Social media and brand awareness creates unique problems for a franchisee system, the well understood division of national and local advertising has to be revisited.
One important question is: should every franchisee own a website for local marketing purposes?
Michael Seid, a well known franchisor consultant and Board member for of the International Association of Franchisors, speaking for his franchisor clients, argues on Linkedin, that franchisees should not have the right to develop their own local content marketing program using a franchisee owned website.
Before a franchisee develops an independent website, they should review their franchise agreement to determine if they are allowed to.
Most well developed franchise systems would likely have some prohibition regarding a franchisee developing their own independent site.
However, many franchisors do provide the franchisee with a customizable site linked through the franchisor's website.
Even if the agreement does not discuss an independent web presence for its franchisees, a franchisee should discuss this with their franchisor to determine if the franchisor has any policy regarding this.
(Most of MSA's clients have such a policy and I do not believe any allow the franchisee to set up an independent site, for a host of reasons, although some do provide the franchisee with a customizable web presence.)