Social Media Audit and Conversation Analysis Report

Social Media Audit and Conversation Analysis Report

Brooke Freeman Erin Horwitz

Baylee Newman Lizzie Stapleton

Social Media Audit and Conversation Analysis Purpose Taco Bell is a fast food chain that has been around for the past 50 years. Its locations first began in Southern California, eventually spreading all throughout the country and internationally. Taco Bell is famous for its fast food version of “Mexican” food, including tacos, quesadillas, burritos, and its famous crunchwrap supremes. In recent years the popularity of Taco Bell has risen in the fast food industry; in comparison, our competitors, McDonald’s and Burger King have decreased in popularity. Our main focus for this research is to identify the demographic differences among these three companies and how social media has made a difference for these three franchises. Taco Bell is famous for creating relationships with their consumers through their social media outlets in a way different from others. They appeal to a younger audience through their social media, while Mcdonald’s and Burger King target for a much more diverse consumer base. In recent months, there has been a shift in Mcdonald’s and Burger King’s voice and actions through social media as they try to imitate Taco Bell’s young and hip voice. Through this report we have examined Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook. We examined all three corporations social media reach and perception. This social media audit will help Taco Bell recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and help them explore avenues to branch out into a larger consumer base. Taco Bell Consumers by Age Age Distribution on Twitter

Burger King Consumers by Age McDonald’s Consumers by Age

Method Social Media Audit We examined the social media use of Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Burger King on the following social media channels: Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. The three companies use all these social media tools frequently enough for us to examine and compare to one another. On Instagram we looked at many aspects including the number of followers and post content. For YouTube we examined the number of subscribers and views in general, and per video in order to gage what types of videos appeal to customers. On Twitter, we paid special attention to replies to tweets, focusing what type of responses each corporation was generating. Lastly, on Facebook we looked at the number of fans, likes per post, and how each company responded to negative comments.We focused on the month of April for our audit. Conversation Analysis To analyze our client’s social media presence, we used Social Mention, which gave us information about each corporation’s social media strength and reach. We also followed each account. On twitter, we personally counted tweets and took note of retweets, mentions and replies. We analyzed the differences between all three corporations and their conversations. April was particularly interesting as Taco Bell and McDonald’s got into a “fight” on social media in response to Taco Bell’s “breakfast deflectors” campaign targeting McDonald’s.

Results: Social Media Audit

April 2015 Number of:

Followers/Friends General Interactions Average InteractionsPer Post

Taco Bell

Burger King

McDonald’s Taco Bell

Burger King


Burger King

McDonald’s

Facebook 9,903k 7,183k 56,721k 9.9 mil

7.1 mil 56 mil 72980 likes per post

66745 likes per post

996 likes per post

Instagram 527k 229k 565k 692 posts

391 posts

200 posts 20,000 7,000 17,000

Twitter 1,549k 1,098k 2,804k 350 posts

180 posts

831 posts 500 7000,

200 5000

10300

YouTube 34k 38k 171k 30 videos

20 videos

46 videos 6.4 mil. views

47.6 mil. views

7.9 mil. views

Instagram



Instagram 52

7k 229k 565k 692

posts

391 posts

200 posts 20,000

7,000 17,000

Throughout all the three different fast food Instagram accounts, Taco Bell posts most frequently. Taco Bell has had their Instagram the longest and their platform has twice as many posts than McDonald’s or Burger King. Taco Bell has a total of 692 posts, Mcdonalds; 200 posts, and Burger King; 391 posts.

Out of them all, McDonald’s has the most followers on this platform, outperforming our client by 33 thousand followers. Burger King has three thousand less followers than both of them. It is surprising our that our client has less followers than Mcdonald’s because Mcdonald’s target audience is an older demographic crowd that wouldn’t be as likely to be on social media. Both Burger King and Mcdonalds follow people back, but Taco Bell follows no one back. This makes them way less interactive. Burger King has a list of random followers, while Mcdonald’s follows famous people and franchises including Kim Kardashian and the National Football League. This may be something our client could benefit from as following high profile people and organizations often encourages more people to talk about the Instagram account. None of the accounts comment back to people. Our client’s captions that go along with each picture have the most relatable voice for the demographic they are aiming towards. Taco Bell posts fun pictures of consumers using their product, instead of pictures that appear as advertisements. While examining all three corporations, we noticed that our client does the best job at relating to their intended audience. Mcdonald’s and Burger King have both attempted in their past few months to aim to a younger crowd like our client, but it hasn’t been as successful as Taco Bell’s efforts. In the screenshots below, you can see Burger King try to be funny, however it still receives the least number of likes.

