In a recent blog post about the Franchise Update conference in Atlanta, franchise expert Joe Mathews comment that the attitude of franchisors has shifted from ‘I don’t think social media works,’ to ‘my social media approach isn’t working.”

Attendees at FranCamp 2011 in Nashville

He’s spot on.

Most franchisors realize that they need to leverage social media, have a desire to and simply lack an understanding of what is really working.

This was the reason for FranCamp, a one-day social media camp for the franchise industry. Give people the recipe for what works and show them how to get better results and the franchise industry as a whole will improve.

By all accounts, the first FranCamp in Nashville was a success. During the event, there were 1,100 tweets that generated over 2.4 Million twitter impressions on Saturday alone.

Here are some important points from the event:

1. Content driven websites are now the norm. If you think of your brand or franchise development website as an online brochure or teaser to get someone to fill out a form, you’ve already missed the boat. Customers and potential franchise buyers do significant amounts of research online and to get their attention, you have to publish a LOT more content than most companies in franchising are accustomed to. Best tip: build your franchise websites around a blog so you can more easily publish trust building content. Look hard at using WordPress as your CMS to drive your website.

2. Organic Search is now one of the largest sources of leads. Since people are looking online to do more research than ever before, smart companies are targeting organic search phrases by the hundreds and are using a business blog to publish real and helpful content that both targets the key phrase and answers a searcher’s query. Social mentions are replacing inbound links and page rank is no longer an important metric.

3. Local is better on Facebook. Don’t want your franchisees to have local facebook pages? Too bad – facebook has already setup local pages for all businesses that mirror Yelp and Google Places. If you don’t claim your Facebook place pages, users can post content and like your page without your input. This amounts to true social negligence! Giving local franchisees corporate controlled or designed local fan pages is now the norm and if you choose to go another route, you’ll just miss out on engaging local customers.

4. Twitter is 90% about others and 10% about you. Twitter works for franchising. It is one of the easiest platforms to build up real relationships. Don’t use twitter just to push out content (although it works for that) – use it to follow local businesses and people. Engage them in conversations and be authentic online. If you are monitoring your brand, respond in a friendly but not creepy way to anyone who posts. Be visible.

5. Social Loyalty works. Social Loyalty is the concept of taking your point of sale system and using it to incent your repeat customers to become social marketers for your brand. Instead of punch cards, use a swipe card that checks people in on foursquare and facebook and posts approved messages with trackable coupons to their social networks. This drives repeat business since customers purchase more when they receive free items and the coupons draw in friends.

Missed Francamp? Here are some links to review

FranCamp site: www.fransocialcamp.com
You can find the Tweets:  here
BlogTalkRadio -” What Happened At FranCamp”  with guests BJ Emerson, Alissa
Don’t forget to take the survey (http://fransocialcamp.com/where-is-the-next-francamp/) and vote for the next city that FranCamp travels to.

At the end of an information-rich and very valuable day at FranCamp Nashville 2011 on Saturday, I tweeted this about the top three lessons I got from it:

1. It’s 90% about them, 10% you.
2. You don’t sell. They buy.
3. Engage. Engage. Engage.

Here’s what I meant:

It’s 90 percent about them, 10 percent about you. This came from Engage 121 Vice President Jack Monson’s terrific presentation on Twitter strategies. The beauty of Jack’s presentation on Twitter was that it had lessons you can apply to all social media — and, really, to all business.

Joe Mathews of Franchise Performance Group speaking about the role of content in franchise development

He laid out 10 “best tactics.” Some were head-smackingly, duh-caliber obvious (but business owners don’t always do them): Say hi. Use a tweet to ask a relevant question. Follow everyone who follows you.

But the one that hit home for me was: Ninety percent of your Twitter content should address your customers’ interests, lifestyles and needs, and only 10 percent should be about you and what you’re selling (“We have a great promotion this month on …”).

This resonated for me because it’s counter-intuitive (it is to me, anyway). If you’re trying to sell something, your inclination is to offer someone a product or service, make a case on why the customer needs it and convince the person that it’s a good value for the price.

But that’s the wrong approach.

A better way is to know your customer base well enough to continually funnel relevant information to them, and to position yourself as an authority on that information. Take a look at the Engage 121 Twitter feed. You won’t find much traditional “promotion.” You will find a lot of information and routes to learn more.

That’s the game. Jack said he’s heard people lay out the ratio at 80-20. He thinks that’s not wide enough. I think Jack may be lowballing it. It might be 95-5.

You don’t sell. They buy. This is related to Jack’s point, and it came from Joe Mathews, the knowledgeable founding partner of Franchise Performance Group.

Joe talked about the psychology of selling, how people don’t really buy products but the vision they have of their lives with the product worked into it. It might seem like a subtle distinction, but it’s critical. It relates to addressing your customer’s needs rather than pitching your product. When it comes to social media, especially for helping sell new franchise units, this is an area where most franchise systems misfire.

In other words: Your pitching and persuasive skills don’t matter nearly as much as your customers’ perception of what they need, which is seldom rational. You haven’t sold anything until they’ve bought. To get people to buy, you have to deliver valuable content, which was Thomas Scott’s blogging for business main point: out there, there are people who want what you have to sell. If you publish a stream of content on your business blog, you can get better organic search ranking and be the expert to answer questions people have about your brand. If you don’t, people are human and they’ll make up a worst case scenario about your brand.

Engage. Engage. Engage. There’s no substitute for this.

This came from just about every presenter in one sense or another, but AK Stout of Saying It Social really hammered this point home: When people make comments on your business’ Facebook page, you have to answer them. You just have to. To not answer comments is in some ways worse than not having a Facebook page.

Jack Monson hit this, too, in his presentation on Twitter: The way to turn a customer into a devoted customer is to build a relationship with them, and the easiest way to build a relationship is to quickly acknowledge their concerns or compliments and show you’ve heard what they’ve had to say (as long as their comments aren’t abusive or obscene).

Jack talked about being snowed in at a hotel once and FB-messaging back and forth with a staff member, fun stuff referencing “The Shining.” (“All work and no play,” etc.) Jack “liked” the hotel. The hotel didn’t reciprocate. What an opportunity lost for the hotel. They missed a chance to start a very productive relationship.

The day was FULL of really specific and helpful information that any franchise – any business owner for that matter – could immediately use. How to do business blogging for franchise lead generation, how to use linkedin for networking, how to engage franchisees in social media, how to tap into social loyalty programs and one very helpful session on what’s new in organic SEO filled out a day that I can’t imagine anyone missing.

The great thing about all those social media tips is that they apply across the social media and communications spectrum. Tech or no tech, they’re good, basic rules for any kind of social interaction. Listen. Pay more attention to the other person’s need than your own. Have genuine give-and-take. It works.

Expect a FranCamp to come to your city – the conversations on Saturday are just too valuable.

Greg Lacour is a Charlotte-based journalist and freelance writer who blogs for businesses.