What has two arms and two legs however can go in 289 instructions without delay? Every of your franchisees on social media. Eek. How do you retain advertising messages, branding, and buyer expertise in line with, fairly actually, so many cooks within the kitchen?
Concern not, franchisor: Right here’s the best way to plan, execute, analyze, and keep a profitable franchise social media advertising technique that each one your franchisees will get enthusiastic about.
Bonus: Get a free, customizable social media tips template to rapidly and simply create suggestions in your firm and workers.
Franchise social media advertising is selling your model and fascinating prospects at each the company and native ranges, whereas making certain messaging and values stay constant throughout all social profiles.
In a centralized company, the corporate owns all areas (or branches) and there’s one chain of command. Easy.
In distinction, a person or one other firm owns every franchise firm location. These branches are technically separate entities, though they have to report again to the dad or mum group, pay licensing charges, and observe the model’s established practices.
One of the vital well-known franchise examples is McDonald’s, with over 38,000 areas worldwide. Every restaurant is individually owned and operated by franchisees, however prospects see the identical signage and menu gadgets — and hopefully, have the identical expertise — at each location.
Franchisor: An organization that owns the logos and rights to a model who sells licenses permitting franchisees to function enterprise areas utilizing the trademarked model.
Franchisee: An individual or firm who pays a licensing price and recurring royalties to open a enterprise leveraging the dad or mum firm’s present model, identify, providers, and different proprietary property.
#1 Social Media Instrument for Franchises
Assist your franchises with brand-safe content material and straightforward approval workflows. Measure ROI and develop sooner — regionally and globally.
Imposing model tips
You need franchisees to profit from social media advertising to develop their (and your) enterprise, however how do you keep away from a cringe-worthy fake paus, like utilizing an outdated brand in advertising supplies?
Reply: Creating an in depth model tips doc and preserving it the place all franchisees can entry the most recent model, alongside together with your model belongings.
Bonus: Get a free, customizable social media tips template to rapidly and simply create suggestions in your firm and workers.
Preserving content material high quality constant
Moreover utilizing the best visuals and model voice, there’s additionally the considerably ambiguous judgment of social media content material “high quality.” What’s good in relation to content material anyway?
Examples of consistency may be so simple as making certain every submit is freed from spelling and grammar errors. Or sticking to 1 exclamation level as a substitute of 5. You realize, the straightforward issues.
These high quality requirements must also be a part of your model tips doc.
Dividing obligations
Will your company head workplace deal with all social media advertising, utilizing one account per platform? Will you create separate model accounts for various areas or languages?
Or, will every franchise open and keep their very own social media accounts?
Neither method to franchise social media advertising is incorrect. Simply be sure you doc your construction in your social media advertising technique.
Monitoring efficiency and ROI
Was the final Black Friday promotion efficient? Or was it solely efficient in a sure market? Or just for a sure franchisee? What did they do in another way on social in comparison with the opposite franchisees?
Getting efficient efficiency information is necessary for all companies, however particularly for franchisors managing groups of franchisees.
Utilizing social media for customer support (successfully)
Offering customer support over social media is not optionally available: 40% of your prospects now count on you to assist them on their most popular social platform. Over half (53%) usually tend to purchase from manufacturers who supply customer support through chat. And, unsurprisingly, 94% of individuals say optimistic customer support makes them extra doubtless to purchase from you once more.
You higher hurry, too: 40% count on a response inside an hour and 79% count on one inside 24 hours.
So what does all that imply? Should you’re not already fixing buyer issues on social media, begin now. (Don’t fear: I cowl the best way to effortlessly get began with social customer support later.)
Cut back response time (and your workload)
Handle all of your messages stress-free with straightforward routing, saved replies, and pleasant chatbots. Attempt Hootsuite’s Inbox at the moment.
Adjusting content material to suit numerous cultures
Whether or not your franchisees are unfold throughout your state, nation, or your complete world, it’s doubtless that totally different kinds of content material will carry out in another way throughout every area. Your social media content material must respect variations in tradition, attitudes, legal guidelines, and extra to resonate with as many individuals as potential.
Localization can be about greater than geography. Creating multilingual content material can set up you because the model of alternative for hundreds of thousands: 2 out of three prospects would change to a model providing service of their native language.
1. Set targets for the model and for particular person branches
Each weblog submit about social media advertising for the reason that dial-up days spouts the significance of setting targets and KPIs to measure the success of your efforts, so I don’t must. However right here’s the best way to set social media targets that really increase ROI, plus a free template to trace all of it.
Franchisors, the easiest way to measure progress is to set targets in your group as an entire, plus separate social media targets for every department.
You each need the identical factor — Development! Revenue! Loyal prospects! — however the way you go about attaining these targets might be totally different. For instance, every department goes to have a a lot larger position in customer support and engagement than your head workplace (assuming every location will handle their very own social profiles).
In that case, targets for branches may very well be:
- Delivering a response time underneath 1 hour for all DMs.
- Customer support satisfaction survey scores above 90%.
