responding to people who have questions. They’ll ask us, “Can I get this at my local store?” or “What are your holiday hours going to be?” or “Can you tell me a gluten-free alternative to cornbread stuffing?”

Whole Foods has more than 1.7 million followers on Twitter.

Mike: I understand that you have over 150 different Twitter accounts. Can you give me the rationale for having so many different accounts and maybe how you use the different Twitter accounts?

Marla: We started out first with our global account Twitter.com/wholefoods. For about a year, that was all we had.

Then we thought, “It might be neat to niche a couple of accounts.” So we have an account for cheese. It’s called Twitter.com/WFMcheese. That’s our cheese expert who has a quadruple PhD in cheese. She’s one of the world’s leading cheese experts. It’s a terrific niche account.

We also have a wine account and an automated account for recipes.  So that’s four accounts. The rest, the 150 plus, are our local stores.

Mike: For businesses that might have stores or chains, what kind of oversight do you have or recommend? Is it typically done by an employee, a manager of the store, or a cashier? Or is it somebody special who’s not actually working at the store?

Marla: The first thing we found is that not every store has someone who’s really familiar with social media or with Twitter specifically. So we did provide some guidance to these folks in the form of a very, very casual document that was part tutorial: “What’s the difference between an @reply and a direct message?” It was also part guidelines: “Here are some things you shouldn’t do and here are some things you should do.”

For the most part, we’ve pretty much let them run with it. A tight control from a corporate level would be exactly the opposite of what we were trying to achieve, which was to decentralize the responses.

I definitely think that people who tweet on behalf of an organization need to be in it. If you can find the wonderful combination of someone who really knows your business and really knows social media, then that’s the person to use, even if they’re in the meat department or they’re a cashier.

Mike: I want to talk about your master account, your main Twitter.com/wholefoods account.  A lot of the social media pundits out there say that you need to have a physical face behind a brand. I know Whole Foods has not done that. Why did you choose not to put a face behind the Whole Foods Twitter account? What are your feelings and rationale about whether you should have a face behind the brand?

Marla: That was a conscious decision, definitely. We considered both sides of that question and I do see both perspectives. When I was trying to articulate our thinking on this, it fell into a natural ABC thing, which is “authority, boundaries and continuity.”

Authority, to me, just means that it is very clearly a corporate account. With the verified accounts now, this is less of an issue. But we wanted to make sure that it was very clearly the official voice of the company and not one person’s opinion.

Boundaries just means that if you keep your personal account and your professional account separate, go ahead and talk about whatever you want in your personal account. Talk about your favorite football team and talk about where you took the kids for dinner.

Then there’s continuity. When we first started our Twitter account, there were three people in on the account. We would all sort of jump in and tweet or take turns or handle different areas of it.

Now we’ve got one person, Winnie Hsai, who has really stepped up to the plate to manage our social media presence. She does most of our tweeting. If she were to win the lottery tomorrow and leave us, we wouldn’t have to worry about introducing a new person. It would still be the Whole Foods account. There wouldn’t be that sort of jarring disconnect.

Finally, another one that is important to me because I’m a designer is a distinctiveness to having a logo in your account. For example, Frank Eliason at comcastcares is definitely one of the trailblazers of customer service on Twitter. Yet when I’m scanning my Twitter feed, he looks like 10 other guys that I follow.

But when I see Starbucks, instead of seeing Brad Nelson’s face, I see the Starbucks logo and that jumps out at me. I like that distinctiveness of having our branding there.

Mike: Do you think if you were a smaller retailer that you might give the same advice to your peers who are really small?

Marla: That’s a very good question. I’m glad you asked that because I do see a lot of benefit in small businesses having a more personal face.

There is a local dog grooming place that I follow. I’m going to take my dog there because I like the individual I’m corresponding with. I feel that personal connection and I think, “Yes, I’m going to bring my business to you because we’ve talked.”

I think for a small business the rules would probably be quite different than for a large company.

