The article below is an excerpt from AIS Media’s Thomas Harpointner and FON’s W.C. Garth Snider’s white paper, “8 Critical Steps to Leveraging the Power of Social Media to Drive Franchise Sales”. To download the full white paper in PDF format, please click here.

Properly integrating social media into a website enables users to distribute website content to their friends and colleagues across the internet. Franchisors should strongly consider creating either a separate website or a sub-domain off of the main website that is dedicated solely to franchise development.

• Integrate Facebook Stories: display success stories from existing franchisees on the website — testimonials are your greatest asset. Integrate social media icons into your website and cross-link to social properties.
• Encourage website visitors to become Facebook Fans and distribute your content to their Facebook Friends through the use of Facebook Widgets and sharing tools.
• Publishing to Facebook: This enables Facebook members to publish Status Updates directly from your site, notifying their Facebook Friends of your content.
• Live Stream: Facebook Friends can view live video on your website while chatting in real time about what they are watching. This can be useful for tradeshows, special events, and conferences.
• Publish your live Twitter feeds in a section directly on your website. For B2B franchises, promote your LinkedIn profile by adding LinkedIn badges to the website.