In my work I’m currently taking a look at health food companies, checking the state of social media usage in that industry, particularly blogs. Hooo boy. It’s not good.
Very, very few use any kind of social media at all. You’d think in an market where many consumers are fanatics about what they eat, that at least many, instead of hardly any, health food companies would be jumping on the band wagon. But not so.
And to make it even more disappointing, several of the health food company blogs that I have seen are just downright embarrassing. So much so that I’m not even going to mention their names here. But one in particular stands out in my mind like something that I wish I could forget.
Again, no names because it’s just way too embarrassing, even though I am tempted. The owners of this company have their daughter blog for the company. Okay. But their daughter is in college and, judging from the content of the posts, evidently has little to do with company operations. It’s a nice blog, but it’s about a college student and her trials and tribulations in trying to pass calculus. Not about the company, its products, the inner workings of the company, how and why the products are made as they are, where new product ideas come from, who makes the decision to put more fiber in the products and why, yadda, yadda, yadda. All the stuff that health food nuts would like to discuss until the organically raised corn is harvested. And when I think of how much free market feedback this company is foregoing, it makes my head spin.
Well, at least they’re getting great feedback about how their daughter should tackle first derivatives.
