One of the nation’s most recognized restaurant brands has teamed with Your Brand Voice to evolve social-media strategy.

Top fast food brand teams with Your Brand Voice to evolve social-media strategy.

One of the nation’s most recognized restaurant brands has teamed with Your Brand Voice to evolve social-media strategy. “As more and more restaurants move beyond branding and use the online tools to drive traffic at the local level, we have identified an opportunity to help Sonic Beach restaurants use the hyper targeting capabilities of the social networks to drive foot traffic into their South Florida locations.”

Interestingly enough, Sonic did not appear in the top 25 most social restaurant brands when the partnership begin a few months ago. Starbucks, McDonald’s and Subway took the first three spots in the top 25 rankings of most social restaurant brands, according to the latest Social Mention Index from social-marketing software firm Vitrue. “Our goal is to get Sonic Beach into this top 25 as quickly as possible,” Bryan Bruce, Your Brand Voice founder says. “These numbers are based on the number of online mentions the companies garner on social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, photo-sharing sites like Flickr, check-ins on location-based services, and inclusion on blogs and our goal is to grow the Sonic Beach brand in these channels.”

“The mentions we’re monitoring for our customers continue to increase,” said Your Brand Voice’s Bryan Bruce. “That awareness starts to drive their brand and starts to drive action. Now the question is how the biggest brands are leveraging technology platforms that point those fans to an individual store or produce a coupon from a check-in.”

Starbucks retains its No. 1 ranking in the March 2011 SMI, compared with the first such ranking Vitrue compiled for Nation’s Restaurant News in July 2009. While the coffeehouse chain trails No. 2 McDonald’s and No. 3 Subway in terms of worldwide locations, its 20.3 million “likes” on Facebook and 1.35 million Twitter followers tower over the competition.

McDonald’s, which had been No. 3 behind Subway in the 2009 SMI, surpassed the sandwich chain this year in social-media presence, even as Subway overtook McDonald’s title as world’s largest restaurant chain in terms of total worldwide units. McDonald’s has 7.6 million Facebook likes and more than 111,000 Twitter followers to Subway’s nearly 4 million Facebook likes and 44,000 Twitter followers.

Smaller yet influential chains also rank high in social mentions, the report found. Krystal, which has 386 units in 11 Southeastern states, moved up one spot to No. 4 on this year’s SMI. In-N-Out Burger, which has more than 250 locations, mostly in California, once again is No. 24 on the list.

Pizza Hut and Chick-fil-A, Nos. 5 and 6, respectively, made big leaps into the top 10, which is rounded out by KFC, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Burger King. New entries into the top 25 SMI rankings since 2009 include Krispy Kreme, Buffalo Wild Wings, Papa John’s Pizza, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Bruce says the biggest change in social media since 2009 — the year Twitter gained wide adoption among restaurant companies and location-based platform Foursquare debuted — is the widespread buy-in from business owners in hospitality, food service and other industries.

“It’s moved beyond an experiment and individual campaigns to a true mainstream channel that needs some serious attention and investment,” he said. “With the pervasive growth of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, and the time spent on them by consumers, people realize it’s more than a fad and becoming a dominant form of communication.”

While some companies in the top 25 tumbled slightly — Chipotle fell from No. 10 to No. 19 and IHOP went from No. 11 to No. 21 — Bruce stressed that “nobody’s a loser on this list.” More likely, he said, is that companies making big gains in their Social Mention Index scores like Chick-fil-A and Pizza Hut are getting proactive about connecting to their loyal followers.

“These guys are figuring out how to harness this platform and drive content and communications consistent with what their fans are looking for,” he said. “In that news feed on Facebook and Twitter, brands need to ask their followers questions, create poll questions and basically give them an opportunity to give the restaurant relevant feedback.”

Your Brand Voice works with several key brands like Marriott Resorts, JW Marriott, Marriott Golf, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, WonderWorks, Faldo Golf Institute and others to create plug-ins for their Facebook pages and offers that show up in followers’ news feeds through its Wall Apps and Social Relationship Management platforms.

Bruce says the next social-media move for major brands and their software providers is to increase the chains’ local-advertising capabilities with features meant to connect Facebook and Twitter followers to the nearest individual location of a restaurant brand.

“Large hotels and restaurant brands are going to be moving in this direction of local advertising, the majority of which is driven by digital,” he said. “As Groupon drives more local commerce and Facebook gets into it with Places, the hospitality and restaurant industry will embrace social media’s local-connection capability.”

Such targeting and audience segmentation could help independent hotel and local restaurant operators make more in-roads online and further compete with larger rivals, he added.

“Social media is the great equalizer, where you don’t need a $100 million budget to be successful,” Bruce said. “A big part of this is good word-of-mouth, managing your reputation, and going viral. When people [from outside the chain’s trade area] go to Sonic Beach, they take a picture and can’t wait to tell their friends. They must have great products, but I don’t know everything they’re doing on Facebook, so they must have great reputations and word-of-mouth to begin with.”

Contact Bryan Bruce at bryan@yourbrandvoice.com

About Your Brand Voice

Orlando-based interactive marketing company provides marketing support services including social media and online reputation management.

To learn more, visit www.yourbrandvoice.com or follow them onwww.facebook.com/yourbrandvoice orwww.twitter.com/brandvoiceinc.

Your Brand Voice, which started as a hospitality marketing company now serves clients in the following industries: Hotels and Resorts, Restaurants, Bars and Nightclubs, Golf Courses, Attractions and Theme Parks, Vacation Home Lease and Rental, Automotive Sales, Construction and Real Estate.