Friday, March 27, 2015

Outpost

                  Corporate Blog Post


          For this post I explored different corporate Facebook and Instagram pages. I started with Marshalls and looked at Nike but then my roommate came home and she was talking about work (She works at Outpost) and I thought, what a challenge a food company may have. It’s easy for apparel places to promote online with options for ordering online or pinning clothing outfits to other pages. For Marshalls you could pin, or tweet professional pictures and Nike followed sports stories that featured their products but outpost is a small natural food store how could they do this?
    When I looked up the facebook page I was surprised at the small network outpost has but the charm they exuded. I felt like when I read their posts that I was reading the posts of my fellow friends on FB, they were charming and funny! They had the perfect angle and that was humor!


 They used this and claimed their Ginger Chicken Soup was so good it would make you want to break out in song. I smiled SO big! I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t get this soup just because of the choice of reference! There is also a soup video making a reference to Coming to America that would make everyone smile.  So they post about daily items and hot soups, they post about internal politics and provide information on products they carry. The target audience may be smaller than an apparel company and even smaller for being a local but the communication in this business seems to give off the horizontal feel and a very casual approach. Without working there I feel like the atmosphere very much reflects the page we see. For a grocery co-op they provide benefits to even the cashiers (like my roommate) and if you come for at least half your scheduled shift you can leave without consequence. We can see even the politics of the company on its Facebook page. It invites people to vote for Board members and even displays the profiles of the people running. This is incredibly inviting and allows the co-op members to feel like they have a say in what Outpost looks like. This is very refreshing. I feel like displaying community owned pages such as this one allows consumers to feel like their business is better appreciated and provides a more personal service.

   I think what would help Outpost on their page would be posting recipes and natural/vegan meals that can all be found at Outpost, Or if they created a calendar of deals. Right now they seem to focus on the soup of the day and they do it in a creative way but that can only draw in so many customers. If they had a daily recipe people might be more inclined to check that daily or even right before shopping for meal ideas. They can target a different audience this way as well. For the organic eaters, the vegetations or the vegans.