CStore Decisions, for the 12th consecutive year, is recognizing the convenience store chains performing best on social media platforms.
This year we looked at performance across Facebook (FB), Instagram (IG), X — formerly Twitter — and TikTok.
For the fourth year in a row, CStore Decisions partnered with Rival IQ to determine the winners.
Rival IQ, a Quid Company, is a social media analytics software company that helps brands measure their social media engagement and benchmark their performance against their competition and their broader industries.
Rival IQ looked at the social media performance of 70 convenience store chains across the aforementioned platforms —FB, X, IG and TikTok — between Nov. 1, 2022, and Oct. 31, 2023.
“Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each store,” explained Blair Feehan, content marketing, Rival IQ. “The top-ranked convenience stores on social media have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes.”
Best Overall Performance
For the fourth year running, Kwik Trip claimed the top spot on the social media awards in the overall category, and it’s no surprise considering the chain’s commitment to driving social media engagement.
“Kwik Trip consistently does so many things right on social year after year: it creates dynamic, channel-specific content that engages its way-above-average follower counts to earn impressive engagement rates and totals that other c-stores just can’t beat,” Feehan said. “The brand benefits from years of hard work engaging followers to deliver fun and sassy posts that just always hit.”
CStore Decisions caught up with Kwik Trip, which operates 850 locations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan and Illinois, to learn more about its strategy.
Paige Geary, digital marketing for Kwik Trip Inc., noted the chain’s strategy of creating and posting engaging, relatable content that helps it spread brand awareness and build a loyal fan base has remained relatively consistent over the past few years.
“This past year, our team has definitely pushed our creativity by including a bit more promotional content than in past years,” Geary noted. “While it’s a challenge at times to make these key business initiatives entertaining, we’ve found success in using our established witty, humorous brand voice to help push commodity sales and sweepstakes through graphic and video content. A large component of this shift has been allocating more time for our team to be present at events to capture content as well as coordinating video shoots to showcase sweepstakes prizes.”
Runner up, West Des Moines, Iowa-based Kum & Go, which came in third place overall last year, edged past Ballston Spa, N.Y.-based Stewart’s Shops into second place, with strong performances across FB (sixth place), IG (fourth place), X (third place) and TikTok (second place).
New to the top 10 this year is Altoona, Pa.-based Sheetz, thanks to its strong finishes across each of the four channels.
“The brand really shined on FB, where their engagement increased consistently month over month all year,” Feehan said.
Sheetz, which operates 700 locations across Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Maryland, also came in fifth place overall on TikTok by staying on top of trending sounds and memes, which, Feehan noted, helped it rise in the rankings. Of note, Sheetz dipped a little on X and IG, but still finished strong, “reminding us that you don’t have to improve everywhere to earn top marks on social,” Feehan added.
Download the free PDF to view the winners in the Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok categories, and learn the Top 3 social media trends for 2024.