Who’s serving up a treat on social media: Nando’s or Burger King?

Creating great social media content is about both style and substance. It needs to look great but it also needs to be relevant in order to generate meaningful engagement. Knowing what works helps you improve your own offering. But if you also get a flavour for what people are saying about you, you can also use this to further inform what content is likely to tantalise your audiences’ taste buds. 

With that in mind, we decided to take a look at what both Nando’s and Burger King have on their UK social media menus. By comparing what worked for them, and how people felt about them throughout February, you will see how you can use Maybe* to solve the headache of doing more with less

Insight

OrganisationFollowersPostsEngagementAvg. posts per dayAvg. engagements on each postAvg. engagements per day
Nando's1.7M85.9K0.5738295
Burger King346.3K332.1K264105

All data collected from February 13 - March 4 2020. Data correct as of the time of collection and may not reflect the impact of any paid media support, or data accrued since.

Nando’s

Like its menu, Nando’s UK keeps its social simple but effective. The chain posts limited amounts across its UK Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages. In fact Nando’s only posted eight times (excluding Twitter replies) from February 13 - March 4 2020. That’s less than an average of one post per day. But they still earned 5900 engagements on their content.

Encouraging their audience to tag one another, posting new menu items alongside peri-peri classics and their coveted celebrity endorsements,  keeps their audience hungry for more.

 

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A post shared by Nando's UK (@nandosuk) on

 

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A post shared by Nando's UK (@nandosuk) on

Everyone loves a cheeky Nando’s, so it's not surprising that peri-peri equals positivity in the sentiment stakes. Customers not only post about the restaurant offering - Nando’s sauce and seasoning line in supermarkets made for recipe inspiration over pancake day. Using this insight could help them create more content either by;

1) Incorporating customers’ posts into their content strategy
or
2) Simply creating more content about topics likely to be of interest to their customers

Burger King

Burger King has become a dab hand at cooking up a social media and marketing storm with campaigns that are provocative and innovative.

Through February, Burger King UK posted 33 times but they earned less than half the engagement of Nando’s.

Focusing on their new meat-free items certainly inspired engagement, though the content spectacularly missed the mark with its vegetarian audience. Why? Because the new offering, though meat-free, was not actually vegetarian-friendly. Responding to the wave of negative sentiment dominated early March but the feedback gives Burger King an opportunity to improve not only their communication via social, but also review their product labelling process. A good but potentially costly lesson learned thanks to social!

Interestingly in the conversation created about Burger King UK, the most positive sentiment actually came from vegetarians referencing their Rebel Whopper, which is in fact vegetarian-friendly.

So, while they need to up their pre-campaign research (they could use their social channels to run a Q&A or poll with their vegetarian customers for their input), they clearly know how to engage a new audience on social.

Key takeaway

Continuing to listen, learn and then serve via social enables a business with limited resources to do more of what works for their customers. This insight can help the wider business to change and respond in a competitive climate of ever-increasing customer expectations.

Tip* Look for opportunities to integrate learnings from social media so you can drive more value across the business, and not simply improve your social media engagement and metrics.

A great social media strategy inspires interaction, boosts brand recognition and generates influence. Maybe’s social media engagement analytics report empowers you and your content team with information. Automatically track, analyse and visualise data from your business’s social media posts and those of your competitors. Uncover winning strategies and proven approaches through benchmarking and prioritise content that maximises output with minimal investment.   Get started for free.