There are so many different types of social media to choose from now and although you need to be on social media, you don’t have to be active on all the different types of social media.
I know this may sound different to what everyone else is telling you, but I see a lot of franchisees wasting a lot of time on social media that is not producing them a result in their business. This does not mean you don’t do any social media, it just means you need to pick and choose.
The greatest benefit for a franchisee is that the franchisor/head office team should have a corporate or group social media account on all the major social media networks and they will be managing that, posting to it, commenting and responding. So the first thing to realise is that you can simply use that account for some of your social media rather than creating your own.
For example, if you are not going to be regularly producing videos, there is no point you having your own individual YouTube channel. Let the franchisor deal with that, but you can still let people know you have a YouTube channel, put it on business cards, display it in a store (if you have a physical store), have it on your profile/location page on the website.
What you need to think about is which is the main social media platform that your customers use? Then that is the one that you should be doing yourself and have a location page for. Some franchisors do not allow you to have your own social media accounts – although this is changing in a lot of groups as franchisors realise this is a necessity – but talk to them about how you can do it. I suggest you make them an administrator on your social media account as well so they can always take control on the account if you have been naughty! This give the franchisor peace of mind that they are able to protect the brand for other franchisees if for any reason you are not representing the brand in the best possible way.
The other great thing with social media is that you can link a lot of the majors together. For example, if you have an account on Facebook, you can tell Facebook to link to your Twitter account, so then anytime you post something on Facebook, it will immediately also post it to Twitter. This saves you time and effort.
Don’t get caught up in social media unless it is developing new customers or keeping your past customers engaged with you. We live in a very noisy world now so make sure you are posting things to your accounts that are of interest to you customers which is why it is essential to know which social media platform to use for YOUR customers and where they are hanging out.
Save time and leverage from head office (you can also use the posts they do and put them on your social media……). Remember that social media is just one of your marketing/connecting strategies so give it the appropriate amount of time, don’t be on it ‘thinking’ you are doing work, when really all you are doing is wasting time.