Social Media Marketing for Franchisees

- Pratiti Nath

Earlier this month the internet went crazy over a handsome looking roadside tea vendor.  Now, the buzz is that he has become a model. Well, it all started when a few people started raving about his good looks and sharing his pictures on Facebook.  Gradually it spread like a wild fire with major newspapers reporting it and soon he became a face to reckon with it. Here, Social Media acted like a catalyst speeding up the process in a jiffy! 

Now think of it this way. There are billions of people all over the globe. Of these billions, a moderate percentage has access to the internet. So it comes down to some millions people using the social media. Hence, it is an ideal platform for marketing your franchise. In fact a more viable form of marketing because of its greater outcome and outreach with very limited expenditure in a short span of time.  lt’s like the saying by AnushkaSharma in “Band, Baja and Baraat” – similar to weddings as cited in the film social media too is a never ending sphere. Irrespective of the economy or climate or social trends it continues to click.

What exactly is social media marketing?

From the name itself , it is clearly understood that it deals with marketing done via various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. This type of marketing strategy emphasizes on gaining more viewership for your website by promoting your franchise – gradually engaging people and drawing investors.  

Of all the social media platforms Facebook and twitter are more widely used. The reason being their relative predominance on the global sphere. While Facebook is used for global as well as local exposure , twitter is mainly used for global outreach.

India is  the 3^rd highest populated nation and much of its population is on Facebook. Hence, it is the ideal place for social media marketing.

Now the question is - what is franchise business model? How can social media marketing help?

Franchise business model is the legitimate use of a company’s business model - their ideas , vision and brand . A particular company has a given set of business model applicable to all of their brand outlets present all of the globe. This builds up a franchise business model for the company. All local and regional centers follow this franchise model. 

Social media with its crisp and highly engaging content can easily promote and strengthen your franchise. It comes with minimal cost and a greater target audience. It can be simply achieved by opening a Facebook page or a twitter handle for your franchise. Start promoting your website by presenting your ideas- the unique way you are solving the problem.  One benefit of using social media is its personalized and creative connect.  Like you can share videos, short messages, photos, giphs to attract people. On Facebook, you can go live and directly interact or create events related to your business.  You can host special contests and give away a gift from your franchise to the winter. The most important aspect of social media marketing is constant engagement with your audience. It is essential to be quick and responsive. Twitter is the most responsive in this regard. It is  usually used by people to gauge different trends and directly contact with people. So make sure you reply to tweets, re-tweet people who give you feedback, use hashtag to promote your products or use trending hashtags for your purpose. 

This is essentially how social media marketing works.

However, there is an exact model of how to set up things for social media marketing.  There are 4 structures of social media marketing that franchises can opt for.

 

Centralized structure

Here the brand  has single centralized presence in social media, like a same page for all activities relating to the franchise. Thus  content will flow in-out of the same outlet.  This ensures your global outreach and all contents being restricted to your brand without diluting. However, there is one drawback losing out local customers and failing to meet cross-cultural differences.

Centralized Blend Structure

In this model, the same corporate house maintains different social media profiles relating to its franchise. Here different content is generated across various profiles according to various locations/divisions but related to the same franchise. Hence all contents are driven to the same brand and local customers are kept engaged.  It requires a robust social media team to pull this up

Controlled Structure

This structure is quite similar to centralized blend. The only difference is their management.  Here the different franchise profiles are managed by their respective team s but the content is provided by the parent franchise brand.  This involves greater involvement of the franchises with their respective audience. However, conflict of interest may arise due to discrepancy in content approval. Also outcome may vary across different franchises.

Monitored Structure

Different franchises manage their own social media presence without any involvement from the parent franchise. They only follow a set of guidelines from the parent company. By using this model local area content is well established forming a niche in the local market.  This kind of model requires a big and strong social media team to maintain all franchises. 

These are the ways to generate a social media marketing campaign for your franchise.

Despite all these, there are certain problems that franchises face while embarking on a social media marketing campaign.

 What are these potential problems?

The problems are quite genuine and have a potential to derail your social media marketing strategy.

Setting the correct target audience

It is important that you target the correct audience. Any miscalculations in this regard can greatly affect you and you can lose potential customers.

Creating different page for different locations
In order to cover different regional bases over a wide geographical area , it is preferable to opt for different pages for different location. Your brand may be a global one but you need local presence to monopolize the local market. Hence your local business outlet should have a social media presence.

Opt for a fan page or create a group to boost audience interaction
Interacting with your audience is essential for social media marketing campaign. Sometimes it becomes difficult to handle all feedback coming from different franchise sources. The best way to deal with this is to create a separate fan page or a group for your franchise. Add your regular customers and people who are active on your profiles. This way it is easier to get customer feedback and give them personalized response.

