“…Joe Beccalori, co-founder and principal of Internet marketing firm Interact Marketing, said that by not engaging with their fans on social media, especially Twitter, the brands could be losing out on other opportunities, including market research. He also sees a correlation between brands actively engaged with fans on social media and their online reputation and sales performance.
“Companies that have social media profiles are on more of an upswing, whereas Burger King’s stock price has taken a downturn,” he said. “Also, through Compete.com we have found that there is an 80 percent drop in web traffic to Burger King’s site as opposed to McDonald’s and Taco Bell (both active on Twitter), which have shown percentage increases.”
Could there be a correlation with sales as well? Wendy’s early this year began engaging with fans on Twitter via @wendys but Arby’s has yet to start. Wendy’s same-store sales have been stronger than sister brand Arby’s during the recession, but during the period the brand was on Twitter, the company had positive same-store sales in February — and some of the strongest in QSR — despite severe winter weather. The company reported Thursday that it ended its most recent quarter with positive comps of 0.8 percent. Arby’s were down 11.5 percent.
Beccalori’s research on Arby’s and Burger King found that Burger King is searched more than 22 million times a year online and Arby’s 3.5 million times, according to SEOBook.com. His search on Twitter found that someone tweets about Burger King once a minute and Arby’s about once every 30 minutes.
With those stats in hand and the limited investment to get started on social media, Beccalori sees no reason why the brands would hesitate…”
This is an excerpt from a news article: Read the full article here.
