10 things Burger King does to serve up whopping social media

Like all restaurants and eateries, Burger King was forced to close its eat in services due to the second lockdown on November 5. But rather than be defeated, the fast food chain has rallied its support around all fast food eateries and burger joints including its main competitor, McDonald’s. By doing so, Burger King increased its social media engagement by over 23,000%. Boom! 

Here we show you in 10 steps how they tapped into the mood of the public and took a bold and brave approach to social media over the last week of October and first week of November.

1. What was the business goal?

Burger King are experts at grabbing attention. The business wanted to draw attention to the risk a second lockdown posed to those with jobs within the food and hospitality industry.

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2. Telling Burger King’s story

Burger King issued a branded letter via social media across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with the attention grabbing headline, ‘Order from McDonald’s.

Coupled with its usual playful tone of voice came the acknowledgement “We know, we never thought we’d be saying this either”.

On expanding the letter, customers could read how and why Burger King was encouraging customers not just to order from its biggest rival, but also a whole plethora of its other competitors.

The post tapped into the public mood well, by demonstrating that it recognised jobs, livelihoods and the protection and preservation of the wider industry was more pressing than competition.

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3. What did Burger King want its audience to do

Burger King wanted to encourage its audience to keep ordering from their favourite food outlets, for the sake of a bigger purpose.

In addition it wanted to start and amplify a conversation. And that’s just what it did.

Burger King saw the engagement with its content increase a whopping 23289% on the previous week.

You can discover the content you post that is the most engaging within Maybe*, across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

4. How does Burger King engage with customers?

Burger King responds to all its comments and customer service issues including job enquiries, complaints and good ol' burger banter from its loyal following.

Over this time period, the Burger King content began to divide opinion, as more and more joined the conversation. Noticeably there was a camp of people pointing out that local eateries needed support a little more than the big chains.

Burger King responded to this by calling out some more of its smaller competitors.

You can engage with your comments and mentions of your business.  Listen to the conversation about your competitors, or other businesses in your place, and use this insider knowledge to inform your own approach and reach more customers.

5. Who does Burger King need to engage?

Burger King enjoys engagement with many people from all walks of life. While facing stick for promoting fast food and potentially unhealthy competitors, the brand managed to engage not just a teen or youth audience, but also earned engagement from a professional community of marketeers and business pundits who also engaged in the conversation, especially on LinkedIn.

Maybe* allows you to see the conversation being created about your business across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram so you can identify influencers and engage with the conversations that matter.

The benefit of engaging this community, means the conversation about Burger King also continued to grow. Across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the amount of social media conversation about the business grew over 570%.

Steps 6 - 10 .

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Key takeaway

Burger King took a risk to grab attention, and it paid off. The business chose collaboration and purpose over competition, cooking up a social media engagement storm, while at the same time retaining its tone of voice and brand identity.

Maybe* is here to help businesses learn the essential ingredients and steps to take to stay connected to customers via its social media engagement tool. By providing social media and advertising insight tools, we can help your business continue to grow and make sales..

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