Social Media Critique of McDonalds Company - Essay Example

Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Submission Date Social Media Critique Of McDonald’s Company Company Name, Mandate and Overview The paper analyses McDonald’s company, which is one of the global leading food service retailers with over 35,000 locations around the globe. It is approximated that McDonald receives about 70 million customers every day in over 100 countries. Moreover, about 80% and above of the McDonald’s restaurants are operated and owned by independent local business men and women. McDonald aims to become a place of customers’ choice, where they can eat and drink through a service of core favourites including the world famous fries, quarter pounder, big mac, and chicken McNuggets (Mieth, 2007). The success of McDonald’s company has been linked to its well organized suppliers and franchisees, which are capable of identifying, implementing, and elevating the ideas that meet the customers’ varying needs and preferences. In addition, McDonald’s business model enhances a consistent delivery to the customers’ restaurants, as an integral part of the communities they serve. The mandate of McDonald focuses on three global growth priorities such as optimizing their customer’s menu, updating their customer’s experiences, and extending the accessibility of their brands to different locations of their customers. Besides, McDonald is founded on five pillars including products, people, price, promotion, and place that enables in the building a long term value of its shareholders and sustainable growth. McDonald ensures the safety of their customers’ meal through the delivery by approved suppliers. Besides, the preparation of meals is backed up by a proactive program starting from the design of the meals through the entire process while rigorously testing their meals for safety (Bradley & McDonald, 2011). Current Social Media Techniques Employed and their Purpose The current use of social media as a tool has been widely used to market their products to their customers by McDonald Company. Social media finds application in the delivery of vital information to the McDonald’s customers about their products, price, and promotion. McDonald has various social media sites including Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Twitter Similar to Facebook fan page, McDonald’s also engages in social interactive with their customers on twitter. The use of twitter involves several posts of their brands shared on a daily basis that attracts about two million fans. Mostly, the twitter posts involve the product promotion including the recent events held by McDonald’s. Moreover, twitter also uses hash tags to create the customers’ buzz and events, where the team also extends their efforts to respond to its twitter followers. For example, McDonald’s team responds to about twenty to thirty twitter followers per day on average, but depending on the comments it has, McDonald’s brand can be more interactive with its customers (Twitter, 2014). Facebook The McDonald’s Facebook fan page has about 30 million and one million fans from USA and France respectively. In addition, the Facebook fan page has also attracted several thousand likes from different countries around the world. McDonald uses Facebook as an avenue for product promotion and responds to their Facebook customers’ comments it receives in order to improve. At the same time, they also post some interesting news concerning their updates of new films, social style photos associated to their brands, as well as art of activities that are attractive to their customers. The use of Facebook fan page by McDonald has attracted massive likes from various parts of the world (Facebook, 2014). Pinterest McDonald’s has a major Pinterest account which is separate from its local markets on Twitter and Facebook. On Pinterest, most of the McDonald’s content are pinned from the websites of the brands and has more than five hundred images and eighteen boards. McDonald’s uses Pinterest to invite users to pin the related photos on board. The use of Pinterest enables people to feel engaged in various companies’ activities and also serves as an opportunity to build a community (Pinterest, 2014). Instagram In Instagram, McDonald’s has a number of accounts for its national markets on Instagram. For example, it has about seventy seven thousand followers in USA. McDonald’s uses Instagram as an avenue to post their brands related to lifestyle images and videos, which helps its customers to get updates of the incoming brands (Instagram, 2014). Effectiveness of the Current Social Media Tactics Through the use of different social media networks as mentioned above, McDonald’s attempts to reach most of their customers by giving them vital information concerning their brands. In addition, the interactive media between the company and its customers has led to innovation of newly attractive products that meet the customers changing needs. Mostly, McDonald’s has dominated in the use of interactive social networks of Facebook, as well as Twitter, which are essential tool to communicate with the wide range of customers across various countries (Alpert, 2012). In addition, it is through the use of interactive social media that McDonald’s can reach its target audience, providing them with vital information that is readily available, easy to find, and quick to disseminate. In particular, the use McDonald’s social media feeds from Facebook and Twitter frequently updates its customers by taking advantage of the current use of snapped photos of their brands. It also enables the sharing of brands such as chicken nuggets among customers hence allowing interaction of new friends, who increase the market of the company. In addition, consumer engagement has been achieved through responding to the