Social Media for a Corporation ??????

I do social media for a few companies and many of the employees truly do not understand how to use the sites. And they don't want to take the time to learn. Plus they do not know how to use them effectively. I imagine this could easily be the case with your franchisees.

So my suggestion would be to have ONE Facebook, Myspace etc for all the sites. Let the franchisees contribute tidbits and info. as desired to one social media person who will then post it. You can encourage this activity by having contests ie most blog posts etc.
I would suggest one main Twitter and letting everyone grab their own Twitter also so they can retweet as desired and add more tweets to get the buzz going.

Do not let them post the information on the sites like Facebook, Friendster, Orkut, etc. as then you lose control of the password and who knows what can happen. In addition sites like Facebook are quick to delete and/or block members who over use their "wall" and yet they do not spell out what is overuse. So you totally cannot have your franchisees running your social media sites as they may not be fully versed in the TOS, you could get deleted, hacked etc.

You can however encourage them to set up their own Personal sites if they wish where they can re-post about how great the company is, re-tweet the company tweets and do other things to encourage interaction and promotion.

If you need professional help with your sites feel free to PM me.