Cory Doctorow/Flickr
Which of the two BBQ brands – Dickey’s BBQ Pit or Dinosaur BBQ – employs social media better, and what lessons can they learn from each other?
Fire in the hall!
Barbecuing is one of America’s favorite pastimes. And, as such, it enjoys a great deal of attention on the part of online users. You might think that managing the social media channels for magnetic brands, such as Dickey’s BBQ Pit and Dinosaur BBQ, is easy peasy?
If you reckon that harnessing the power of something so popular is a simple task, you might want to think again! Let’s peek into the two companies’ social profiles and check what it’s like to cook for "likes" and "retweets".
As BBQ is a “meditative process”, according to The Economist, and a form of art rather than a meal, it’s not enough to simply have culinary knowledge at your fingertips to manage a BBQ brand’s presence on the web. For the marketing teams of America’s highly popular BBQ companies – Dickey’s Barbecue Pit and Dinosaur BBQ – it’s very much a labor of love.
Who’s the BBQ Chef?
Let’s look at the hard data – who’s doing better when it comes to managing social media channels?
Right from its URL, it seems Dinosaur BBQ did some pretty extensive research before choosing their brand name. Based on the trends that Google extract, it is clear the word ‘BBQ’ is searched more frequently than ‘barbecue’.
So, when comparing [Dickeysbarbecuepit] and [DinosaurBBQ] as parts of the respective URLs, the latter is much more likely to appear in search results on Facebook, as well as on other media.
google.com/trends/
But then, on Twitter the Dinosaurs have gone for the username @DinosaurBQ, and one wonders why it appears in this fashion, given they were not pressed for symbols (the maximum length of a username on Twitter is 15 characters).
Returning to basics, on Facebook, Dickey's Barbecue Pit has less fans than Dinosaur BBQ (51,296 and 134,507 respectively), so it should be easier for their marketing team to mobilize fans with the content they publish. In fact, this is the case: Dickey's see an engagement rate of 0.139% (with 1.9K people talking about them), while for Dinosaur BBQ it is merely 0.039% (with 860 people talking about them).
According to Social Bakers, the benchmark for the engagement rate for pages in the FMCG industry is 0.49%. For a page the size of Dickey’s, the ideal average ER is 0.61%, while for Dinosaur BBQ the norm is 0.45%. Both pages can do better to engage their fans on Facebook, but Dickey’s is closer to reaching its benchmark.
What strikes one right away is that Dickey's make the most of being a local business. Realizing the fact that Facebook is more and more used by mobile users, they have incorporated a Bing map with all their locations so that fans can both check in and see their nearest Dickey’s location from their Facebook page.
On a more specific note, the best time to publish posts for Dinosaur BBQ is from 5.00 p.m. to 5.30 pm (the time when people start thinking about going home and what they’ll have for dinner), with another noteworthy peak at about 8.00 p.m. (right before dinner). The Dinosaurs seem to notice this fact and employ it to great advantage, as the content they publish at these times is relatively more engaging, appealing, and mouth-watering.
Last, but not least, the captions to the images are succinct yet informative, a perfect marriage of form and content. However, one cannot but notice the fluctuation in the engagement rate on their page – there are posts receiving anything from 5 likes and 0 comments to 100+ likes, shares and comments.
In order to achieve better and more consistent engagement on their Facebook page, Dinosaur BBQ might want to maintain a more compelling style of conversation for all posts, as well as cut down on the number of daily posts.
Meanwhile, Dickeys’ BBQ keep up a steady conversation pace and they seem to be more effective in engaging their audience as a whole. Their performance could be improved by publishing more delicious-looking and tempting images.
Other than that, their messages are straightforward, clear and to-the-point. Keeping a healthy level of engagement is important, to let their messages reach new fans and friends of fans, but overall Dickey’s has the upper hand in terms of conversation.
On Twitter, Dickey’s team often enter into conversations, and poke their fans by favoring their posts, replies and retweets – and posts get retweeted quite a lot. It’s also impressive to see Vine used to best advantage.
In contrast, Dinosaur BBQ’s favs are a negligible number, and despite the number of replies, and fans favoring their tweets, the engagement rate of their account is lower. So, the Dinosaurs’ messages are less likely to reach a wider audience on Twitter.
Our new owners are ready to bring amazing, slow smoked #barbecue to all corners of the country! https://t.co/29fV8E1VKR #bbq #vine
— Dickeys Barbecue Pit (@Dickeys) June 24, 2014
In a nutshell, although both companies are neck and neck when it comes to the number of fans, Dickey’s again achieve a higher engagement rate (4.83% vs. 3.64%) This one goes to Dickey’s!
YouTube
On YouTube, while both brands can do a lot to employ the full capacity of video marketing, Dinosaur BBQ’s YouTube channel wins this round.
With about 5 new videos per month, Dinosaur BBQ support an active channel, although, while some of their videos are described in depth, others are left with no description and have received no comments.
Being the second largest search engine, according to mushroomnetworks.com, YouTube is an important channel for video marketing efforts, and it can be essential within a local business' outbound marketing strategy.
Understanding the value of video on the Internet, and its impact on search results, can help both of these companies in their endeavors to raise brand awareness.
Conclusions
The FMCG industry is ranked as one of the top five industries in terms of engagement with social media. This makes the task of ensuring company messages reach new fans and engage present audiences both challenging and demanding.
Enjoying high visibility and brand awareness in this severely competitive environment requires constant marketing effort , comprehensive performance analysis, and establishment of healthy key performance indicators, which companies should constantly strive to exceed.The social media accounts of magnetic brands, like Dickey’s Barbecue Pit and Dinosaur BBQ, while managed with impeccable professionalism, could gain still further popularity via more engaging content, identification of brand ambassadors among fans, and offering further rewards for fan loyalty.
Being local businesses, these companies have yet to make the most of the opportunities presented by Google Places for Business, Foursquare, and other available social media.
Enjoying high visibility and brand awareness in this severely competitive environment requires constant marketing effort