Expion ranks restaurants on Facebook consistency

Following up on a third-quarter study of Facebook engagement for the restaurant industry, social-media software and consulting firm Expion identified The Cheesecake Factory, Taco Bell and Texas Roadhouse as among foodservice’s most consistent promoters on Facebook.

Mike Heffring, chief strategy officer of Raleigh, N.C.-based Expion, said those brands showed a better understanding of “smart social” practices, favoring quality over quantity in their posting and typically earning a more reliable level of fan actions, including likes, comments and shares.

“To get better social integration, making social success repeatable and finding linkages to other marketing goals, start with the frequency issue,” Heffring said. “If you post a lot, you could have success, but it’s harder to repeat it.”

Expion also noted several trends from some brands whose fan engagement varied much more from post to post, like Red Mango, Chick-fil-A and Red Lobster.

To quantify each chain’s level of consistency in fan engagement, Expion calculated an efficiency quotient that indicated more consistency if it fell below 1 and less if it rose higher than 1. The figure was derived by dividing each chain’s standard deviation of fan actions for all posts in the third quarter by the average number of actions per post.

The consistency of Cheesecake

The Cheesecake Factory’s consistent efficiency was reflected in a quotient of 0.60, resulting from its standard deviation of 11,127 fan actions divided by a per-post fan action average of 18,673.

Heffring noted that the chain’s 94 posts had a unifying theme of capturing desserts in glossy food shots. The Cheesecake Factory varied posts, however, by promoting events like National Cheesecake Day or “any slice half-price” days, as well as cross-promotional posts. In addition, several communications from the brand touted desserts that could leverage fan bases from its suppliers, such as the Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake or Hershey’s Chocolate Bar Cheesecake.

“Once you find something that works, you naturally want to continue it, but you have to freshen it up and provide a mix of things,” Heffring said. “Cheesecake Factory had a nice mix, mostly built around their core stuff. But if you’re going to do 94 posts in a quarter, you can’t do 94 pictures of cheesecake.”

Taco Bell’s 0.84 quotient came from a standard deviation of 20,793 fan actions divided by a per-post fan action average of 24,577. Heffring noted that, like Cheesecake Factory, Taco Bell was adept at using food photography and informal captions that encouraged fans to like and share posts about its products.

“How does social media help you talk about your core items in interesting ways?” Heffring said. “It’s through pictures, visuals and the type of language you use. It’s all about talking about your food in a conversational way.”

Texas Roadhouse proved to be a quality-over-quantity promoter on Facebook, producing a quotient of 0.91 in only 24 posts during the third quarter. Its average fan actions per post of 11,111 significantly trailed Cheesecake’s and Taco Bell’s, but Texas Roadhouse’s standard deviation of 10,066 was the lowest of the trio of chains that Expion called out.

The steakhouse chain’s two most popular posts did not involve food but rather a cause. One asked fans to share the post in honor of victims and heroes of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the anniversary of 9/11. Another asked people to share a post “in support of our troops,” promoting the chain’s Motorcycle Ride & Raffle event to benefit the Homes for Our Troops charity.