Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company was established in 1953.
Company “Burger King” have a home page and it already indicates that “Burger King” is using media to communicate with his customers, potential customers, suppliers, investors and other persons. In “Burger King” home page every one can find the necessary information about the company, their products, special offers and current events.
“Burger King” is currently also using different social networks to keep in touch with their customers and of course promote their products as well.
The social networks “Burger King” is using are the three social network giants:
- Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/burgerking
- Twitter – https://twitter.com/BurgerKing
- Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/user/bk
What are the facts ?
This company created an account on Facebook on 9th June 2010. This is the introduction we can find on Facebook about BK:
“BURGER KING® USA official Facebook Page. We’re keeping you updated on new menu items, delicious deals, and reminding you that TASTE IS KING℠ .”
Today, BK Facebook has 5 956 061 people that like it, has 51 902 people who talk about it and 7 614 people has been in their page. This means two categories of people, those who are just fans of the brand, and those who actively like it, share about it, and are proud and able to report when they were in.
From the statistic pages we could find that:
– The 4th week in January 2012 was the most popular week for BK Facebook page. During this week the company interacted a lot with their fans.
-The age group that mostly comments on this page is from 18 till 24 years. Almost all of them are young people. This is a good point as this target is the same as the target audience who go to Burger King. So they are reaching their goal what is to try that more people go to theirs restaurants.
– Houston, Texas, USA is the most popular city who use Burger King facebook.
The page is very active, almost everyday something is posted and people interact with comments.
How BK use Facebook in their social media strategy ?
On this page you can find photos, events and you can find an option where you can buy a gift card to your friends. Also you can find important dates about its history. You can find almost all the information you want about this company.
It asks for opinions, focuses on one particular product, and generates interaction around those new products or promotion they launched. So it does indirect promotion, through advices and opinions asking. The feedback depends on the posts and generally, it has more likes in average than comments.
Most of the post are pictures about new products or some promotions, Burger King ask to share it. So much people could have more interest to go to their restaurants. The comments are answers from the fans, they write if they like it or if they preferred others products. Burger King post the pictures for people comments thats means they do not answer it or write comments about it. The goal is to inform their fans.
The most fans do is put their like it, the second they share the post and third they comments. The easier for people is to press the botom like it as also share it, to comment requires more eforce but in spite this there is a lot of comments (less than like it and share it) about the new products so this is good because helps to imporve Burger King´s image.
Why are they using Facebook this way?
As BURGER KING® is a global, quick-service restaurant chain and the second global burger brand, they need to have more customers than their first competitor so they have to give some extra value to their customers. By creating content, posting about new products and interacting with their fans, they can get this extra value.
The reason why BK is using Facebook is to have communicate with customers and potential customers to have a chance to know about BK business. BK interacts with them. If the company cares of their fans, their fans will be more comfortable and will choose this burger brand above other competitors. Facebook is maybe the best social media to BK to be in touch with their customers and potential customers, they use it to inspire and interact and also to inform. This information is about their new products, relate to all their events, news, and information customers have to know. And as everybody can see their Facebook they could realize how many people follow them.
For improving their image they could follow some recommendations They should interact more with their fans as making some games or quizes, for example if they win they can have some products for free. Also creating more events (because they have only a few) to bring closer the brand and their customers.
Doing this fans will be more to comment more about Burger King and share with friends as the brand will have more recognition.
Burger King began its operations on the platform of Twitter in 2010. It is USA official account. We can say that they started their activities not so long ago. For two and the half years They have earned 78 618 followers while they are interested in 589 accounts and published 1 223 tweets, so it means they are adding post regularly, more than once on a day. 25 % of their tweets include links and media, one on four posts has hashtag. The followers ratio is high, it is 133.79 followers per following.
In the picture below you can see a few rates. The first is the strenght. It is only 34%, which means that the profile is not so much active. Another rate is the sentiment. It is only 3:1. Most of the references are neutral but as you can see there are both negative and positive, and the difference between this is not too optimistic. Passion rate is very low, which means the profil does not have relugars visitors, and most often different people write about him. The highest and most satisfactory is rate reach. It is up 103%, which means that a lot of people is talking about the profile and publish its name in tweets.
Way of working on Twitter.
