The complete guide to franchise social media marketing

The average internet user now spends 2 hours 23 minutes daily on social media. And they’re not just scrolling for fun. Today’s customers are using social media for brand discovery, to interact with their favorite brands, and also make purchases (almost 56% of online adults make online purchases weekly). 

This shift in behavior has fueled explosive growth in social commerce. In 2023, social commerce generated $571 billion globally, and with a projected 13.7% annual growth rate, that number is expected to surpass $1 trillion by 2028. For franchises, this presents a huge opportunity. If your brand isn’t actively engaging on social media, you’re missing out on massive revenue potential. 

But seizing this opportunity requires more than posting a few social posts.

Franchises need a solid, scalable strategy. It’s not enough to just have a social media presence. Customers expect consistency, personalized content, and a seamless brand experience across every platform. Without a clear strategy, it’s easy for franchise messaging to become disjointed, eroding brand trust and causing valuable opportunities to slip through the cracks.

That’s why we created this guide, to give you all the keys to managing your franchise on social networks. Let’s find out what franchise social media marketing is, why it’s important, the challenges franchises face, and the practical steps franchises can take to succeed on social media.

Let’s dive in.

What is franchise social media marketing?

Franchise social media marketing refers to the use of social media networks to promote a franchise and its franchisees.

To break it down, a franchise is a business model where individual owners (franchisees) operate their own locations under a larger franchisor company’s brand, name, and guidance. The franchisor is the parent company that owns the brand and system (for example, McDonald’s Corporation), and the franchisees are the local owners who pay for the right to operate a franchise location (e.g., your local McDonald’s restaurant). 

So in the context of social media, this structure creates a two-tiered marketing scenario:

• Franchisor level: The corporate brand typically runs official national or global social media accounts. These accounts focus on broad marketing campaigns, brand storytelling, and maintaining a consistent brand image.
• Franchisee level: Individual franchise owners may run local social media pages for their specific location or region. These local accounts often share community-specific updates, promotions, and engage with local customers directly.

Franchise social media marketing involves aligning these two levels so that the brand’s voice and values stay consistent, while still allowing each franchise location to connect authentically with its local audience. It's a collaborative effort. When done right, this approach allows franchises to have a unified brand presence and strong local engagement. 

The importance of social media for franchises

Why should franchises invest heavily in social media marketing? Here are some key reasons.

1. Improves brand visibility

The simple answer is that social media is where the customers are. There are over 5.24 billion people who use social media worldwide and they represent a massive pool of potential customers that franchises can tap into.

When a franchise is not visible on social media, it misses out on a huge opportunity to attract new customers. 78% of businesses that sell on social media outsell peers who don’t use social media.

2. Influences customers' purchase decisions

Consider today’s consumer behavior: 73.9% of respondents in a global survey said they used social media to conduct research on brands before making purchases. People often check a business’s Facebook or Instagram page to see reviews, photos, or recent posts.

For a franchise, this means potential customers might look up the nearest location’s page to decide if they want to visit. A strong social presence can directly influence traffic to your franchise outlets. 

3. Enables local targeting

Social media is especially powerful for franchises because it allows local targeting at scale. 

A franchisor can run nationwide campaigns to build broad brand awareness, while each franchisee can simultaneously run geo-targeted social media advertising and share local content to reach the community around their store. This joint strategy can greatly amplify marketing reach. 

4. Helps franchises stay competitive

Lastly, the numbers behind franchising underscore why social media marketing is necessary. According to the International Franchise Association, there are over 821,000 franchise establishments in the U.S. alone. With so many franchise businesses competing for customer attention, a robust social media strategy can make all the difference. 

Social media is an indispensable marketing channel for franchises because it offers unparalleled reach, customer influence, and the ability to connect global brand messaging with local customer engagement.

Key challenges in franchise social media marketing

Marketing a franchise on social media isn’t as simple as running a single business account. Franchises are complex, with hundreds or even thousands of locations. Managing a social media profile for each location and maintaining a cohesive brand strategy is no small feat.

Here are some of the major social media challenges franchises face in their social media marketing strategy.

1. Maintaining brand consistency across locations

One of the biggest challenges franchises face is keeping brand marketing consistent across all franchisee locations. Each franchisee might run their social media page differently, which can lead to off-brand messaging or visual styles. RE/MAX is a real estate franchise with thousands of agents, and the majority of their franchisees maintain a personal FB/IG/TikTok to market listings. 

Inconsistent brand messaging or graphics from multiple locations will confuse customers and weaken the overall brand, as 90% of customers expect a consistent brand experience across all channels. Customers will trust and choose brands that present a unified front. The challenge is getting dozens or hundreds of social media managers to sing the same tune while still sounding authentic.

2. Balancing corporate control with local autonomy

Franchisors often struggle to decide how much freedom to give franchisees on social media.

Who should control the franchise’s social media content? Should it be the franchisor or the franchisee? Striking the right balance is tricky. Too much corporate control, and local pages may feel generic or fail to engage with local audiences. Too little oversight, and you risk rogue posts or inconsistent quality. 