Mike: Let’s talk about Facebook a little bit. How are you using Facebook? How are you using it differently than Twitter? If Twitter is predominantly for support, what is Facebook for?

Marla: Facebook is a really good extension of what we’re trying to do with our blog, which is to promote more of our editorial content. Because so many of our stores have Facebook accounts as well, it allows us to do more local promotions.

But on our global account, we exploit its strengths and weaknesses as opposed to Twitter’s immediacy in one-to-one. We are able to expand a little bit more in Facebook. We can have longer posts, we can post photos, and we can post videos.

The tradeoff is that Facebook is somewhat more passive. People come to you. People will subscribe to your feed on Facebook, but it tends to get lost more, I think, than on Twitter. That’s just my personal experience.

There is also that community aspect where people can respond, not only to us, but to each other, which, because of the way @replies work on Twitter now, has fallen off quite a lot, but is still quite strong in Facebook.

Whole Foods has more than 175,000 Facebook fans.

Mike: Have most of the folks who have discovered you on Facebook and Twitter discovered you through the good old-fashioned viral nature of the two networks?

Marla: I believe so and I think there’s an awful lot of dissemination from the global account.

On our website, wherever we had a link saying we’re on Twitter, we used to send people out to Twitter.com/wholefoods. We realized we were doing that wrong. What we needed to do and what we have done is built out a page at WholeFoods.com/twitter. On that page, we list all the different accounts we have so people can see, “Oh look. There’s not just this global account. There’s also an account for wine, which I would be interested in, and there’s also an account for my local store, which I would be interested in.”

Because Whole Foods has 150 Twitter accounts, it created a page on its main website to help customers determine which accounts to follow.

Mike: I understand that you also have an iPhone app. Can you tell me a little bit about what it does and how it has helped you?

Marla: It’s called Whole Foods Market Recipe and it’s primarily a recipe search app. We have a database of recipes and the iPhone app lets you search those recipes and then not only search by ingredients, but also filter by special diets such as ” vegan recipes” or “gluten-free recipes.”

It also has a store locater. When you find the store nearest you, which you can do either by the automatic GPS location or by typing in a zip code, it takes you out to the page for that store. From there, that page links out to the Facebook account if they have one and the Twitter account if they have one as well.

Mike: Let’s talk a little bit about the future. What do you see happening from a social media perspective down the road?

Marla: I think the same thing will happen with social media that has happened with everything else. They will begin to consolidate and to align quite a bit more than they are now.

Social media has taught companies an enormous lesson about breaking down walls. But the applications themselves don’t seem to have learned that. They’re going to have to learn to be more open and transparent.

Twitter is especially interesting to me right now in that it’s being driven in two directions simultaneously. The individual users are driving it from the bottom up and Twitter, working very hard on its business model, is trying to drive it from the top down in some directions that will be more attractive to businesses.

Mike: What is on the horizon for Whole Foods as far as social media? Is there anything that you are working on that you could share with us?

Marla: We actually, for the size that we are, have a really tiny social media program right now and I would love to see that expand.

As new apps come along, for example, we’re looking at some of these location apps and trying to figure out how we can participate in some of those. We’ll definitely expand our presence as much as we can.

Mike: Thank you so much, Marla. If folks want to learn more about what you’re doing or more about Whole Foods, what sites would you recommend they go to?

Marla: WholeFoodsMarket.com is our primary website. On the top of every page, you will find links to our Twitter and Facebook pages as well as to our blog. Those are WholeFoodsMarket.com/Twitter, WholeFoodsMarket.com/Facebook, and also our blog at Blog.WholeFoodsMarket.com.

Mike: Thank you so much for all this great information. It was very, very insightful.

Marla: Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate it.

Listen to the rest of this interview (below) and learn a lot more about how Whole Foods sets up and manages its social media efforts.

What do you think about Whole Foods’ social media programs? Do you shop Whole Foods and have you engaged them online?  Leave your comments below.