- Rising follower counts and engagement charges. (Psst: use our free engagement price calculator to see the way you stack up.)
Whereas targets in your group might be extra brand-focused, resembling:
- Monitoring and enhancing your model status.
- Utilizing social listening to proactively deal with potential PR crises and conduct aggressive analysis.
- Supporting franchisee success via sharing analytics outcomes and training them on social media advertising greatest practices.
2. Create a do’s and don’ts information
You want three tips to share with franchisees:
- Model tips: All of the visible facets of your model, like which brand model to make use of, colours, the best way to spell product names and in the event that they want trademark symbols or not, and so on.
- Social media coverage: You could possibly embody this inside a bigger model tips doc. This spells out your model voice,
- A do’s and don’ts information: Consider this as a fast, point-form one-pager itemizing out a very powerful social media “guidelines.”
A do’s and don’ts information ought to function a cheat sheet franchisees can use to guage whether or not they need to submit one thing or not. Stating clear expectations is the easiest way to keep away from potential PR disasters, and in your franchisees to really feel assured about what they’re posting.
Finest Purchase doesn’t name theirs a “do’s and don’ts” but it surely’s clear and to the purpose:
Hold your tips and coverage paperwork the place all franchisees can simply entry them. It may be so simple as a Google Drive folder. Put visible belongings in the identical folder too, resembling brand recordsdata, so your franchisees all the time know the place to get essentially the most up-to-date variations.
Need assistance? Seize our free social media coverage template, and test this entire information to model tips.
3. Standardize publishing flows
That is the place the facility of a scheduling device is available in. Certain, you may schedule content material without spending a dime on many of the platforms’ native apps, however a publishing workflow is a lot greater than simply scheduling.
For instance, if you happen to set your group up with Hootsuite, you additionally get:
- Shared Canva templates for on-brand content material: Earlier I discussed how necessary consistency is. With our Canva integration, you may let franchisees entry customized branded Canva templates proper from Hootsuite Composer, making certain everybody’s visuals are prime notch.
- Fast onboarding and account entry: You keep Tremendous Admin privileges for all accounts and it’s straightforward to arrange new franchisees at scale.
- Deep analytics insights: With all of your franchisee accounts linked in Hootsuite, you may get a macro or micro view of key analytics with a couple of clicks. Simply determine prime performing content material concepts to share with all franchisees and all the time know your social ROI.
- Highly effective publishing instruments: The personalised Finest Time to Publish characteristic routinely schedules content material for when every profile’s viewers is almost certainly to see it. Plus: Drafts, a visible calendar planner, inbuilt promoting choices, and extra.
- Straightforward content material approval: Wish to assessment every submit earlier than it goes public, and simply collaborate on edits or revisions with franchisees? Hootsuite does that, too.
Plus, supercharge your franchisees’ advertising energy with OwlyWriter AI. Excellent for each novice social media entrepreneurs and execs alike, OwlyWriter immediately generates ready-to-post content material that truly feels like your model.
Get all of the deets in underneath 60 seconds:
4. Monitor analytics (regionally and globally)
You already know analytics information is important for understanding in case your social media advertising technique is working. However analytics are much more necessary for franchisors as a result of you could measure your total development, and be capable to break down efficiency by department.
Hootsuite Analytics makes it straightforward to see the whole lot you want immediately.
Get the large image overview of all of your franchisors without delay, throughout all platforms, or break it down by area, platform, or particular person department.
See what’s working (and what’s not) earlier than campaigns finish, permitting time to pivot if vital. No extra spreadsheets or having to log into every platform’s web site to get the numbers you need. Save your key metrics as customized stories, able to view, export, or share with just some clicks.
That is one other massive benefit of setting franchisees up in Hootsuite: They get environment friendly content material scheduling and also you get complete analytics.
Don’t know what to trace? Right here’s the whole lot you could arrange your social media analytics the best method.
5. Conduct department social media audits
Don’t panic at the usage of “audit” — it’s painless, I promise. A social media audit is a method of routinely evaluating efficiency and figuring out enchancment alternatives.
An audit opinions:
- Present social media platforms
- Model consistency
- Analytics stories
- Repute and sentiment through social listening instruments
- Targets and ROI
It’s a repeatable course of you need to use to see how your franchisees’ social media advertising goes. Use it to reward and amplify top-performing content material, and to determine areas of enchancment to teach them on.
How usually must you run a department social media audit? That’s as much as you, however I’d recommend at the least quarterly to test in, and yearly, earlier than updating the following yr’s advertising plan and finances.
Learn the best way to do a social media audit and snag our free template, or watch beneath:
6. Assist branches with design templates
One of many largest challenges your franchisees doubtless have with social media advertising is creating content material, particularly visuals like graphics or movies.
The common creator spends 1-5 hours per week creating content material, which doesn’t sound like a ton of time… if social media is your full-time job. However for a lot of franchisees, it’s not.
Plus, over 1 / 4 (27%) spend 5-10 hours and a complete of 30% spend over 10 hours per week on content material.
