Navigating Social Media Strategy for Multilocation Businesses: Is Hyperlocal Social The Right Solution?

Multilocation businesses face unique challenges in structuring their social media presence. With multiple physical locations, these companies must balance brand consistency, local relevance, and resource management. This article explores various approaches to social media strategy for multilocation businesses:

Single Brand Account with Location-Specific Content

Regional Accounts by DMA or Geographic Area

Individual Accounts for Every Location

The attainability of managing multiple social media accounts depends mainly on your organization’s resources and commitment. Consider staff availability, content creation capabilities, and engagement management. ROI can be challenging to measure for localized social media efforts. Still, key metrics include engagement rates, follower growth, website traffic from social media, in-store visits attributed to social media, and local sales correlated with social media activity.

Let’s examine the pros and cons of each method and offer insights to help determine the most effective strategy for your organization.

Option 1: Single Brand Account with Location-Specific Content

One approach is maintaining a single, central social media account for the entire business while using hashtags, geotags, or other identifiers to distinguish content for specific locations or regions.

This method offers easier brand consistency maintenance and centralized management of content and engagement. It also leads to a consolidated follower base, potentially resulting in higher overall engagement and more efficient use of resources. However, it may lack local flavor and personalization, making it challenging to build strong local communities. Additionally, content for specific locations may get lost for followers interested in particular areas.

Option 2: Regional Accounts by Geographic Region

Another strategy involves creating separate accounts for different geographic regions, such as Designated Market Areas (DMAs) or other logical divisions.

This approach allows for more targeted, regionally relevant content and can build stronger regional communities. It’s also easier to manage than individual location accounts. On the downside, it requires more resources than a single central account and may lead to inconsistencies in brand messaging across regions. There’s also potential for confusion among customers in border areas between regions.

Option 3: Individual Accounts for Every Location

The most granular approach is to create separate social media accounts for each physical location.

While this method offers highly personalized, location-specific content and the potential to build strong local communities, it’s highly resource-intensive to manage. There’s a high risk of brand inconsistency, and it isn’t easy to maintain quality across all accounts. Additionally, individual locations may struggle with low follower counts and engagement.

Platform-Specific Multilocation Approaches

Some social media platforms offer features that can help multilocation businesses manage their presence more effectively:

Facebook: Allows creation of location pages under a main brand page, making it easier to manage multiple locations.

Instagram: Offers location tagging and the ability to switch between multiple accounts easily.

X: Allows for creation of lists, which can be used to organize tweets by location or region.

LinkedIn: Provides company page features allowing showcase pages, which could be used for different locations or regions.

Tools for Multilocation Social Media Management

Several tools can help streamline social media management for multilocation businesses:

Agorapulse: Offers social media management tools with features like shared calendars, team collaboration, and social listening, which can be particularly useful for tracking location-specific mentions.

Hootsuite: Offers a comprehensive platform for managing multiple social media accounts across various platforms. It includes features like team collaboration, content scheduling, and analytics.

Sendible: Designed for agencies and multi-location businesses, Sendible offers features like custom workflows, team collaboration, and white-label reporting.

SOCi: Specializes in localized marketing solutions, offering features like local listing management, review management, and social media content distribution across multiple locations.

Sprout Social: Provides robust social media management capabilities, including content calendar planning, engagement tracking, and reporting. It also offers location-specific tagging for content.

These tools can help businesses maintain consistency across locations, allowing for localized content and engagement. They often provide centralized dashboards for managing multiple accounts, scheduling tools for coordinated content distribution, and analytics to track performance across different locations or regions.

©2024 DK New Media, LLC, All rights reserved.

Originally Published on Martech Zone: Navigating Social Media Strategy for Multilocation Businesses: Is Hyperlocal Social The Right Solution?