McDonald’s ranked first as the most astute fast food chain using social media, followed by Taco Bell, according to Unmetric’s Fast Food Report. Unmetric is a social media benchmarking firm that researched the interaction between the top 16 fast-food chains and their customers via social media.
Among Unmetric’s findings:
• Burger King has seen 105 percent fan growth on Facebook since January and the chain also claims the top spot for conversation percentage, at 4 percent.
• McDonald’s has seen 118 percent follower growth on Twitter since January.
• McDonald’s replies to follower tweets faster than any other chain (29 minutes). Burger King takes more than two days to reply to fan tweets.
• In-N-Out has very little social media presence overall and rarely interacts with fans and followers on Facebook or Twitter, however its few posts have seen cult-like engagement from fans, resulting in the highest overall engagement score of 54.
• Chipotle uses Twitter as a conversational tool to connect with followers, replying to 100 percent of its followers’ 15,002 tweets.
• Overall, 61 percent of fast food fans on Facebook are female.
• Virtually all the brands saw rapid growth for January and February, which slowed down in March and by April the growth was quite sluggish.
• As far as specific content, quick serve restaurants mostly talk about contests and brand news. But menu updates, recipes and ad campaigns drive far better engagement.
Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins rounded out the top five highest scores on Facebook behind McDonald’s and Taco Bell. For Twitter, Chipotle Pizza Hut and Dunkin’ Donuts were among the top five.
