Tips for Using Social Media to Grow Your Local Franchise

As a franchisee, you want to harness the power of social media to help you grow your business. In fact, you already have a major advantage on social media, as your franchisor has likely created some general awareness of the products or services you offer already. But that doesn’t mean your work will be easy, as you still need to attract local attention for your franchise business in order to be successful. To help you out, we’ve got some tips for using social media to grow your local franchise below.

Decide on Your Goal

Before you can accomplish anything on social media, you have to decide on the business goals you hope to achieve. Ultimately, your goal is to create greater brand awareness and generate sales, but there will be smaller goals that help you do these things. Some examples include growing a larger following, increasing the number of ads you display, and raising your engagement rate. Whatever your goals may be, just make sure you’ve written them down and clearly defined them. This will allow you to create a social media strategy that can help you reach your goals.

Focus on the Right Platforms

There are a lot of different social media platforms out there, and if you try to do something with all of them, you’ll probably end up going crazy. Each platform requires a specific type of content. You can’t just repeat the same thing across all of them and expect to have the best results. It’s likely that your franchisor may have already done the research and given you guidelines on which platforms to use to best reach your audience. So, instead of trying to do it all, pick the ones that are most relevant to your business.

At 9Round, we encourage our franchisees to focus on Facebook and Instagram, as these are the most relevant to our audience and are well-established platforms. Facebook is great for creating conversations with our members and prospects, as well as highlighting any upcoming events at local studios. Instagram, on the other hand, helps show off our gyms and the types of exercise we do during our Daily 9Round Workouts through photography. Both of these platforms have proved to be very useful for our franchisees.

Create a Plan and to Help You Reach Your Goal

Slapping a few random pictures on Instagram every now and then is not going to help your business grow through social media. You need to have a structured social media plan and know what you’re going to post and when. This is the only way you can properly control your messaging, so you can communicate effectively with current and potential customers. This will ensure that your customers know exactly what you offer and who you are, which will build brand trust and loyalty.

Some franchisors may provide you with regular social media calendars, so you have a solid foundation of branded content, which is something we do on a monthly basis for our 9Round franchisees. This helps our franchisees post consistently on social media and keeps them aware of any upcoming events they should be advertising at their studio.

Think About Your Audience

Every business has an ideal audience they hope to attract, but you can’t effectively communicate with this audience if you don’t know who they are and what they like. Pay attention to who your audience is and make sure you are tailoring your social media content to fit their needs. This will increase the likelihood of someone engaging with your posts and becoming a follower of your brand. Hopefully, after multiple interactions with your audience, you will be able to guide them to your website or into your brick and mortar location where they are able to make a purchase.   

Make Your Content Look Good

The key to having a strong profile on any social media platform is to make sure your content is cohesive and clear. Take your time and make sure your photos and videos are clear and highlight your product. You also need to make sure your content makes sense for your business and that everything looks like it belongs on your profile.

To do this, stick to your company’s branding and color palette for all your posts. Take a look at our 9Round Instagram profile for example, and you’ll see the color red in almost every photo. This is our brand’s main color and using it in the majority of our photos helps tie our content together, even when the photos aren’t always similar.  

Engage with Your Followers

Two-way communication is powerful, as it allows you to connect with your customers and prospects on a deeper level. This is one of the main benefits of social media, which is why you should aim to constantly interact with your followers. People like to be recognized, so when someone comments on your post, you should like their comment or respond if necessary. Even a simple emoji response is enough to show people that you’re paying attention to them.

You also never want to leave a question unanswered on social media, as this can make people feel like your business doesn’t care about them. When someone feels like you don’t care about them, they will quickly turn to your competition for a better solution. Today, everyone expects you to respond to them quickly on social media, so make sure you’re watching your messages and comments and providing excellent customer service.

We can’t wait to see you take these social media tips and use them to create a solid plan for your business. When used effectively, social media can help franchisees attract a large audience for their business and eventually, turn them into paying customers.