Usually Burger King is posting about their products which they have in offer, but the most popular in publications is their main sandwich Whooper. Company is paying a big attention to this product, they are so proud of it and want to promote as much as possible. Also their followers can find some information about discounts, reductions and possibilities to get free vouchers for theirs products. It is good way of promotion, because they encourage customers to visit their restaurant, get used to the offer and try new products, which will appeal to them. In theirs tweets they include clues about lottery with attractive rewards. They update their profile with new menu items, delicious deals, and reminding customers that TASTE IS KING.
This profile is created to communicate with people. Customers are tweeting to Burger King and Burger King is tweeting back to people. Twitter team is trying to answer to every post. There is a lot of examples when clients are sending photos from restaurant or from weird places while they are eating BK products. Burger King makes also it possible for users to allow them to participate in commercials. It shows how big interaction company has with their customers.
Account on Twitter is compatible with account on Facebook. Burger king Twitter team is often posting links to their Facebook page. Also we can see that policy of Burger King is more focused on working on Facebook because there is almost 6 mln. people. This big difference shows how important for company is this social network, but we cannot forget that Twitter account is mostly made for US customers and this profile is directed to them. Facebook has more general issue. Also the target group on this two platforms is different. On Facebook mostly youngsters in age 19 to 24 are interested in post and comments and they active participate in life of account. The situation is different with the target group on twitter. The account is aimed more toward older, matured people.
Recommendation for Burger King Twitter team is to ensure more active Twitter account, and not just focusing mostly on facebook profile. Twitter.com is a social site and it can bring more benefits to the company, where she takes care of her commitment to consumers.
Youtube
What are the facts?
A YouTube account was created in 2005. Since then, 27 166 subscribed to the Burger King YouTube channels, and videos have been seen 1 479 999 times. The channel is composed of 2 tabs: New Year, New chicken nuggets at Burger King and Whopper Moment at Burger King.
Why Burger King uses YouTube?
Some smartphones are capable of accessing YouTube videos, dependent on the provider and the data plan. YouTube Mobile was launched in June 2007, using RTSP streaming for the video.]Not all of YouTube’s videos are available on the mobile version of the site.
In September 2012, YouTube launched its first app for the iPhone, following the decision to drop YouTube as one of the preloaded apps in the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 operating system.
In January 2009, YouTube launched “YouTube for TV”, a version of the website tailored for set-top boxes and other TV-based media devices with web browsers, initially allowing its videos to be viewed on the PlayStation 3 and Wii video game consoles.
YouTube is also available for the Xbox Live.
On November 15, 2012, Google launched an official app for the Wii, allowing users to watch YouTube videos from the Wii channel. An app is also available for Wii U, and videos can be viewed on the Wii U Internet Browser using HTML5.
To sum up, Burger King created an account on You Tube because it offers users the ability to see their videos from different platforms .With a YouTube account they are trying to create an image for potential customers and customers. By sharing chicken nugget videos they want to persuade the potential customers to buy their products
How Burger King uses YouTube?
First of all, Burger King uses YouTube to convey the people a message:”Taste is King” .How? They put this motto at the end of the videos. It is more eye-catching for the customers to see a video than to see only an image with a motto. A video convey customers more and awake their desire to buy. On YouTube the products are taking shape better than if it is only in images.
Why Burger King doesn’t have feedback from the customers?
As we can see, Burger King has disabled the comments for the videos.
Why did they do this? They try to keep the feedback from the customers confidential. They made a site where they are receiving the feedback:
http://burgerking.suggestionbox.com/
Why Burger King closed down the restaurants in Romania?
In 2012 Burger King closed down the restaurants in Romania after entering insolvency.
The main reason is the competitors: KFC and Mc Donald’s.
Recommendations for YouTube
Should add more tabs on the account. In this way their account won’t be so dull.
Use more YouTube to promote their products and in this mode they can get more subscribers and likes.
Conclusion
In our opinion Burger King is using the opportunities provided by social media. But we think they should pay much more attention Youtube page, because in that ways they can reach more people. And a really good advantage of using Youtube is that Burger King social media team is able to tweet of post links to their Youtube page or videos and as everyone already knows video is more eye catching because it includes text, pictures, sound is more easier for people to receive the information that BK wants to deliver to their customers.
What comes for the other social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, they are doing their job quite well, although they could interact more with their costumers to be more closer to them.
Prof Dr Ana Adi - Vives Erasmus Courses 
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