Supply: Statista
Fortunately, that is one thing you may simply remedy in your franchisees. Create pre-designed content material templates that solely want small tweaks earlier than scheduling and publishing.
Arrange a template library with Hootsuite’s built-in Canva integration so your franchisees can customise and insert templates proper inside Hootsuite Composer.
We’ve even acquired 50 free Canva social media templates to get you began.
7. Create a fast begin equipment
Whether or not you determine to handle your franchisees’ accounts with Hootsuite or have them handle their very own, a social media “fast begin equipment” can assist.
Your equipment may embody:
- Beneficial social platforms to make use of.
- Naming practices (e.g. @BrandNameCityName) to maintain branding constant.
- Model tips.
- A fundamental one-pager overlaying social media advertising targets and expectations.
- Hyperlinks to the place you retain up to date copies of name tips, technique paperwork, belongings, and different gadgets they’ll frequently discuss with.
- Tutorial movies displaying the best way to arrange social accounts, add logos, schedule posts and/or submit posts for approval, and so on.
- Suggestions on how usually to submit.
Plus anything you need franchisees to know immediately about how your organization does social media advertising.
8. Construct a social customer support technique
As talked about earlier, your prospects count on to get good service out of your franchisees’ social media profiles.
However how do you:
- Guarantee all franchisees are offering the identical caliber of customer support?
- Set response time benchmarks?
- Measure buyer satisfaction?
- Construct genuine relationships with prospects?
Shock: the reply is Hootsuite.
Yep, Hootsuite Inbox 2.0 is right here with all-new options to make social customer support straightforward and efficient in your franchisees:
- Unified Inbox: Branches can see and reply to DMs and feedback throughout all their social platforms inside Hootsuite, as a substitute of getting to log into platforms individually.
- 24/7 service: Night time owl buyer? No drawback. You’ll be able to setup autoresponders to guarantee prospects you’ve acquired their inquiry and once they can count on to listen to again from you. That is particularly useful exterior of enterprise hours.
- Time-saving instruments: Auto-filter messages, save customized replies, and think about cross-channel message historical past so your buyer doesn’t must re-explain themselves.
- Sensible chatbots: Want to supply customer support at scale? Harness the facility of AI to resolve buyer issues immediately with adaptive, conversational chatbots.
- Highly effective analytics: Measure response instances, buyer satisfaction scores, reply quantity, and tons extra to guage efficiency total and per department.
Hootsuite Inbox dramatically boosts your social customer support capabilities and makes it straightforward in your franchisees to make sure each buyer feels valued.
Try all Hootsuite Inbox 2.0 options in-depth, or higher but, request a free demo to see it in motion.
9. Leverage worker advocacy
One of many quickest methods to develop a brand new franchisee’s social media presence is to encourage their workers to get entangled. Worker advocacy can enhance natural attain as much as 200% and earnings as much as 23%.
Plus, a third of workers already share their firm’s content material with out being requested.
Moreover moolah and attain, worker advocacy additionally has different advantages:
Supply: Hootsuite and Altimeter Analysis, Social Transformation Report
Worker advocacy may be so simple as workers sharing your content material to their private networks, or you may go a step additional with Hootsuite Amplify: a devoted area for pre-approved posts.
Moreover getting access to a library of ready-to-share content material, workers can generate customized captions in their very own model with built-in AI writing instruments.
Bringing workers into your advertising technique can strengthen their engagement stage and reduce your paid promoting prices on the similar time. A win-win for you and your franchisees.
10. Encourage buyer opinions
Testimonials encourage belief, in each the franchisor and franchisee.
If prospects are already leaving opinions on Google, Yelp, or your social media profiles, share them. Create a branded graphic your franchisees can copy and paste present opinions into for fast content material that’s — to cite Pokemon — ”tremendous efficient.”
Individuals rank buyer opinions, and different user-generated content material, as 2.4X extra genuine than something a model produces, even when your newest industrial has A-Checklist Hollywood expertise. That’s necessary as a result of whereas 92% of entrepreneurs suppose they’re producing genuine content material, solely 51% of shoppers agree.
No must seek out opinions. Arrange Hootsuite Streams to trace opinions and mentions of your model, and share it with a couple of clicks.
11. Share top-performing content material ideas
Did a submit from considered one of your branches go viral? Work out why, then share it for instance for all of your franchisees.
The way you share any classes discovered relies upon the way you’ve arrange your franchisee advertising construction. You could possibly ship out a month-to-month publication overlaying nice submit examples and greatest practices. Or, host a weekly or month-to-month webinar or convention name about social media technique for all franchisees to participate in. It’s also possible to maintain it easy with a Slack or Discord group chat to showcase and focus on nice content material.
Everybody advantages from sharing social media success tales.
Hootsuite powers franchise social media advertising with environment friendly scheduling, publishing, and buyer engagement instruments in your franchisees, and superior analytics, collaboration, and branding instruments for you — throughout all platforms. See it in motion.
Handle all of your social media in a single place, measure ROI, and save time with Hootsuite.
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