Twitter



Twitter 1,549

k 1,098k 2,804k 350

posts

180 posts

831 posts 500 7000,

200 5000

10300

Twitter has become an important tool in a corporation’ social media program. Whether using it to advertise products or communicate with consumers, maintaining a Twitter presence has become essential. Our client, Taco Bell, utilizes Twitter to communicate with consumers, especially with their target demographic.

Taco Bell’s most common consumer is ages 1824, with 1217 and 2534 following closely behind. Fortunately for them, Twitter’s demographics match Taco Bell’s, with the most common age of Twitter users being between 15 and 25 years old. Taco Bell clearly knows their market, as students at the University of Oregon often talk about Taco Bell’s creative and funny tweets.

On Twitter, Taco Bell utilizes trending hashtags to promote their brand. These trending hashtags make Taco Bell relatable and relevant, especially when their target market is tweeting about the same things. This makes Taco Bell relevant because it continually makes their tweet a “top tweet” and can be easily found just by searching the hashtag. For example, when #ThingsThatILove was trending on twitter, Taco Bell tweeted “#ThingsThatILove Late Night Trips to Taco Bell.” Taco Bell consumers were using the same hashtag, so Taco Bell was relating to their consumer base. Taco Bell tweeted 60 times in April; however, half of those posts were retweeted tweets from other accounts, from celebrities such as Katy Perry and Justin Timberlake, to regular people.

Taco Bell utilizes mentions, and replied to about 300 tweets during the month of April. Responses were witty, and usually were in response to a Twitter user professing love for and enjoyment towards the food

.

Our competitors, Burger King and McDonald’s, both utilize Twitter, as well. Burger King has the least prominent Twitter presence with only 180 tweets during April. Burger King only retweeted five tweets, all involving their sponsorship of the March Madness NCAA Basketball Tournament. What was interesting about Burger King’s twitter, was that though it replied to about 100 tweets during April, the majority of those responses were customer service complaints.

Burger King tried to imitate Taco Bell’s twitter personality, and actually received a similar response. Taco Bell had a social media campaign involving Taco Bell “promposals” that was tweeted about on April 13. On April 27, Burger King had a similar tweet. Burger King’s tweet

did receive more favorites and retweets, although that could be because the Taco Bell tweet was a video, and the Burger King tweet was just an image. The Burger King image was easier for user to engage with, as images have no sound, and can be viewed with a quick tap. Videos, for example, require sound, and in public places, playing videos on your phone loudly has become socially inappropriate.

McDonald’s has a very different Twitter than both Taco Bell and Burger King. In April, McDonald’s only tweeted 31 times, and only retweeted one tweet from another account. The other account was McCafé, which is actually a part of McDonald’s. However, McDonald’s had more reply tweets than Burger King and Taco Bell combined. This is mostly due to the fact that McDonald’s held a sweepstakes drawing during April and replies were mostly about the sweepstakes.

McDonald’s also had a “artisan chicken surprise” campaign and encouraged twitter users who tweeted about the chicken to direct message the McDonald’s account for a surprise a free Artisan Grilled Chicken sandwich.

However, what was most interesting about Taco Bell and McDonald’s twitter usage during April, is that on April 14, Taco Bell and McDonald’s entered a “Twitter fight.”

This comes after a recent battle between both fast food chains, as Taco Bell’s “Breakfast deflectors” campaign encouraging people to deflect from “boring Egg McMuffin” breakfasts in exchange for something new: breakfast tacos. This battle began in March, so it is fairly recent. It is also interesting to note that Taco Bell will be handing out free breakfast tacos nationwide on May 5. Taco Bell’s plan to hand out free breakfast tacos nationwide was very effective as it shows their national strength.

Twitter users varied in responses to this “fight” with responses ranging from “childish” to proTaco Bell. There were a lot more positive responses than negative responses to this fight as it seems to be well received when companies tweet at each other.

The tweet below, by Alex Alvarez, a BuzzFeed reporter, demonstrates the common consumer base shared by McDonald’s and Taco Bell and how important it would be for each corporation to remain above the competition. This tweet below shows the power fast food still has in our society. We perceive this tweet as positive because it shows that consumers care about the food more than the politics surrounding it. As Taco Bell is our client, we are proud that Taco Bell has seemingly won this “battle.”

Facebook McDonald’s leads the three companies in the number of fans on their page by a long shot. However, when dissecting the average number of likes per post, McDonald’s is far behind both Taco Bell and Burger King. Taco Bell and Burger King have very similar Facebook statistics, with Taco Bell still taking the lead. Taco Bell posts the least frequent of the three organizations, but this frequency appears to be purposeful. They mainly post about new menu items or deals happening. These types of posts receive the most attention, receiving more shares and likes than more casual posts, which Taco Bell saves for Twitter.