For example, a franchisee might post something offensive, off-brand, or handle a customer complaint poorly, causing a PR issue for the whole brand. The Krispy Kreme Franchise received a lot of backlash after its UK franchisee posted a wrongly worded promotional post on Facebook.

3. Coordinating multiple social accounts and content schedules

Many franchises allow and even encourage franchisees to operate their own social media account. That could mean hundreds of accounts under one brand umbrella. Coordinating content calendars, promotions, and campaigns across all these profiles can be difficult. What works in one city might flop in another, so simply copying and pasting content wouldn’t work. 

The franchisor’s marketing team also needs to monitor what franchisees are posting to ensure quality and timing. Without proper coordination, you might have gaps (locations not posting at all) or conflicts (competing messages) in your social media presence.

4. Resource and skill gaps at the local level 

Not every franchisee is a marketing expert. 

They are mostly business owners who wear many hats. Some franchise owners lack the social media savvy or resources to execute great social media campaigns. They may not post regularly due to time constraints or uncertainty about what to post. 

This means that some locations will excel on social media while others won’t, resulting in an uneven brand experience for customers.

5. Customer service and reputation management

For businesses, social media is also a customer service channel. Customers will voice complaints or ask questions online, and they can tag either the main brand page or a local page. For a franchise, this raises a question: who responds? Keep in mind that slow or unhelpful responses can lead to public dissatisfaction. 49% of consumers say they’d unfollow a brand due to poor customer service. 

The franchisor must decide whether the corporate social team handles complaints or if the franchisee should. Many times, local owners may not monitor their social inbox diligently, letting customer issues slip by. 

Conversely, corporate social managers might not have the local context to resolve certain issues. Ensuring every customer comment gets a prompt, appropriate reply across potentially hundreds of profiles is a major challenge.

💡 These challenges are manageable with the right approach. Next, we’ll discuss how franchises can overcome each hurdle and succeed on social media.

How to succeed on social media as a franchise

Here are strategies and best practices that franchisors and franchisees can implement to build a strong social media presence.

1. Develop clear brand guidelines and a social media policy

Consistent brand messaging across all locations starts with clarity. Franchisors should create a comprehensive social media policy and brand style guide that all franchisees must follow. 

These social media guidelines should outline the approved tone of voice (e.g., friendly, professional, witty), language to use or avoid, visual style (preferred profile images/cover photo, logos, colors, imagery), and even hashtag usage. By providing a unified playbook, franchisors give franchisees a framework to create content that aligns with the brand’s identity.

For example, a franchisor might specify that all posts should use a polite, upbeat tone and never engage in political commentary, to keep messaging on-brand. Guidelines might also include how to respond to customer comments or what kind of local promotions are allowed. 

Setting these expectations in writing protects the brand and empowers franchisees to post confidently within safe boundaries. 

Alongside style guidelines, define social media goals at both the brand and local levels. The franchisor can set overarching goals (e.g., increase overall brand awareness or drive X% more website traffic via social media), while each franchisee might have local goals (e.g., get 100 new followers in their city, or promote an event to boost local turnout). Clear goals give everyone direction and something to strive for.

2. Balance centralized vs. local content (empower local voices)

Finding the sweet spot between corporate content and local content is important. The strategy here should be two-fold: provide templated content from corporate and allow personalization by local teams. 

Franchisors should create a library of approved content that franchisees can use. For example, professional photos, videos, graphics, and post captions for each campaign. 

Having customizable templates and a shared asset library is also helpful.  

A franchisor could supply templates for, say, a Facebook event post or an Instagram Story, where the franchisee only needs to fill in their location-specific details (date, address, contact info) while the branding remains intact. 

By using a centralized media asset library, franchisees can easily grab pre-approved images or videos for their posts. This not only ensures quality and consistency (no off-brand images) but also saves time for busy local owners.

At the same time, encourage franchisees to infuse local flavor into their social presence. 

Give franchisees flexibility to showcase their store’s personality. Franchisees can post local staff spotlights, community events they participate in, local sports team shout-outs, etc. This will resonate with the local target audience. Localized content will make customers feel like the page is run by people in their community, not a distant corporate office. The key is to empower local creativity within brand guidelines.

One effective way to coordinate this content is by using a content calendar. The franchisor can set a general content schedule (for major promotions or seasonal campaigns that all locations should post about on certain dates), and franchisees fill the gaps with their own posts. 

💡 Corporate can publish to the main social accounts daily and push suggested posts or themes to franchisees weekly, leaving certain days open for local posts. Regular communication (weekly emails or monthly calls) can help everyone stay aligned on upcoming content. 

3. Leverage approval workflows and monitoring

To maintain quality control, put in place an approval process for social content. 

Using social media management tools, franchisors can require that certain posts be submitted for approval before going live. 

