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RESTAURANT SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT:
INSTAGRAM FRONT-RUNNERS FOR 2013
Instagram has quickly become one of the most popular social
tools for consumers. With 90 million monthly active users
taking 40 million photos per day as of January 2013, the “fast,
beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a
series of pictures” has created a way for anyone to create
visual content about their experiences.
For restaurant brands specifically, the visual storytelling that
Instagram enables represents a tremendous opportunity in 2013
and beyond as customers capture their experiences in real time
and share them with the world through the Instagram app. Several
restaurants are off to a great start, and this report takes a closer
look at these brands.
For brands, Instagram represents a new marketing channel in a
number of ways. In addition to taking photos themselves, brands
can leverage content created by customers and fans by for
example sharing customer photos across other channels like
Facebook to reach additional fans. The comment features also
enable direct communication with customers.
Based on data captured by the MomentFeed social marketing
platform for 30 top restaurant brands, the report breaks down
Instagram performance in terms of total number of photos,
average number of photos per location, and photos as a
percentage of check-ins. The report only counts Instagram photos
that have been explicitly tagged to a restaurant’s location between
December 14 and December 31, 2012.
TOTAL NUMBER OF INSTAGRAM PHOTOS
The total number of Instagram photos taken across locations for
each restaurant brand provides an overview of how attractive
consumers find these brands and their experiences with the
brands for photo taking. These totals only include place-tagged
photos (photos tagged to a specific location of each brand), not
ones that are just hashtagged with the brand name.
4,899
4,332
3,493
The Cheesecake Factory
Applebee’s
Chili’s
3,469
3,440
3,242
3,044
2,365
1,920
1,895
1,622
Olive Garden
Denny’s
P.F. Chang’s
Buffalo Wild Wings
T.G.I. Friday’s
Red Lobster
Outback Steakhouse
BJ’s
1,566
1,524
1,394
1,326
1,301
792
718
706
575
McDonald’s
Dunkin’ Donuts
Chipotle
Taco Bell
Texas Roadhouse
Johnny Rockets
Yogurtland
Wendy’s
Fox & Hound
571
513
492
490
485
464
452
305
264
210
Burger King
Five Guys
Famous Dave’s
Dairy Queen
Chevy’s
Fleming’s
Capital Grill
Seasons 52
Moe's Southwest Grill
Arby’s
Data provided by MomentFeed
AVERAGE NUMBER OF INSTAGRAM PHOTOS PER LOCATION
13.26
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0.97
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2.84
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BJ’s
Given the significant difference in number of locations among the
restaurant brands – some with less than a hundred and others with
thousands of locations – averaging the total number of Instagram
photos (only photos tagged to a specific location of the brand)
across each brand’s locations allows for a more direct comparison
between the restaurants.
Data provided by MomentFeed
INSTAGRAM PHOTOS AS A PERCENTAGE OF CHECK-INS
MomentFeed has identified a strong correlation (0.90) between
check-ins and sales, which makes check-ins a fair representation
of foot traffic across locations. A closer look at Instagram photos
as a percentage of check-ins (Facebook and Foursquare
check-ins combined) therefore gives an idea of how many of a
restaurant’s customers take photos when they visit.
18.31%
11.10%
4.67%
2.91%
10.79%
4.66%
2.88%
9.66%
4.23%
2.81%
7.18%
4.05%
2.71%
6.62%
3.61%
2.54%
6.42%
3.52%
2.35%
15.18%
4.98%
3.45%
1.55%
11.17%
1.42%
3.28%
1.16%
4.78%
3.16%
0.99%
Data provided by MomentFeed
THE WINNERS
The Cheesecake Factory is the overall winner with the most
Instagram photos from customers both in total and as the average
per location, set for a strong 2013 in terms of customer engagement
on Instagram. BJ’s is second in terms of average number of
photos per location but in 10th place when looking at the total
photos. Applebee’s, on the other hand, is second in terms of total
photos but only 20th when looking at the average per location.
Fleming’s, which was 26th in total photos and 6th in average per
location, is the clear winner in terms of photos as a percentage of
check-ins. This is where The Cheesecake Factory – in 7th place –
and others like BJ’s, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, P.F. Chang’s, and
Buffalo Wild Wings have an opportunity to improve by encouraging
even more of their customers to take Instagram photos.
HOW TO MAXIMIZE THE INSTAGRAM OPPORTUNITY
Customers Sharing Their Photos
Having customers take Instagram photos at restaurants (or at any
other brick-and-mortar brand’s locations) is valuable for more than
one reason. First, these photos are typically shared with all the
customer’s friends, often across multiple channels like Facebook
and Twitter in addition to Instagram itself, which can create a
significant number of impressions.
Brands Sharing Customer Photos
The other part of the value is unlocked when brands take actions
on these photos. Recognizing that Instagram photos from
customers can be highly compelling for others to see as well,
brands can share these photos to the rest of their fans across
other channels like their local Facebook pages. That way they are
sharing authentic, locally relevant content on which they can generate
additional earned media when other fans like and share that content.
Brands Connecting Directly with Customers
An Instagram photo tagged to a restaurant’s location also creates a
starting point for the brand to connect directly with a customer. So in
addition to sharing a great photo on Facebook, the brand can also
thank the customer for the photo by commenting on it, which
customers find highly rewarding.
Encouraging and Incentivizing Engagement
By engaging with customers and the content they create via
Instagram, brands are providing positive reinforcement and can create
a virtuous cycle of customer-generated content and engagement.
Beyond that, brands can incentivize photo-taking by running
Instagram contests or other promotions to reward customers for
taking the overall best photos, specific photos, or frequent photos.
HOW INSTAGRAM PLACE-TAGGING WORKS
Tagging a photo to a location via Instagram is a simple action for
customers using the app. It happens in the step before the photo is
shared. Here’s how it works:
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Customer turns on “Add to your Photo
Map” and then clicks “Name this location”
Customer sees a list of locations nearby
and selects the right one to tag the photo to
Customer sees the right location selected
before clicking the Share button (final step)
ABOUT MOMENTFEED
MomentFeed is the first social marketing platform built
specifically for restaurant, retail and other multi-location brands.
The MomentFeed platform provides an integrated solution to
manage Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, and Twitter at the local
level, on a global scale. Through its proprietary PinSync process,
MomentFeed is the only company that offers venue optimization for
local Facebook pages and Foursquare venues. The MomentFeed
platform also provides comprehensive publishing features,
social-local CRM tools, and deep analytics capabilities.
For more information, visit: www.momentfeed.com.
For details on how to have your brand included in future reports
at no cost, please contact:
Joergen Aaboe
Director of Marketing
MomentFeed
310-853-2840
joergen@momentfeed.com
These Instagram photos are all place-tagged and identified based on that tagging in
the MomentFeed platform, giving brands the opportunity to curate the best photos
tied to their locations, share these photos with other fans, and comment on them to
engage directly. Other Instagram management tools that simply pull photos based on
hashtags would not be able to identify these place-tagged photos for brands.