Arby’s Best Practices Guide: Twitter

Our well-established history of effective social media usage is a point of pride for Arby’s. As we expand our social media team and experiment with new ideas, this guide may be referenced to orient new employees and ensure social media posts remain consistent with our brand image. In this section, we will cover the five essential considerations of our CATER approach for Twitter.

Content

First, consider the tweet’s content. What can we use to communicate our message? On Twitter, keeping things brief is crucial to holding the audience’s attention. When creating a new tweet, we aim to use between 70–100 characters (Lee, n.d.). To supplement this limited length, use visual content such as images, gifs, and short videos. Tweets with images perform significantly better and therefore reach a much larger audience. Not only do they make our tweets more interesting to look at, but they can convey additional information (York, 2017). Rather than typing out how tasty a product is, just include a photo. Remember: show, don’t tell.

Attitude

Attitude is our brand’s voice and persona. It’s how we present our company’s values, culture, and identity. It also reflects what our customers want and what we can do for them. Arby’s makes fast food. It’s fast, easy, tasty, and widely available. Customers can grab it from their car and eat it in front of their TV. Our product and customer experience are, above all, about comfort.

That’s why we keep our activity on Twitter positive and humorous. We’re happy to see playful jokes at our expense, and we make a few about our competitors as well. In the words of our CEO, “what kind of person do you want to be a friend with?” (Feloni, 2017a). Our success comes from allowing our social media team greater independence and trusting in its expertise. This lets them interact with customers organically, contributing to an overall sense of authenticity and relaxation (Feloni, 2017b).

Sometimes a professional tone is appropriate, though. To preserve that easy-going feeling for our fans, Arby’s uses a separate account for responding to customer feedback and posting more formal content. When a customer complains about their experience, use @ArbysCares. When Jon Stewart does it, use @Arbys.

Timing

There are two parts to mastering timing on Twitter. First is finding the right days and times to post. Using content calendars and social media management platforms allows our team to automatically post tweets that have been prepared well in advance. This is useful for planned campaigns and announcements around promotional events, holidays, and product launches. Aside from these special occasions, Arby’s most frequently tweets between Monday and Thursday when engagement is high (Adobe Express, 2022).

We base the specific timing of our posts where the highest concentration of Arby’s locations can be found — the Eastern Time Zone. Most planned tweets are released at 11 AM, shortly ahead of the lunch rush to drive more customers to our locations. Occasionally, a second tweet may be released later in the day. We typically keep this between 1 and 3 PM, periods of higher Twitter activity across the US, and very rarely consider any further activity to avoid becoming obnoxious (Adobe Express, 2022).

The other part of timing is how quickly our team adapts to other social media activity. Responding to customer feedback with @ArbysCares demands effective social listening to find and address complaints as soon as possible. Our @Arbys account also relies on an awareness of current events and trends to get involved while the topic remains popular. In these cases, speed is everything and acceptable posting times are much more flexible (Vogel, 2021).

Engagement

Forgettable tweets which don’t come across as fun or organic can undermine Arby’s brand identity. It’s important to recognize how to evoke a positive response from our audience (Walker-Ford, 2019). Using relevant hashtags can draw attention and posting engagement-driving questions is useful for inviting Twitter users to reply more (York, 2017).

However, our highest engagement consistently comes from connecting with celebrities and other brands. Our reputation on social media grew out of viral interactions with Jon Stewart and Pharrell Williams, while more recent examples include Wanda Sykes and King Push (Feloni, 2017a). Our current social media team is also effective at engaging fans of popular shows and communities that fall under “nerd culture” such as video, card, and tabletop game communities (Feloni, 2017b).

Review

Finally, remember that the job isn’t done once a tweet has been sent. Time should be dedicated to reviewing the post’s performance and checking our accounts’ analytics to identify opportunities for improvement (Vogel, 2021). For instance, hashtags currently see little use outside of obscure holidays, but engagement trends suggest that we should regularly include one or two per tweet (Vogel, 2021). Additionally, we frequently upload on weekends when engagement is low, but sometimes go an entire week without posting at all. A lower volume of tweets to avoid boring our followers is acceptable, but consistency is key (Adobe Express, 2022). Always monitor these trends and use them to refine our social media strategy.

References

Adobe Express. (2022, May 9). When is the best time to post on Twitter? Adobe. https://www.adobe.com/express/learn/blog/best-time-to-post-on-twitter

Feloni, R. (2017a, November 21). Arby’s Confronted the Nihilist Arby’s Twitter Account by Bringing Its Creator Sandwiches and a Puppy. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-arbys-made-peace-with-nihilist-arbys-2017-7

Feloni, R. (2017b, November 28). Arby’s CEO is now in charge of turning around Buffalo Wild Wings — here’s how ‘Moneyball’ inspired his hugely successful transformation of Arby’s. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/arbys-ceo-based-brand-comeback-on-moneyball-2017-7

Lee, K. (n.d.). Infographic: The Optimal Length for Every Social Media Update and More. Buffer. https://buffer.com/library/optimal-length-social-media/#:~:text=The%20optimal%20length%20of%20a,a%20message%20of%20their%20own.

Vogel, K. (2021, May). 35 social media best practices for 2021: Tips for each platform. Ring Central. https://www.ringcentral.com/us/en/blog/social-media-best-practices/

Walker-Ford, M. (2019, April 9). 15 Ways to Fail at Social Media Marketing [Infographic]. Social Media Today. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/15-ways-to-fail-at-social-media-marketing-infographic/552280/

York, A. (2017, April 24). 5 Social Media Best Practices Every Marketer Must Follow. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-best-practices/