This kind of checkpoint can catch potentially problematic posts and allow franchisors to offer feedback. For instance, if a local franchisee drafts a tweet that uses an off-brand slogan, the corporate social media manager can suggest edits or veto it before it’s public. 

Along with approvals, franchisors should be able to see what franchisees are posting in real time. Setting up a shared content calendar that aggregates posts from every location is a great practice. This allows the corporate marketing team to keep an eye on overall activity. They can spot if a certain location hasn’t posted in a while (and nudge them), or highlight a particularly great post by one franchisee as a best practice for others. 

Regular audits of franchisee pages (perhaps monthly check-ins to review whether they are following guidelines) help maintain consistency. Think of monitoring not as policing, but as quality assurance and support. It lets the franchisor proactively help locations improve their social media performance.

4. Engage with the local community online

One major advantage franchisees have is their local presence – they are part of a community. Engaging with the local community on social media can significantly boost a franchise’s following and reputation. 

But what does local engagement look like? It includes responding to local happenings, supporting other local businesses online, and joining community groups or conversations. For example, a franchise owner might join a local Facebook Group for small business owners or community events in their town and actively participate (not just promote their business, but genuinely engage). 

On X (Twitter), a local franchise account can retweet city news or react (positively) to local sports victories or city-wide initiatives, showing they’re in tune with their neighbors.

Also, franchisees should network with other franchisees on social media. Sometimes, multiple franchise locations within a region can collaborate on social media. For example, a few neighboring franchises of the same brand might coordinate a regional campaign or simply share each other’s content. This cross-promotion extends reach. 

5. Encourage user-generated content (UGC)

Franchises can significantly amplify their social media marketing impact by encouraging customers to create and share content. Satisfied customers posting about your brand provide authentic testimonials that money can’t buy. In fact, 56% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase a product after seeing it in a positive or relatable UGC photo. 

One way to encourage UGC is through hashtag campaigns. Create a memorable hashtag and ask customers to use it when they post about your business. Dunkin’ (formerly Dunkin’ Donuts) did this effectively with their #thecharli campaign. They asked followers to share photos of themselves enjoying Dunkin's new coffee (The Charli) while using the hashtag. 

The result was tons of organic content which Dunkin’ could then repost to keep the cycle going.

Contests and giveaways are also a tried-and-true method to generate UGC and buzz. Another form of UGC is reviews and testimonials on social media. 

Encourage satisfied customers to leave a Facebook recommendation or to tweet about their customer experience. When they do, engage with those posts. This shows appreciation and also signals to other followers that real people enjoy your franchise.

6. Provide social customer service (and do it fast)

How franchises handle inquiries or complaints can either enhance or hurt the brand’s reputation. Franchises should establish a clear protocol for social customer care. Typically, simpler questions (hours, location, product availability) can be answered by the franchisee managing the local page. More serious complaints might need involvement from the franchisor’s support team or PR team. 

It’s wise to create an internal escalation path. For example, if a franchisee sees a customer alleging a serious issue (like a safety concern or very bad experience), they should alert corporate immediately for guidance on the response. 

Many franchisors include in their social media policy how to handle negative comments or crises (e.g., do not argue, apologize sincerely, offer to take it offline to resolve) to ensure even inexperienced franchisees respond appropriately. 

Speed is also critical. Customers expect quick responses on social. 40% of consumers expect a brand to respond to a social media inquiry within one hour, and 79% expect a response within 24 hours. Not only that, but responding to customers on social can increase their spending by 20–40%.  

To manage franchise social customer care at scale, franchises can use tools like social listening and unified inboxes. A social listening tool alerts you whenever your brand or location is mentioned, so you don’t miss any complaints or opportunities to engage with customers.

A unified social media inbox (available in many social management platforms like ours) aggregates messages and comments from all platforms into one dashboard. This will make it easier for a franchisee or a central support person to see everything and respond efficiently. 

7. Invest in training and education for franchisees

A franchise system is only as strong as its weakest link. If even a few franchisees mishandle social media, it can hurt the overall brand. That’s why investing in training and ongoing education is necessary. Franchisors should incorporate social media marketing training into their franchisee onboarding process. 

When a new franchise location opens, part of the training (along with how to run the business) should cover how to set up and use social media for that brand. This could include a tutorial on the preferred social management tool, lessons on the brand’s voice and style guide, and the dos and don’ts of posting. Providing a social media playbook or manual is useful as a reference.

Ready to market your franchise on social media?

Franchise social media marketing may be challenging, but with the right strategies in place, it can become one of your most powerful growth engines. The key is to be strategic and proactive. Set clear guidelines and goals, equip your franchisees with training and tools, and create a steady flow of engaging content that resonates at both the brand and local level. 

To make this easier, Iconosquare offers powerful tools built for multi-location brands and franchises. From scheduling and publishing across multiple profiles to tracking performance with advanced analytics and custom dashboards, Iconosquare helps you maintain brand consistency while empowering local teams to shine. , your new favorite social media tool.

Ready to simplify franchise social media marketing and management? Start Iconosquare for free today, your new favorite social media tool.