consumers’ twitter that makes them feel more involved in the company they love (Bradley & McDonald, 2011). How Could McDonald’s Improve in the Future? Every company around the group is attempting to achieve the best in the market by meeting its changing customer needs. McDonald’s is not an exemption, bearing in mind its numerous market rivals such as Burger king. It is vital to note that McDonald’s has made excellent steps in the use of interactive social media to reach its customers’ around the globe. Most remarkable is the use of Facebook and Twitter social networks. However, compared to other available brands, McDonald’s does not use Pinterest as an avenue to hold contests. It is, therefore, important that McDonald scale up its interactivity and engagement on Pinterest with its followers (Ritzer, 2011). In addition, McDonald’s does not effectively utilize Instagram as they have fewer brand posts of their images. In addition, some of the Instagram comments are offensive yet the brands do not respond to any of these comments. As a result, the silence is dangerous for the brand image since it makes no added value for being present on Instagram social network. Therefore, it is vital that the company takes more advantage on this popular social network and be more attractive with followers. The integration of the four interactive social media networks can result to increased response of what the customers’ needs from the company. Besides, active response towards the customer complaints generated from the social media can assist in the improvement of McDonald’s brands, thus meeting the customers’ needs better as compared to other market rivals. In addition, the generated complaints can help the company to identify better design of their products, change their processes, as well as the marketing strategy leading to increased market share against their rivals (Bradley & McDonald, 2011). How can/should McDonald’s Measure their Effectiveness? The use of interactive social media networks is an essential measuring tool in the effectiveness of McDonald’s performance in the market. The measure of each used social network by McDonald provides an accurate and reliable data that would help the company to understand and react to the customers’ complaints arising from each media. It is vital that McDonald’s engage Net base Company which provides statistics and graphics regarding the effectiveness of the company’s social networking communities (Net base, 2012). The measure of effectiveness would provide McDonald’s a platform to monitor its customers’ needs at different locations using different social networks. Most innovative social media concept demonstrated by McDonald’s or an innovative outreach campaign that you design. The impact of digital among consumers has not been strange to McDonald’s, even when it is the largest restaurant chain in the world. To adapt to the changing technologies of the social media, McDonald’s have had several digital marketing campaigns over the past couple of years, which helps to increase the brand engagement and loyalty. McDonald’s instituted the ask YouTube campaign, especially aimed at informing the Canadian's customers about their traceability and quality of their food products. As a result, over 20,000 questions concerning their food were addressed (Ritzer, 2011). In addition, McDonald’s also created a YouTube channel that intended to provide a showcase video to the responses of some of the questions asked. This was great social media campaign for McDonald’s since it opened the floors for their users to get involved as many of the users can readily access to the YouTube. Apart from the use of YouTube campaigns, McDonald’s can extend their campaigns on the use of Instagram and Pinterest to their accounts, in order to get more users that can lead in the expansion of their markets around the globe. How is the McDonald's currently leveraging a mobile engagement strategy? Over the past couple of decades, mobile technologies have evolved leading to various uses of mobile phone applications. McDonald’s have actively created mobile applications for android, iPad, and iPhones. As a result, thousands of applications related to McDonald’s can be readily accessed and downloaded from the internet. Some of the applications include the track my macca’s App that aimed to address the issues of sources of food in Sydney. The application was highly endorsed with thousands of downloads made by McDonald’s consumers. The track my macca’s App uses the GPS to locate the restaurant which the customer is, uses software that recognizes the image of what the customer is consuming, and also provides the information about the supply chain for the product to be eaten. The extended use of mobile applications by McDonald’s towards its consumers has resulted to the increased number of clients and market for the company around the globe (Alpert, 2012). References Alpert, J. (2012). The mobile marketing revolution: How your brand can have a one-to-one conversation with everyone. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bradley, A. J., & McDonald, M. P. (2011). The social organization: How to use social media to tap the collective genius of your customers and employees. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press. Facebook (2014). Retrieved from https://www.Facebook.com/mcdsg Instagram(2014). Retrieved from http://iconosquare.com/tag/mcdonalds Mieth, H. (2007). The history of McDonald's. München: GRIN Verlag. Netbase. (2012). Instantly Understand and React to the Social Voice. Retrieved from http://www.netbase.com/social-intelligence/ Pinterest(2014). Retrieved from http://www.pinterest.com/mcdonalds/ Ritzer, G. (2011). The McDonaldization of society 6. Los Angeles: Pine Forge. Twitter(2014). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/McDonalds Read More