More franchisors are realizing that not only is social media a powerful tool for promoting their brand, but it can also be very effective for local franchise marketing when owners know the right way to market through these platforms. As a result of this realization, many franchise operations are making significant investments to help train and educate their owners about using social media for local franchise marketing.

Whether you’re a franchisor or the owner of a local franchise, if you’re interested in learning more about social media marketing, let’s take a look at how to get results, social media’s role in PR and how to measure the effectiveness of a social strategy:

Getting Results from Social Media

One of the most common hesitations business owners of all types have about social media is being able to generate real results. Many business owners are worried that they’re not going to generate any tangible results from the time and effort they invest into social media.

While that is a valid concern, the good news is there are proven ways to ensure that social media usage will lead to actual business results. The first step in this process is to identify the most important social networks for a specific business. While it’s useful to have a presence on all the major social sites, chances are that one or two will drive the majority of results.

Once you determine where to focus your efforts, the other most important component is to stay consistent. The most common reason that businesses fail to see the type of results they want from social media is they don’t stick with it. Although it can take a little time to start building momentum, consistently posting and engaging will lead to measurable results.

What’s the Connection Between Social Media and PR?

Local franchise owners know just how much they can gain from targeted local media coverage. What’s great about social media is it can work very well for supporting traditional PR efforts. Not only is social media a great way for a local franchise to promote any news coverage they get, but it can also be very useful for reaching out to local media contacts and building relationships that lead to coverage.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of a Social Media Strategy

Although it can be a little tricky to attribute exactly how many leads or new customers you generate through social media, there are still plenty of ways to measure the effectiveness of a social media strategy. One of the best is to look at what kind of traffic different updates drive. By using an analytics program to see what visitors do once they arrive at your website from a social media channel, you’ll be able to see what kind of content does the best job of attracting engaged visitors. This information will be very useful for guiding your future social media efforts.

If you want expert help creating the right social media strategy for your franchise, be sure to take a look at how Web Strategy Plus can help.

Michelle Hummel is CEO of Web Strategy Plus a full-service digital marketing agency focused on Franchise Marketing. She was recently nominated for the Woman-Owned Business of the Year! She’s a passionate Social Media Trainer with 15+ years of successful online business development, sales, and marketing experience. She also holds a valuable Internet Marketing Degree however with the ever-changing world of web marketing she strives to learn something new every day. 

She travels Nationwide visiting her 22 Social Media Enthusiasts Chapters she developed Nationwide delivering in-depth social media training. She also provides Social Media Certifications through founding Web Media University. A current contributing editor to The Franchise Dictionary Magazine and she has written 3 books in her series called, “The Social Media Magnet: Everything You Need to Know to Attract Customers with Social Media”, where she shares her best-kept secrets to success. She also specializes in helping Franchisors and Franchisees develop an integrated web marketing program to drive leads. She’s available for interviews via email, telephone, Skype video, news segments on location and more. Just let her know how she can help!