Facebook Fans Check Ins Number of Posts in April Avg Likes

Taco Bell 9.9 million 1.3 million 7 72980

Burger King 7.1 million 334 thousand 20 66745

McDonald’s 56 million 17 million 13 996

Taco Bell’s Top Comments are rarely negative. Most of them are positive comments. Taco Bell responds very quickly to unhappy customers within the hour. Their apologies are extremely

personal to the consumer as they are sure to maintain their conversational tone, rather than treating it extremely formally.

McDonald’s receives the most negative feedback on their Facebook posts of all three restaurants, as seen in their Top Comments. Their comments are not only about service, but many users question the way the McDonald’s makes their food, voice health concerns, as well as attack the entire corporation. The way McDonald’s responds attempts to be witty, but as seen above, often appear too graphic or condescending.

Burger King also receives many negative comments as most of their posts’ Top Comments. Their responses are the least personal, as they send the customer to the Consumer Relations department, and make it the customer’s responsibility to follow up. YouTube Taco Bell created its YouTube channel in January 2006. After a little over nine years, they have 30 videos and 33,998 subscribers. Compared to Burger King and McDonald’s, Taco Bell comes in last for all YouTube statistics. McDonald’s has more subscribers than both Taco Bell and Burger King combined at 171 thousand and triples their combined view count with 47 million.


Subscribers Videos Total Views

Taco Bell

Burger King


Burger King


Burger King

McDonald’s

YouTube 34k 38k 171k 30 20 46 6.4 mil. 7.9 mil. 47.6 mil.

As you can see in the figure below, although they have the lowest statistics overall, Taco Bell’s YouTube channel has been on the rise starting around the end of March. In the past month, Taco Bell has posted 3 new videos on their Youtube channel as opposed to Burger King and McDonald’s who has posted one.

The data point where Taco Bell shows a rise in both subscribers and views is March 23. On this same date, the fast food chain released a “short film” on their YouTube channel that also has a shortened television commercial version that indirectly calls out their most successful YouTube competitor McDonald’s. The commercial was promoting Taco Bell’s new breakfast items and how they are different and exciting compared to the “boring routine” breakfast items offered by places like McDonald’s.

In the commercial Taco Bell uses key words and ideas that are regular marketing strategies of McDonald’s. For example, happiness and happy meals, a dirty “PlayPlace” ball pen and a propagandized image of Ronald McDonald. Whether it was connected or not, McDonald’s suffered a steep decrease in video views starting at the end of March.The video is still Taco Bell’s most popular video on its channel and the only upload to break one million views.

Although Taco Bell has the lowest success with YouTube compared to its competitors, recent efforts to the social media platform has caused Taco Bell to have the highest increase rate for both subscribers and views than Burger King and McDonald’s. Results: Conversation Analysis According to social mention, Taco Bell is weaker than we perceived during our analysis. Taco Bell has a 42% brand strength, meaning that there is a 42% chance that Taco Bell is being discussed on social media. However, when you think about everything that can be discussed on social media, having a 42% likelihood that someone is talking about us is actually a pretty good likelihood. Social Mention also explains that the sentiment of Taco Bell is usually positive which is something we noticed during our research. What we found interesting, is that Taco Bell’s reach is only 31%, meaning that not as many people are tweeting about Taco Bell as we thought. McDonald’s had a stronger perceived strength than Taco Bell but not much higher at 46%. McDonald’s had a larger reach as well, at 45%. However, this can easily be because McDonald’s has over 35,000 restaurants in 118 countries whereas Taco Bell has only 6,500 stores, mostly in the United States. With Taco Bell’s expansion to Tokyo and other countries, we expect Taco Bell’s reach and strength to increase. What is also interesting to note, is that the top user posting about McDonald’s is McDonald’s, and Taco Bell is the third most prominent author. This strategy, while it is working, is not the best. It would be better for these organizations to not have to generate all their own content, but instead be talked about by other users. Burger King had a higher strength than Taco Bell as well, at 44%. However, compared to Taco Bell and McDonald’s the likelihood that the post is negative is much higher. With this scenario, it doesn’t matter if there are many tweets about a corporation, because the more negative tweets, the more bad press for the corporation. Burger King, like Taco Bell is not the most common author, but Burger King has a higher reach than Taco Bell as there are more Burger King authors than for Taco Bell. Due to our research, we assume this is because many people tweet customer service complaints to Burger King, and although that makes its reach strong, those are not the tweets a corporation would want showing up in other users’ feeds. McDonald’s follows 50 people back on Instagram, including celebrities like LeBron James. Burger King follows 97 people back, and Taco Bell does not follow anyone back on Instagram. Taco Bell, though relatable, sets itself apart from its competitors by not following anyone back.

