As with any businesses, franchises stand to benefit from content marketing and should be actively creating content in order to reach a wider audience. However as you can imagine content marketing on a franchise level is somewhat unique, and requires a certain amount of careful management.
If you're engaging in content marketing for a franchise, there are three tips that you should try to follow:
- Give branches control over the local content
While the main branch of the franchise should handle its overarching content marketing, it helps to give franchise managers control over local content marketing. That will allow them to specifically target the demographic in their locality, and improve the overall effectiveness of the content marketing.
Ideally local branches should be allowed to have their own websites, social media, and hire their own writers. That way they will be able to work closely with them in order to optimize the content marketing for their area or region.
- Provide clear guidelines and relevant expertise
Despite the fact that branches should have control over the local content, there still needs to be a set of unified guidelines that applies throughout the franchise brand. That is the responsibility of the national branch, and it should produce guidelines for the website and social media content, as well as editorial guidelines for content produced for elsewhere (e.g. guest posts).
Aside from guidelines, the national branch can also provide some expertise - such as SEO experts that help optimize local websites, identify keywords that branches can target in their campaigns, and so on.
It could do the same for content that may require specific expertise to produce, such as videos and provide talent or tools. For example if it is necessary to record screen Mac or PC to create content, the tools to do so such as Movavi Screen Recorder Studio Mac could be provided.
- Establish firm standards for reporting
To tie the content marketing of the entire franchise together, there must be clear standards of reporting. The national branch should remain updated on the content marketing progress of local branches, and the status of content that they are producing and publishing.
For example it would be possible to create a Google Sheet template that each branch can update as they create and publish content, so that at any given time the national branch can check on its status.
At the end of the day all franchise managers need to be aware of the reporting standards they are expected to adhere to.
Make no mistake content marketing for a franchise can be challenging, and depending on the size of the franchise and the number of branches it may require a lot of management and organization. That being said by following the tips listed above you can establish a structure for the content marketing that spreads out the responsibility in key areas so that it is more effective.
From that point further improvements to the content marketing strategy can be made more easily, as and when the need arises.