Like all marketing campaign, social media campaign also comes with certain checks and balances.

So, what are these checks and balances?

Maintain visibility
Keep updating contents on a regular basis. Come up with refreshing and engaging contents. Make sure your franchise remain visible in their newsfeed.

Always maintain contact with the audience
Keep in touch with your customers. Engage them, interact with them.  Make sure you are responsive to their comments and queries.

 Be Creative
Look out for new ways of engaging people – like creating contests on special occasions, urging your customers to share some unique/memorable experiences related to your brand.  Use different tools like pictures, giphs, videos, and blogs to share contents.

 Make call for action proposals
Post contents that urge people to act and make them curious to look for more. Ask them to subscribe more to avail greater discount or share it with friends to earn reward points. Urge them to download your franchise app and win 1 year free subscription. Attract customers with these kinds of deals.

Circulate content to and from your parent franchise
Remind the audience that you are part of a franchise. Share contents to your parent franchise and post contents from their page as well. Make people aware of your brand credibility.

Thus by formulating a proper social media marketing campaign one can easily boost his franchise business model.  Social media is not just a trend.  In fact it sets up new trends. Who knows with a dynamic strategy YOU MIGHT BE THE NEXT BIG THING!!

If Dogs had Twitter Accounts

-Ankita Roy

Happiness my friends is a warm puppy. Dogs are undoubtedly man’s best friends. They are the only creatures on earth who can love you more than they love themselves. No matter what you do, you can not dissuade them from leaping in joy when he sees you .A dog is a little heartbeat at your feet. All this and more. Dogs these days are smart too! They have taken this tech-savvy generation tail-on. With Meredithswift(Taylor Swifts dog),cookie(bethannie frankels dog) and many more celebrity canines joining the twitterati, we thought of a world wherein all the dogs had twitter accounts. After all….never underestimate the power of the common dog.

Just look at that puppy dog face!  

Top 10 CEOs Who Are Famous Than Their Companies On Twitter

-J.N. GNANESHWARI

“Expect the unexpected” is the phrase that would summaries this article  at “jet-speed”.  Apple, Google, Microsoft… If these are the names that you think are in the list, here are some facts that would leave your eyes wide open…

1. Richard Branson

The first man on the list of the top most CEOs on twitter, with 7.3M followers and 3,845 following is Richard Branson. Virgin group, his brainchild has 211K followers on twitter @Virgin.

2. Elon Musk

“When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world. Now I am.”-ElonMusk. He is the founder, CEO and CTO of SpaceX; CEO,co-founder and product architect of TeslaMotors and the list goes on. Elon Musk has 3.5M followers while he follows only the few 50. His creation SpaceX and Tesla have 1.3M and 944K followers respectively.

3.Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey, a university drop out, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, founder and CEO of Square. Though “Twitter” outcasts him but his brain child Square has just 189K followers yet he can boast about his 3.4M followers.

4.Anand Mahindra

That's right! It’s an Indian CEO of a company born in India… Surprised? Anand Mahindra with 2.9M followers and he chooses the best 182 only to follow. He carries a legacy founded by his grandfather JC Mahindra-The Mahindra Group. The company has about 69.2K followers @MahindraRise.

5.John Legere

John Legere an American businessman who is the CEO and president of T-Mobile US currently has served various other multinational companies like Dell, AT &T etc. His personal twitter profile has 2.2M followers while T-Mobile has 645K followers.

6.Tim O’Reilly

Tim O’Reilly, the man behind O’Reilly Media, quotes-“Money is like a gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you are not doing a tour of gas stations.” This man deserves a loud applause with 1.9M followers and 1550 under following category he makes it to “The top 10”. O’Reilly Media has about 81.1K followers @OReillyMedia.

7. Kai-fu Lee

At an age of 54, Kai-fuLee is a venture capitalist, technology executive, writer etc. He is the man behind the world’s first “speaker- independent speech recognition system.” His personal twitter account has 1.5M followers while only 145 following. Innovation Works, his company has about 4196 follower’s @iwpgh.

  

8.Warren Buffet

The man who is referred as the “Wizard/Oracle/Sage of Omaha”, considered as one among the “world’s wealthiest people”, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway needs no introduction. Man with the heart of pure gold Warren Buffett has 1.1M followers and 0 Following.

9. Michael Dell

Michael Saul Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Inc., is one of the world’s well known tech giants. Dell is his brain child which has about 566K followers on twitter while Michael Dell has around 966K followers and 1963 under following category.

