Social Media Corner

Featured

Why Burger King Is not the King of Instagram

Burger King holds a very special place in my heart. It is my dad’s favorite fast food restaurant and we used to stop there on our way home from softball tournaments in the summer. He loved nothing more than sitting down with a Whopper, fries, and an ice-cold Coca-Cola after a day out on the softball field.

Their social media use is also quite fascinating. The brand’s ability to switch voices between social media platforms to try to appeal to different target audiences is enticing. On Twitter, they tend to be more relatable and humorous, while on Instagram and Facebook, their posts seem much more like advertisements.

Burger King came to mind pretty quickly when I had to choose a brand to audit on social media for my Strategic Social Media course. Their different voices across platforms and my own personal nostalgic attachments lead to the choosing Burger King, but it was actually some of their worst practices that inspired the topic of this first post. Below, I have outlined a few ways Burger King’s Instagram strategy is lacking.

Put a Ring On It—3 Secrets to Boosting Brand Engagement

As I discussed in my two previous posts, engagement is a pivotal piece in brand success. While engagement has a much lesser effect on larger, more well-known brands like Burger King, it does still impact them and the impact is much larger for smaller brands. My previous posts delve into the best and worst practices of two Burger King and Wendy’s following some of the industry’s leading sites, Sprout Social and Social Insider.

In this post, however, I will be diving into academic research on brand engagement. Academic research is important to consider because it often gives us a new and better understanding of people and how they act. In turn, we are able to take that research and better tailor practices/ messages towards them. Below, I offer up three ways to boost brand engagement utilizing academic research articles we discussed in class.

How Wendy’s Stole the Twitter Crown—Sorry Burger King

In my last post, I discussed why Burger King did not deserve a crown for their Instagram practices. Their main pitfalls were their lack of engagement, lack of hashtag use, and their inability to stick to a schedule. In this post, I continue discussing Burger King’s weaknesses, however, I set out to compare the Twitter use of the two fast food brands. Below, I compare Burger King’s social media use on Twitter with one of their biggest competitors—Wendy’s. It is apparent that Burger King may be the king of fast food, but Wendy’s is coming for their crown on Twitter.

As my classmate, Genevieve, pointed out in her blog post, Wendy’s is killing the Twitter game. They are engaged and humorous on the app. They also try to be as relatable as possible to seem like they are more than just a brand. The two brands are doing similar things on the app, but Wendy’s is much more successful in their Twitter use and the question is why?