It’s like Taco Bell is trying to make a statement, but this is not the most positive statement it could be making. Discussion Through our research on these four social media outlets, we have few suggestions to make our client, Taco Bell, even stronger in the social media world. Overall, one main suggestion we have is that Taco Bell needs to be more consistent through the level of engagement on all media channels. We see Taco Bell talking to a lot of people on Twitter but not Instagram. Keeping it consistent across the board helps the communication. Audiences enjoy when a company gets back to them on social media, and if Taco Bell chooses to do it on one social media outlet they should do it on all. Through our research, we have concluded that Taco Bell is perceived more like a user’s “friends” accounts as opposed to a corporation’s. This perception is good for Taco Bell and we encourage Taco Bell to maintain this image. The following strengths and suggestions are listed below for each channel:

Instagram Overall, Taco Bell’s Instagram is very strong compared to its competitors. Their pictures and voice go along with their targeted demographics. They create this delicious virtual world for Taco Bell lovers and viewers want to go eat a crunchwrap supreme in a skate park after viewing their Instagram. All their pictures and captions are very original. In the past month they always are highlighting a new food item in a different way. One suggestion we think will add to their overall interaction with the audience is following people back. When someone sees that Taco Bell following them they will tell their friends, then their friends will follow Taco Bell hoping for a follow back and this continues to be a chain reaction. Also, following high profile people, like celebrities, and franchises, will get more people talking about their page. One other suggestion would be to show off their other social media outlets through Instagram. For example taking pictures of a Twitter conversation they had and posting it on Instagram would increase social media traffic to and discussion about their Twitter account. Twitter Twitter is Taco Bell’s most wellknown and acclaimed social media outlet. It utilizes internet trends to relate to their audience and to advertise their company in a way that makes it seems less

like an advertisement and more like regular tweets. Taco Bell has become something so commonly talked about among their target demographic that Their twitter appears more like their friends’ Twitter accounts than another corporation. A suggestion we had is a Twitter campaign, especially since the introduction of Taco Bell’s Snapchat account, to feature “How I Taco Bell” and tweet pictures of people eating Taco Bell. Since so many people eat Taco Bell, it would emphasize the commonality of Taco Bell that has been so well received. Taco Bell successfully utilized their Twitter accounts to announce new products, including their SnapChat account and a delivery service. Responses on those posts were higher than average and Taco Bell’s Twitter account has generated response by media outlets praising their use of Twitter. Buzzfeed, a news source common among Millennials, features many articles highlighting Taco Bell tweets, increasing Taco Bell’s brand name. Facebook Taco Bell uses Facebook mainly to announce new food products or deals. Taco Bell successfully gains the interest of fans through these posts. On the other hand, their conversational posts do not get as much attention as those picturing food items, as seen in the vast difference in Facebook likes. The way they utilize Facebook in this way acts as a strength in that they save their more witty and conversational messaging for outlets such as Twitter, while making more staple announcements through Facebook. Additionally, its likes per post compared to the number of people who like the fan page remains at a better ratio than both its competitors. Taco Bell also successfully uses this medium to respond to customer complaints. They typically will respond within the hour with a highly specialized reply asking for the customer’s contact information. This shows their commitment to customer service. These types of comments are also not as common amongst Taco Bell as they are in McDonald’s posts. The main suggestion for Taco Bell to increase Facebook dominance, would be to increase its search engine optimization. Currently, it’s SEO remains low. When searching “Taco Bell Facebook page,” on Google, their official fan page does not show up. There is one particular Facebook post that appears, in which can link you to the Facebook page, but that is the most convenient way of finding the page. Additionally, searching for Taco Bell on Facebook leads to the fan pages of individual store locations and not the official fan page. Compared to McDonald’s and Burger King, both of their fan pages are the first to pop up in a Google search

and a Facebook search. By increasing their SEO, they will be able to gain more fans on Facebook and reach more people when posting. YouTube Taco Bell’s YouTube channel is on the rise. It has identified McDonald’s as their main competitor on the platform and targeted them in Taco Bell marketing strategies. By indirectly calling out McDonald’s they have ignited conversation about the commercial that you can see under the video. People are interested and want to share Taco Bell’s video because McDonald’s is such a strong power in the fast food market and Taco Bell capitalized on the opportunity to show that they are the competition now.

Social Media Audit and Conversation Analysis Report

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