10. Kerth Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch is the founder, chairman and CEO of News Corporation. He has about 750K followers on twitter while News Corp has 13.9K followers (@newscorp)

It indicates that these people not only rule their companies but also rule Twitter. By connecting with their customers and other stakeholders directly, they constantly shape up their public image and also the image of their company. Keeping a highly active and vivacious profile help them form positive relationships and line up opportunities for their brand. It’s incredible to see CEO’s diving into the Twittersphere far beyond their company. 

5 Tips To Stay Smart Online

-Pratiti Nath 

Internet, a boon of this century has made our lives easier and brought our dear ones closer. It has made knowledge accessible to people from every social strata. So much so that, it has become a necessity of this age. One such component of the internet is SocialMedia, where you can connect with a friend sitting miles apart and share your thoughts & opinions, exchange files, photographs & videos. The increasing trend of social media usage has led to a growing propensity for social media fraud. Here are some aspects of it and how to prevent them. 

1. Theft calls from fictitious accounts

You use social media website to connect, right? You’ve logged into Facebook and decide to complain about your banking problems to the bank’s homepage. That can prove to be detrimental, as a Pune resident Nehal Deodhar had found out when she was robbed of Rs.50,000  from her account.

Problem

Be sure about sharing your financial details (account number, pin code, branch name etc.) on these platforms as it is very risky and you might just end up like Nehal. Make sure the account you are interacting with is an authentic one.

Prevention

Best way to go about this is to contact them through the bank’s original website or personally get to the bank. 

Research has showcased a rise in these kind of cyber frauds  from 75% in 2013-14 to 77% in 2014-2015.

2.  Fake accounts with  malicious intentions

Problem

So you’re quite active on Facebook. You browse through different offers, educational institutes or beneficial incentives. Well, beware of their authenticity. Some, if not many of these accounts turn out to be fake. Often fraudulent people make such an account pretending to be a representative of an influential organization.

However, most of these are nothing but dopes to lure people. The organization might turn out to be non-existent and their website a fraud. Their contact information would also be false.

Prevention

• Do not disclose too much of your personal details. 
• Try to run a background check about their authenticity (validity of the institution, actual location, and knowledge of people about it). Generally on social media we tend to be in a herd of like-minded people. 
• Look for mutual friends who know them. Contact them personally and see if their words match up.

3.Identity theft and harassment

You are an outgoing friendly person who regularly indulgences in sharing your whereabouts and opinions on Facebook.  You “check in” the places you visit disclosing your locations and preferences and you use auto-fill up option while logging in, just to be hassle free.

Problem

Fraudsters know your personal details and preferences through this auto fill option. Your account can be easily hacked or worse someone can open a fake account in your name. You’ll be unaware of this fake account of yours until they start harassing people from your friend list. They use your personal information and your old pictures for this purpose. 

Prevention

To avoid such situations, 

• Discard the auto-fill up option and log in manually.
• Change your password time-to-time and don’t use the same password everywhere.
• Refrain from making immediate check-ins, disclose information some hours later. 
• Don’t make your phone number, address and email-ids public. Restrict it to “only me”. 
• Restrict making personal photographs “public”, instead change them to “friends” settings. 
• Also do not allow applications to post on your behalf.

4. Stealing information via instant messaging platforms

Here, platforms like whatsapp, hike, Wechat are your go-to-need apps. Beware, this might land you in trouble. 

Problem

Your photographs & videos can be stolen and used later for malicious purposes. People can impersonate you, using your personal information. 

Prevention

Best way to prevent this is to use your smartphone wisely. 

• Restrict the use of public sharing wi-fi connections. 
• Always remember to logout. 
• Don’t share explicit videos and photographs. Restrict sending files in a group chat. 
• Install identity theft detection apps and
• Refrain from using location tracker apps.

5.Via online shopping apps.

When shopping online via phone or desktop, trouble might be brewing near you. 

Problem

Fraudulent people might steal your personal details, banking details and contact information from these platforms. 

Prevention

• Be sure to log out after every transaction. 
• Never enlist your debit/credit card to the payment gateway rather manually enter the card number during every transaction. 
• Make sure your password is long and constitutes various characters. Change your password time-to-time.
• Don’t use your personal preferences (nick name, pet’s name, date of birth, mobile number, favorite color/book/cuisine etc.) as passwords; instead use random combination of characters.

These are some of the frequently used methods of social media fraud. 77% of it is done by furnishing fictitious information & identity theft, 18% by fraudulent contact information and 4% by already established fraudsters.

 Keep them in mind and be more vigilant.

Stay Safe! 

Source:http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/index.aspx?eid=31807&dt=20160314