Over the years I’ve worked with numerous franchisees for brands such as Zipyard, Bluebird Care, Raring2Go, Home Instead, Right At Home and many more
We’ve worked with Franchise owners running £10 million plus turnover businesses
What’s become clear from working with so many, is that franchisees are no different than any other business owner when it comes to social media – some excel at it and on the other side some fear it, don’t know how to use it or have no inclination to use it
The thing is – Social Media is here to stay, so you either jump on it or get left behind
At the beginning of 2018, it has been reported that a massive 83% of the UK adult population now use social media – that is 4 in 5 of your potential customers
In this weeks blog we look at how Franchises can use social media more effectively
1.Give guidelines, but don’t control
If you’re the franchisor – give guidelines, but don’t control
Twitter recently introduced Anti-Spam policies, which was based around organisations posting substantially similar content across various social channels
It’s something Franchises are guilty are
Often the national franchise operator will offer a “Social Media Lite” service for all national Franchises for a low monthly fee
or
Manage Social Media in house at a national level simply because not all franchises around the company have the skill set to manage social media themselves
When this happens the social media updates are bland, repetitive and overly corporate
Human Marketing = Smart Marketing – so allow your individual franchisees to put their own voice into the social media and humanise it – whilst giving the guidelines to give some consistency across the brand
2. Put stories at the heart of social
People buy into stories, not adverts
Brands need to put stories at the heart of social media
We are natural born story tellers
As children at primary school we produced content every day and we got rewarded for it, be that a smile from our parents or a day trip out
As children at secondary school we got creativity knocked out of us as we studied facts and figures for exams
Rediscover your inner child and put those stories, the people in your organisation and your customers at the heart of your social media
3. Empower digital champions
Success does not come without training
You’re trained yourself and your staff in every area of the organisation and then you hand the social media to someone with zero marketing experience and zero training
You need to empower digital champions in each area of your business to truly understand and grasp how powerful social media can be for your business
Marketing is not just something that sits in the marketing department removed from the rest of the business
It’s in every department of the business and is on the frontline facing the customers
Training needs to be an ongoing process as the organisation grows and more and more digital champions get added to the mix to help with that natural storytelling
4. Measure measure measure
If you measure something, you can improve on it
Traditional advertising can be vague and is an outdated model
The local newspaper will talk about readership and throw huge numbers about – but how can you know out of 90,000 readers, how many will look at your Quarter page advert on page 17
With social media you know exactly how many people every update has reached, what engagement (i.e action) has been taken on each post and you have huge data on which messages are most successful with your audience
Social Media is about being a creative geek
Be creative with ideas, but be a total analytical geek and seek to understand what the insights and analytics on each platform are telling you
5. Share best practice
Being part of a franchise is like being part of a digital agency like ours
At Altrincham HQ we get to take the data from huge amounts of social media clients, which gives us insights as to what updates are working across the board
We can take ideas from totally unrelated businesses to inspire what we do for other clients
It’s a huge advantage to have such data at our fingertips
As franchisees around the country you get to share what is working on social media in your location for the brand and share best practice
There are various systems that can be put in place from Whatsapp Groups to monthly emails to quarterly meetings to discuss ideas and best practice
NEED HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA?
Chat to about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation
We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you
Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services
Or
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
