The term “reputation management” refers to protecting a brand online, as in this day and age, all it takes is a couple of negative Yelp reviews to threaten the long-term existence of a modern business. Into this situation has come the fact that online social media, marketing, and social commerce have all created an environment that places an increased burden on franchises, in particular.

Alas, because the task of effectively managing a brand’s image is now so overwhelming that it has spawned an entirely new subsect called reputation management, a number of important factors have come into play about franchises and their respective operations protocols.

Reputation Management and its Relevance to Franchising

We have already established that reputation management can be defined as terminology for online brand management, and also touched on the increasingly pervasive nature of consumer reviews about products and services through public review sites like Yelp. When trying to grow a brand, few things are as important as successful reputation management on a franchise level; among the most critical aspects of protecting a franchise, the brand is developing a strategy for reputation management to be implemented across an entire network, and the goal here is consistency.

This boils down to each individual franchisee adhering to the same coherent strategy – generally throughout all of their interactions with customers and on all social media platforms. Consistency is the element from which all other aspects of a strategy depend, and it’s incredibly important to get right.

The Key Do’s and Don’ts for Franchise Reputation Management

While there are a plethora of things that could fall under the “do’s and don’ts,” a couple of good suggestions genuinely stand out. For the “do’s,” these include:

•    Establishing a social media policy that implements system-wide policies that enable the individual franchisees (and the brand itself) to pursue reputation management strategies collaboratively.
•    Implementing a software system that allows the franchisor to monitor franchisee compliance.

In exploring both of these efforts, it’s recommended that legal counsel is consulted so a franchisor can avoid potential vicarious liability issues based on the conduct of individual franchisees.

Things to avoid include:

•    Implementing any obstruction in transparency to the consumer.
•    Attempting to enhance a brand’s reputation by denigrating others.

Both of these aforementioned “don’ts” can put a brand and its representatives on a direct path to litigation or other burden-inducing legal proceedings.

General Legal Guidelines for Franchise Systems Implementing Social Media Strategies of all the legal ramifications and related factors that can be discussed here, it’s the Guidelines Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising that is the most important; promulgated in December 2009 by the FTC, this guideline focuses on the use of “endorsements,” which, in turn, have been somewhat vaguely described as “any advertising message that consumers are likely to believe the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser.”

This relates to franchise systems in that virtually every form of social media may fall within this definition, whether by affirmative statements or omissions and so reputation management strategies must ensure compliance – including franchises. Indeed, failure to comply with these FTC guidelines can result in significant fines and other punishments.

Final Tips

The following are actions that can be taken to ensure successful franchise reputation management, beyond the aforementioned development of a consistent strategy across a franchise network.

•    Isolate franchise locations on social media and determine a clear policy.
•    Build reputation management guidelines into a franchise agreement.
•    Reputation in a specific territory should be managed by master franchisors.
•    Protect trademarks.
•    Set up confidentiality guidelines and an internal support network.

With a team of experts continually building and monitoring a brand’s online reputation – and remaining poised to jump to its rescue should a crisis arise – a franchise system will be ready to cope with any situation the internet can present it with.