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Brand consistency isn't an easy task when you need to keep 15 to 200 franchisees on the same page.
Anyone who is a part of your franchise should feel like an extension of the brand, but how do you engender that kind of buy-in across franchisees? The most relevant channel that necessitates this brand consistency is social media. Many franchise brands have individual social personas for each franchisee location, so the owners have the freedom to post relevant information to their individual page.
As a marketer for a franchise system, this can be a point of stress or contention because of poorly developed and executed posts, off-brand messaging or lack of social strategy on the individual pages. On social media, franchisees aren't just remote parts of the business; they're part of the overall brand and should therefore project that to the customer.
How do you help your franchisees adopt the brand persona across locations on social media? Conduct annual social media boot camps that inform franchisees of policies, guidelines and best practices for your franchise's social brand.
SET GUIDELINES FOR POSTING
Franchisees need a strategy for posting on their individual pages because, without one, they'll likely assign an employee to "handle social media," which could mean posting once a month to posting irrelevant photos regularly. Developing a strong, informed social strategy for franchisees needs to come from the franchisor level, then disseminate down to the individual locations to get everyone following the same strategy.
To start, franchisees need to know the ins and outs of organic social posts. Consistency across social accounts is critical in terms of voice, types of posts and image selections. A set of robust social media guidelines is helpful, but they need to be enforced to remain relevant. If you set guidelines but don't monitor them, then the guidelines mean nothing. Guidelines should outline:
* The brand - Everything from the persona to the brand voice.
* Brand tone on social networks - What does your brand sound like? If your brand was a person, what would he/she be like and what would they say?