So when it comes to fast-food chains, who is the King on Twitter? McDonald’s? BK? Starbucks?
The answer is, it depends. Do you place more value on followers, or engagement? How important is following back customers on Twitter? Do more active accounts get higher marks?
I found a list of the Top 10 fast-food brands according to QSRMagazine and then used TweetStats to track the Twitter account for each of the Top 10 brands. I then looked at 6 categories: Followers, Following, Tweets, Replies, RTs as Replies, and How Long on Twitter.
Here’s the brands that I looked at, and their Twitter account for each: McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, Wendy’s, Starbucks, Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts, Pizza Hut, KFC, Sonic.
Here’s my assessment of how these brands are using Twitter:
Best Twitter Presence – Starbucks
Starbucks leads 2 of the 6 categories I looked at, and was 2nd in 3 others. The Seattle-based brand has a huge lead in number of followers, Taco Bell and McDonalds were tied for 2nd on the list with just a shade over 123K followers for each. Starbucks has over 1.4 million followers. They also have the most tweets, have been on Twitter since August 2008), and almost 80% of the company’s tweets are replies to others. If there was one knock against the company, it might be that they are only following 79K people, which is the most on the list, but still only a fraction of its 1.4M followers.
Most Active and Engaged: Dunkin Donuts
DD has been on Twitter since October 2008, having left the most tweets on this list (8586), and 70% of those tweets have been replies to others. Also, they have over 78K followers, and have over 52K people they are following. I also think it’s interesting that while DD only has a fraction of the followers that competitor Starbucks has, the rest of its stats seem to closely track with what Starbucks has done. DD joined Twitter a couple of months after SBUX, they have more tweets, and over 70% replies, like Starbucks.
Most Disappointing Twitter Presence: Burger King
BK arguably has the most brand awareness after McDonalds, but you couldn’t tell it from the company’s Twitter account. The chain has less than 10K followers, a full 114K behind rival McDonalds. Of course, The King isn’t doing himself any favors, only following 327 people, with only 223 tweets and roughly 1% of those are replies. This proves that engagement matters, if BK were more active and responsive to followers, I bet its number of followers would spike.
Here’s the complete stats and how each brand ranked:
Number of Followers:
1 – Starbucks – 1,429,917
2 – McDonalds – 123,690
3 – Taco Bell – 123,557
4 – Dunkin Donuts – 78,449
5 – Pizza Hut – 53,306
6 – Subway – 47,821
7 – KFC – 32,808
8 – Wendy’s – 18,821
9 – Sonic – 12,144
10 – Burger King – 9,523
Replies as % of Tweets
1 – Sonic – 86.11
2 – Starbucks – 78.43
3 – Dunkin Donuts – 70.42
4 – KFC – 64.08
5 – McDonalds – 59.69
6 – Pizza Hut – 57.26
7 – Wendy’s – 53.52
8 – Subway – 45
9 – Taco Bell – 12.55
10 – Burger King – 1.79
Number of Tweets
1 – Dunkin Donuts – 8,586
2 – Starbucks – 6,936
3 – McDonalds – 4,946
4 – Taco Bell – 4,251
5 – Sonic – 4,243
6 – Subway – 3,824
7 – KFC – 3,044
8 – Pizza Hut – 2,047
9 – Wendy’s – 1,779
10 – Burger King – 223
Takeaways from these stats:
1 – Engagement matters, and isn’t optional. All of these chains (with the possible exception of Sonic) have national footprints, and as such have to be on Twitter, because that’s where their customers are. If you’re a national brand with a larger customer base (especially a B2C company), then it’s required that you be active on all major social media channels, because your customers will be.
2 – Experience matters. Three of the 10 brands listed here have been on Twitter since 2008, and all three are in the middle or top of all stats.
3 – Social Media is growing up fast. If you look at the Twitter accounts of these brands, you’ll see that most are actively engaging their customers. Remember just 2-3 years ago when it was big news if ANY brand replied to a customer on Twitter? It’s the norm now.
Have any of these brands connected with you on Twitter?