Buffalo Wild Wings in Social Media

Buffalo Wild Wings in Social Media

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Website
4. Youtube

They use their Facebook page to spark conversation and generate discussion, but have almost no intention on controlling the conversation. Their Facebook page is to spark discussion and read free customer reviews from thousands of customers who can comment on the various things going on: the rewards, the atmosphere, a new sauce or product, or simply the restaurant. They use a lot of pictures, but also give a lot of text messages about sports. What would be more effective would be if they offer pictures and “like” for one team, and “comment” for the other team instead of just telling them to comment on who wins.

Use Twitter for engagement and put their name next to social objects such as sports teams, or whatever the “big” thing is during that day. For example, they regularly tweet about the NFL games going on during that particular Sunday, but also tweet at NFL analysts such as Merril Hodge to try to put their name next to all the current sports things that they can.

Interactive website just like every other company.

Use Youtube for things as follows below to have customers show their experience and show the world their “own.” They also have their commercials on their Youtube page, and when people enjoy them, they can go on Youtube to watch it.

Buffalo Wild Wings was far ahead of their time in terms of engaging their customers. Over 4 years ago they had a social media campaign called Buffalo Wild Wings Film School where anybody could post a one minute video with their famous tagline: “You have to be here.”

Overall, Buffalo Wild Wings is a social business as almost all aspects of their business are involved. They use social media for public relations, marketing, and their management if needed can use it as well. Their management uses mainly LinkedIn as I Googled them and the first four things that came up were high up Buffalo Wild Wings managers’ profile.

Compared to Applebee’s

Applebee’s has hired Cornett Integrated Marketing Solutions to build their social media profile. They recently got slammed for making fun of their customers use of social media with a condescending tone. See the link.

They are in the following social media arenas:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Youtube
4. Pintrest
5. Tumblr

The Facebook page of Applebee’s is more popular than Buffalo Wild Wings as one of the links shows, and it looks a lot more professional and has more opportunities to win free things such as $1o0 gift cards, and this is why I believe Applebee’s is a little better than Buffalo Wild Wings.

The Twitter page of Applebee’s is pretty dull with pretty infrequent tweets and in my opinion, fails as a social media engagement piece. It appears at times to try to be funny, but instead posts cliches and random statements and quotes.

The Youtube page of Applebee’s also is a disaster. They post corny videos that send out the ironic message that social media is overrated, yet they are posting this message on social media sites.

Their Tumblr page is an collection of all of their social media and marketing campaigns which is fairly effective because it has lots of pictures and videos, but Tumblr is mainly toward the female population which is what they are trying to attract right now through their “Girls Night Out” campaign.

Their Pintrest page is just focused on pictures of their food, which is fairly effective because the pictures look delicious.

Buffalo Wild Wings Could Do Better

As the link on BWW and their Facebook page suggests, pictures with a limited amount of text drive more discussion and “likes” than text, yet many of their posts are just text. It’s my opinion that BWW should save the text for their twitter page and leave pictures for Facebook. Buffalo Wild Wings is very popular in the fall during football season, and I think it would benefit them if they would advertise for big NBA and NHL games through social media the same way they do for football. I also think that BWW should try to get on Tumblr and Pintrest because it is fairly inexpensive to market through that, and they are missing out on all of the female social media sites. I am well aware that they market for the male sports loving population, but it never hurts to try to get women involved too. I would run a campaign where it became cool for women to watch sports with their boyfriend or husband. They have indirectly started to do this by including women in their advertisements instead of just showing the “bro time.” They have done a really good job of engaging their customers through getting their message out, but letting the people decide what they say and who they listen to and instead of traditional marketing campaigns where a message is thrown at you, Buffalo Wild Wings has given the people the chance to make their advertisements, spread their message, change their menu, and have many different inputs on the decisions.