Repost.This

Monday, November 12, 2012

Why don't brands follow their customers on Twitter?

I recently realized that I haven't posted since August.  Not that anyone is distraught with the lack of attention to this blog, but I should keep up with it, right?

I do have an excuse of a couple of weeks of personal vacation, some business travel and working on an article on “Using Social Media as Part of an Effective Brand/Marketing Strategy" for the December 2012 issue of the International Franchise Association's "Franchising World" Magazine.

Oh, and I do have my day job which fortunately has been extremely busy.

Anyway, in doing the research for the Franchising World  piece, and as an extension of my August post here, I thought it would be interesting to not only look at the top Franchise Brands' number of Twitter followers:

Concept Twitter  Followers
Subway 753,749
McDonalds 717,350
Taco Bell 268,049
Chick-fil-A 198,263
Dunkin 177,346
Buffalo Wild Wings 171,343
Dominos 149,033
Pizza Hut 136,513
Wendys 126,148
KFC 108,176
Jimmy Johns 103,530
GNC 94,249
Arbys 70,557
Burger King 68,740
Chilis 66,272
as of October 14, 2012

But, also having just re-read the terrific "The Tasti D-Lite Way", I thought I'd see how many franchised brands reciprocate and follow their followers.   In the book, Jim Amos and BJ Emerson discuss "Social Anxiety", the need to have more fans or followers than the competition.  This "viral envy" puts focus on quantity vs. "quality of engagement, and reach and impact".  

Throughout the book, the authors reference their strategy to follow their followers (and it shows the list below).

Why not follow your followers as well?

There are probably many reasons:  I'd bet Number One is "not enough resources to actively separate the signal from the noise".   That can be a legitimate reason, but there are lots of tools available to help.

So here's the Top 15 franchised brands, now ranked by the ratio between how many accounts follow them and how many they follow:

Concept
Twitter Followers Twitter    Following
Ratio
Tasti D-Lite 7,903 7,681 97.2%
Perkins 1,363 1,288 94.5%
Interim Health Care 2,370 2,227 94.0%
Arbys* 70,557 61,805 87.6%
Carl's Jr 28,642 20,485 71.5%
Bojangles 4,622 3,200 69.2%
Hertz 18,593 12,831 69.0%
Home Instead Senior Care 1,026 657 64.0%
Great Clips 5,001 3,117 62.3%
Hardees 15,052 8,312 55.2%
Applebees 37,082 19,870 53.6%
TGI Fridays 17,535 9,247 52.7%
Churchs 8,761 3,917 44.7%
KFC* 108,176 48,302 44.7%

as of October 14, 2012
* in top 15 of total Twitter followers


What do these franchised brands know that most other brands don't?



0 comments:

Bookmark and Share

Google+

  © Blogger templates Newspaper III by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP