Author Archives: Brian Geyser
BrightStar Launches “CareTogether” Online Service
Back in 2010, we featured BrightStar Care’s social media prowess in this interview. It was clear then that BrightStar understood the power of social technology to bring people together. So I wasn’t surprised when I saw this article on Mashable showcasing BrightStars newest social technology venture – an online care tool called “CareTogether” that helps family and friends coordinate the care of a loved one with features like Care Team List, Appointment Calendars, Tasks Lists, and Online Journal.
The brilliance of this tool for BrightStar is that they offer the tool for free to anyone, even if you’re not a BrightStar customer. This puts the BrightStar brand in front of non-customers who may need BrightStar’s services and offers these prospects a powerful tool that provides real value. Customers get the added bonus of being able to integrate the tool into BrightStar’s scheduling system – allowing them to better manage care appointments.
The tool is similar to Lotsa Helping Hands and Cozy, both of which are also free. Here’s a video explaining the tool:
Grammar Goofs for Health Care Bloggers [INFOGRAPHIC]
If your (ha ha) a blogger for your company, it’s importnat to know how to right (ha ha). Making grammer mistakes can make you, and you’re (ha ha) company look, well, foolish. Here’s a great info graphic with some common mistakes to avoid. Enjoy!
Senior Living Websites and Social Integration
When Will Senior Living Websites Evolve?
Senior living communities are very social places, so it would stand to reason that senior living companies would want to showcase some of the social aspects of their communities on their website.
Many senior living companies use a Facebook Page as an online community for residents, staff, and family members, but most don’t integrate that Facebook Page into their websites. Why not? The standard way senior living companies demonstrate their presence on Facebook is by placing a small Facebook icon on their homepage, but who really ever clicks on those?
Why not entice people to visit your Facebook Page by embedding a small section of the actual page right into your website’s homepage using Facebook Social Plugins instead?
When we sat down recently with the folks at Meadow Ridge, a premier Continuing Care Retirement Community in Connecticut, to develop a strategy for their new website, we made the case for building social integration right into the design.
Meadow Ridge is an amazingly vibrant place with a beautiful campus, state-of-the-art facilities, a talented leadership team, and, most importantly, a lively community of residents, staff, and family members. But their website was an outdated and static digital brochure with no ability for site visitors to get a real sense of the place, a feel for the community, or to engage with the company through modern social channels.
So, among many of the strategic design elements we built into the site, we embedded their Facebook Page right into the homepage.
The plugin gives the page a dynamic social feel and shows that the company has real fans who love them, not stock images of fake seniors spouting canned marketing messages. Check out the site and let us know what you think.
If you’re interested in a new strategic social design for your website, contact us. We’d be glad to help.
CareNetworks Blog Nominated Again for “Best of the Web” 2012
Despite the fact that it’s been a while since we posted here (we have posted a bunch to our Facebook Page more recently), SeniorHomes.com has nominated us as Best Senior Living Industry Resource for 2012. So why does the CareNetworks Blog deserve such recognition? Maybe it’s because we’re the only resource on the web dedicated to covering the convergence of senior living and social media. Or, maybe it’s because we gladly share industry-specific tips, case studies, and best practices with so you so your business can flourish on the social web. Or, maybe it’s because since August of 2009, long before social media was a player in the industry, we have been posting exclusive groundbreaking articles such as:
- What Every LTC Organization Needs to Know About Their Website
- Social Media and HIPAA: What You Need to Know
- How Senior Living & Eldercare Companies Can Build a Winning Social Media Team
Whatever the reason, we want to thank the good folks at SeniorHomes.com for nominating us, and thank you for voting for us (which you can do here).
So what’s in store for 2012 besides hopefully winning this awesome award? Well we’ve been busy helping senior living, home care, LTC and hospice companies around the country tap into the power of updating their websites and adding social media to the mix, and we’ll have some great real-life stories to tell in the coming months, so stay tuned.
Silverado Senior Living and the ROI of 24/7 Chat
I’ve been watching what Silverado Senior Living has been doing with social media for a while now, and I’ve always been a big fan of the company and the services they provide. So when I moderated a round table discussion on Social Media for Senior Living at LTC LINK in Chicago last week, I was excited that Nancy Convertito, Regional Director for Sales & Marketing for Silverado Senior Living, Hospice, and At-Home, was at the table. Nancy shared some interesting stats about Silverado’s innovative 24/7 Chat Line featured on their website. First, let me explain how it works:
When you land on Silverado’s website, a window pops up that asks if you would like to chat with live professional to get answers to your questions right now. Here’s an image of the pop-up…
If you click “yes,” you are immediately connected to a person who can answer your questions, even at 2AM when you can’t sleep because you’re trying to figure out what to do with your mother who is unsafely living at home with moderate-stage dementia. If you click “no,” the pop-up disappears and you are free to navigate the company’s website. You can also call call a toll-free number to chat with a Silverado representative about your issues 24/7.
Now, I’m not a big fan of pop-ups on any website, but this one is pretty benign, not obnoxious, and gives site visitors the ability to quickly get rid of it if they don’t want to use it. Plus, the value proposition to a site visitor is pretty compelling: find exactly what I need right now with the help of a real human being vs. spend 20 minutes looking around a website with no guarantee I’ll find what I’m looking for.
But here’s the most compelling part: Nancy shared that the Chat Line paid for itself in 7 months. Since January 2011, 350 inquiries have come through the Chat Line and 10% of those inquiries converted.
So why are so many people who visit Silverado’s website using the Chat Line? It’s because many family caregivers who are looking for the type of services Silverado offers don’t have time to futz around on a big company website. They need answers, and they need them now. They need solutions to their problems, and they want them yesterday. The Chat Line gives site visitors this option. And it’s clearly paying off for Silverado.
But this story illuminates another very important issue for the vast majority of senior living, long-term care, homecare and hospice providers (detailed in this 2009 post): your websites are obsolete, outdated, and totally ineffective. The Silverado Chat Line story shows that if you provide your site visitors with a more human experience, easy access to the information they need, and resources designed to help them make informed decisions, you will gain customers.
Your website should be strategically designed to do 4 things:
- Attract new visitors
- Inform site visitors
- Engage site visitors
- Create business value by converting site visitors to customers
The 24/7 Chat Line is helping Silverado do all of the above. Kudos to Nancy and the Silverado crew for innovating “next practices” and sharing their results with us.
To learn more about how CareNetworks call help your organization create an amazing online presence, contact us. We design and build websites and provide social media strategy and solutions to senior living, LTC, homecare, and hospice providers.
What is Google Plus and Do I Need it? [VIDEO]
There’s a lot of buzz around Google’s new social network, Google Plus (Google+). But what the heck is it and do you really need it? Does your company need it? At this stage the jury is still out, but if you want a quick and entertaining overview of the latest social media platform, here’s a video for you. I’ve been using it for about a month now and, so far, I’m liking it better than Facebook. To join me on Google Plus, click here.
YouTube Makes Senior Living Community Very Cool [VIDEO]
Just discovered this from the Ecumen Changing Aging Blog. These guys deserve an Oscar.
Meet ePatient Dave [VIDEO]
A fun, inspiring, heartfelt story about how social technology is empowering patients.
When Dave deBronkart learned he had a rare and terminal cancer, he turned to a group of fellow patients online — and found the medical treatment that saved his life. Now he calls on all patients to talk with one another, know their own health data, and make health care better one e-Patient at a time. The tide is turning….
The Cost Of Social Media in Health Care [INFOGRAPHIC]
Last year, I wrote a post called, “7 Things Every Senior Living, Home Care, and LTC Provider Wants to Know About Social Media.” One of things covered in that post is cost. Every health care provider executive is concerned about cost and ROI. If you want a basic overview of what a social media program might cost your organization, Mack Collier has a great post on this called, “How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2011?”
I also stumbled upon this infographic which gives a nice overview of costs and benefits of social media for business, and while the numbers below seem to be based on large corporations, you get a sense of the elements that make up a social media program and their associated costs. To get a better idea what an enhanced web presence or social media program will cost your organization, contact us. We’re happy to give you the skinny without a sales pitch;-)
Is Your Senior Care Company Old School? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Is your company flexible, agile, innovative, and efficient? Are your workers empowered, authentic, connected, engaged, self-sufficient, and inspired? These are generally not the adjectives one thinks of when it comes to the health care or senior care industries. If I had to venture a guess, I would bet your home care company, senior living company, hospice organization, or long-term care company falls more into the left column below. If not, tell us about your organization and why it can be classified as “New Workstyle.” Share your stories with us. And thanks to Gist for a great infographic.
Let Your Customers Share Their Stories on Facebook
We continue to see social media superstars emerge from Children’s Hospital Boston. Here’s why they are simply the best in the business…
So, is your organization encouraging families to tell their stories on your Facebook Page? It’s all about the stories. Give them a platform to share their stories and it will serve you well.
Healthcare Social Media 2011 [VIDEO]
Just had to post this video. The latest in the series from Erik Qualman…
Feed Your Facebook: Tips for Managing Your Social Media Presence in a Time-Starved World
This post originally appeared on the Elder Pages Online Blog and is authored by Tasha Beauchamp, MSc. Tasha is the Webmaster and Research Scientist for Elder Pages Online, a company specializing in Internet marketing for hospice and geriatric care managers.The big concern about Facebook and other social media tools is that they take time.
Indeed, the purpose of a Fan page, blog or Twitter account is to develop relationships and community with your fans, subscribers and followers. Just as it takes time to have meaningful conversations, it takes time to create engaging posts. And you don’t develop trust and rapport by simply talking about yourself. Like any good friend, you need to be giving out at least as much energy as you are taking in.
You need to regularly offer content that inspires or educates your target audience. According to an ExactTarget social marketing study:
- 38% of Fans will UNLIKE you because your posts are boring or repetitive
- 24% of Fans will UNLIKE you because your posts are too self-promotional
Even as a non-profit, if your hand is always out asking for money or time, more than you are giving away information and useful resources, you will lose followers.
So how do successful social marketers create engaging content in a manageable amount of time? They become “Content Curators.” Because social networking is essentially distinguishing yourself through your content, you need to care for your social presence like a curator cares for an exhibit at a museum. (Facebook has sometimes been called “The Museum of the Self.” This makes the content curator analogy even more appropriate.)
The curator draws together pieces of art from different sources, each one a gem, and assembles them into an exhibit that as a whole inspires the visitors, draws crowds, and promotes membership to the museum. There is also a very practical side to curation: While the exhibit requires creativity, the curator does need to work within a budget and timeline.
It is the same for curating a social media site. Posts are assembled from a variety of sources, working together to create a whole that inspires and educates visitors, generates leads, and promotes LIKES, follows or subscribers. And it must all be done within a budget and timeline.
To accomplish their goals, successful social marketers follow some basic rules of thumb:
- Choose a target audience and identify keywords/categories of interest to this group
- Create a plan and work the plan
- Post on a regular basis
- Make 80% of the posts educational/inspirational to viewers (only 20% about yourself)
As an elder care professional, I would suggest that your target audience is family caregivers. Boomers are starting to robustly embrace Facebook. (According to Pew Internet data, approximately 33% of middle-age individuals are now using social networks).
Determine a list of topics that will be of interest to Boomer daughters and sons. In the realm of family caregiving, this would mean posts pertaining to the care of elders. But it also means presenting information to help manage the stress and challenges of being a family caregiver. Dementia, paying for care, and tips for handling daily life with chronic or serious conditions are just some of the many posts that would be welcomed by family caregivers.
Create a Content Calendar. According to Daniel Zarella, author of The Facebook Marketing Book, you want to plan and compose your posts ahead of time. Create a calendar so you will know what you will post on each day of the coming week. Give yourself a specific time each week to get in the social media headset, to think like a curator, and compose the next week’s posts. For truly thoughtful posts, it’s much easier to do several at once than to try spontaneously each day to say something meaningful when you are in a rush to meet other deadlines.
- Facebook status updates have 420 characters (not counting any web addresses you link to)
- Blogs typically have 300-1000 words, depending on how often you post
- Twitter has a 140 character limit per tweet
Post consistently. You must get in the habit of regularly making meaningful posts. Each channel has a culture of its own with an expected frequency:
- Facebook: once a day
- Blogging: 1-5 times a week
- Twitter: 3-5/day
Many people find it easiest to set a specific time aside each day to do the actual posting. (You can use automated programs, but these rank lower on the search results than posts that are submitted manually.) On a rushed day, you can simply copy/paste the text from your Content Calendar. But because this is the social network, you also want to respond to comments made on previous posts and take time to look at your News Feed and make meaningful contributions to conversations happening on the pages of allied businesses. If you are seen only to broadcast out and not to engage with others, you will quickly fall in the category of “marketing to” your audience rather than creating community and “marketing with them.”
Find content that is educational and inspirational. This is the part that takes time. You want to be sure you are posting across a wide range of topics. You also want to vary your content across the categories and keywords you identified earlier in the planning process.
Where do you find content? A recent survey of 150 marketers across many segments of the business world revealed that:
- 73% value original content, but are challenged by the time it takes to develop it
- 57% use a mix of original posts and third party content
Following the 80:20 rule, successful social marketers tend to use links to other materials for the majority of their posts, adding their own comments for flavor and personality. They save their time and creative energies for that 20% that is about them, where they can really fine tune the call to action (join our list, sign up for our webinar, come to our event, donate to our cause…). In this way, they are able to give their social networking presence the best chance of delivering a return on the investment.
Remember, a key business function of social networking is to generate leads and move people toward action that allows you to engage with them in a more personal way.
A study by Idealware indicated that companies need to spend at least 2 hours/week per social media channel in order to feel it was worth the effort. Companies that spent less than 2 hours a week were generally dissatisfied with the results. Those that spent 9-20 hours per week total, usually working across many channels (e.g., Facebook, Twitter and blogging) seemed to be the most satisfied.
You can conserve time by wisely leveraging the content of others. Mimic the workflow of successful social networkers. Link liberally and paraphrase or make commentary on the work of others. Tons of information already exists. You do not need to re-invent the wheel. You simply need to be smart about finding the info and then adding your own personality to the mix.
To learn more, visit the Elder Pages Online Blog, or Contact Us.
How Modern Social and Contextual Search Will Change Your Search Experience
I don’t know about you but I’m starting to like some of the things Google is doing to search. These days when I go to search for something, it’s almost as if Google knows who I am and where I’m at. The results are becoming eerily specific to my needs. In the old days (about a year ago), when I searched for “ice cream Durham,” Google would pull up a million irrelevant links about ice and cream and Durham North Carolina. Today, when I do the same search, Google gives me “Durham Dairy Serve” located in Durham, CT. Wow. that’s exactly what I was looking for! How did they do that? Does Google know that I live in Durham, Connecticut and I was looking for the phone number to Durham Dairy Serve? The answer is most likely YES.
The specificity of search these days is in part due to advances in social and contextual search. What does that mean and how does it apply to health care, home care, long-term care, or senior living? Let me give you an example:
Let’s say a prospective client is searching for “assisted living communities North Carolina”. In older versions of search, she would find a ton of links to anything related to “assisted living” and “North Carolina.” She would certainly find links to an overwhelming number of assisted living facilities, their homepage, address, phone number, and maybe a rating. In new iterations of search, she will find assisted living communities located right near her along with their address and a map, a view of their recent photos on Facebook, activity calendars, and the option to contact the facility directly, see their ranking on Yelp and CitySearch —along with photos, tweets, what your friends may have said about them in your private social networks, and a quick and simple way to compare them with other similar facilities in North Carolina.
The bottom line is that health care companies need to be paying close attention to their entire web presence (website, social sites, external ratings and reviews sites) because this is what people are going to discover when they search. If your website is out of date, if you have no social presence or one that is dormant, and if you have ratings and reviews out there that you don’t even know about – all of it can bite you when that prospective client finds you on a search engine these days.
New search technologies will most certainly make our lives easier, AND they will create great challenges and opportunities for companies who want to attract and impress a new breed of web savvy customers.
CAN Social Media and HIPAA Webinar [SLIDES]
For those of you interested in the slides from the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits Webinar today, you can download them on our Facebook Page. We’re having some trouble with our blog functionality at the moment. I’ll post to the blog once we get things fix. While your there, become a fan by liking the Page. Thanks;-)
Update:
We are now fixed. Here are the slides. Enjoy.
Healthcare Social Networks: What is the ROI of Love? [VIDEO]
Just wanted to share this. At e-Patient Connections 2010, Susannah Fox of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project presented data on the online activity of those with chronic disease. Called “healthcare out loud”, she discusses the huge amount of support people can obtain from these online interactions and asks the question: “What’s the ROI of love?” Great topic. Excellent talk.
Children’s Hospitals Innovating on Facebook. Others, Not So Much [STUDY]
A new study published by Verasoni, a New York based marketing and PR firm, shows that among hospitals, it’s the ones caring for kids that are kicking butt on Facebook. According to the study, children’s hospitals are building community, engaging and partnering with patients and developing lasting relationships with families on THE social network faster and better than their adult counter parts. In fact, the study concludes that most hospitals are not taking advantage of the opportunities Facebook provides to build their brands and advance their mission and business objectives. The authors also argue that hospitals that do not begin to engage on the social web risk falling behind their younger patients, doctors, and nurses who were practically born with social media in their DNA.
Here are some other key findings from the study:
- Hospital Facebook Pages tend to have a high degree of interaction between the hospital and members
- Members frequently connect with other members facing similar challenges
- Members share stories of hope and struggle – using the Page like a virtual support group
- Activities ranged from patients and their families posting videos of their experiences at the hospital that demonstrated the quality of care they were receiving to how nurses, physicians or staff helped patients during their stay at the hospital
- Activity by parents in support of the hospital was high
- Members posted questions and concerns – giving the hospitals public-facing customer service opportunies
- Facebook also allowed children’s hospitals themselves the opportunity to broadcast their accomplishments to a targeted audience that believe in the work they are doing
- Patients remained engaged on the Facebook Pages long after discharge
Major Business Implications
Facebook and other social media outlets offer visitors insights into an organization’s culture and brand experience. The brand promise shines through on these emerging customer touch points. How a Facebook Page is organized, what the Page looks like, the types of messages posted, the frequency and recency of postings, and the tone of the dialog all convey certain messages about the company (positive, negative, neutral) to the visitors. There are clear business implications here. Companies can appear warm, caring, sophisticated, engaged, open, and transparent, OR, uncaring, uninterested, distant, and self-centered based on how their Facebook Page is perceived by visitors.
Industry Examples
Here are some examples of great Facebook Pages from different healthcare industry segments:
- Children’s Hospital Boston
- Emeritus Senior Living
- Catholic Healthcare West Careers
- North Shore LIJ Health System
- Aurora Health Care
If you know of other healthcare, hospital, senior living, LTC, home care, or hospice company Facebook Pages worthy of recognition, I would love to know about them. Please share in the comments below.
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Join the CareNetworks Facebook Page to keep up to speed on emerging social technology issues related to the health and senior care industries.
Contact us to learn about how we can help your company kick butt on the social web.
New Healthcare Tool: Social Networking [SLIDESHARE]
Just wanted to share this article from the February 2011 edition of Indiana Nurses Quarterly. I’m interviewed for the article discussing HIPAA and social media; and CareNetworks is featured. Enjoy.
Can Facebook Revolutionize Heathcare?
Facebook by the Numbers
We’ve seen Facebook’s ability to help spark revolutions in distant lands, but how can Facebook help to revolutionize the health care, senior living, home care, and long-term care industries? Let’s do some math. About 50% of Facebook’s 650 million active users sign on to the site in any given day and they rack up about 700 billion minutes a month of posting, poking, liking, sharing, clicking, researching, learning, purchasing, and interacting with friends, family, companies, and organizations. The average Facebooker is connected to 130 people and 80 community pages, groups and events – and shares about 90 pieces of content (links, videos, photos, etc.) each month. Booomers and seniors are the fastest growing demographic on Facebook and they spend about 60 hours per month online. More than half of adult women routinely participate on social networks at least weekly and healthcare-related activity is something 90-100% of people across every generation engage in on a regular basis.
Now, if you want a great example of how these numbers play out in the real world, Children’s Hospital Boston (a health care social media powerhouse) has over 510,000 fans on their main Facebook page, giving them a potential reach of at least 66.3 million people (510K fans x 130 friends per fan) every day.
Facebook Is No Print Ad
Facebook is a place where people go to hangout, browse around, connect, and communicate. But, unlike old-style websites, radio ads, print ads, and mailers, Facebook is loaded with “hot triggers” or calls-to-action – items visitors can click on and do something with immediately (view a video, check out a photo gallery, play a game, accept a new friend into their network, or “like” a company Page). How many times have you opened up your personal Facebook page to read a message from a friend, and you end up spending the next 20 minutes looking at stuff you never intended on? This happens tens of millions of times each day to hundreds of millions of people. And, it’s almost all trackable. Pretty powerful stuff.
Facebook Empowers Healthcare Companies
So, what can health care, senior living, home care and LTC companies do with a Facebook Page? First, and foremost, they can cultivate community around their brand. Check out how Emeritus Senior Living nurtures a community of over 2,700 Facebook fans on their Page. Emeritus allows and encourages peer-to-peer interactions, one of the eight success criteria for Facebook Page marketing. The result is a flurry of word-of-mouth marketing for Emeritus from customers, prospects, and employees. Marketing that costs the company nothing – except the time to monitor and manage the Page.
Next, companies can provide unlimited support and resources to customers and prospects. Children’s Hospital Boston (CHB) has 16 Facebook Pages in addition to their main page. Each Page is another customer touch point and gives CHB an opportunity to provide targeted support to different groups with unique challenges or similar interests. Their Generation Cures Page empowers children around the world to help cure sick kids through online and community fund raising, digital media, music, and more. Their Celiac Support Group Page helps kids and families learn how to live healthy and happy gluten-free lives through engaging educational content. While not Facebook, websites like PatientsLikeMe, which offers people with specific diseases a place to connect with others like them, or Lotsa Helping Hands, which provides free online communities for caregivers to coordinate the care of a loved one, show that empowering social networks through social technology can have a significant impact on patient/caregiver experience as well as healthcare delivery.
Finally, companies can enhance their recruiting efforts by offering Facebook Pages dedicated to employment, like Catholic Healthcare West does, or a Career Center right on their main Page, like St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center does. Catholic healthcare West has over 5,700 fans on their Careers Page alone.
So, can Facebook, and other social networks and social media sites revolutionize healthcare? I would argue that the revolution has already begun. From the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media to the Assisted Living Federation of America’s online community, to Twitter’s #HCSM, #RNChat, and #MDChat, there are countless examples of how social technology is slowing changing the healthcare landscape.
How about you? Tell us what you think?
Like This Post? Here Are More Like It…
- How Emeritus Senior Living Tames the Social Media Beast [INTERVIEW]
- Social Media Makes Cover of Long-Term Living Magazine
- How Senior Living, LTC, and Home Care Companies Can Avoid the Online Community Ghost Town
Stay Up To Date and Get Connected. Join Our Facebook Community for More In-Depth Conversation and a Bit of Fun:)
2011 Home Care 100 Conference Social Media Slides
Will This LTC Company Video Go Viral? [VIDEO]
Connie Bessler, CEO of Greystone Healthcare Management, and one of my favorite LTC executives, understands the power of social media to inform, educate, inspire, and entertain a community with a common purpose. Connie and her team from Greystone’s 27 skilled rehab communities just published a YouTube video called, The Go Red Dance, to increase awareness about heart health and commemorate American Hearth Health Month. Connie’s goal is to get at least 10,000 views on YouTube by the end of the month. Let’s help her make that goal and then some. Check out the video and share it with all your friends. Nice job folks.
CareNetworks Is Now On WordPress (And So Can You!)
Okay, the title was inspired by Steven Colbert’s book. Anyway, for the past two years, the CareNetworks website was running on the HubSpot platform. Well, times have changed. Thanks to our WordPress Development Wizard, Colby Wright, the site is now operating on WordPress, the most popular open source content management system (CMS) and blogging platform in the world. We’ve been setting up our clients on WordPress and they love it, so why would we not use it ourselves? Colby did an amazing job migrating the site and all of it’s contents over to WordPress and the site looks just as good, if not better, than before. Plus, we have 10 times the functionality.
WordPress is an amazingly powerful publishing platform and can handle websites for any size enterprise. Best part, it’s free. Yes, free. You still have to pay for design, development and hosting, but the platform itself is free (unlike HubSpot which was costing us $3K per year). WordPress is also very easy to use, is great for SEO, and allows you to manage all of your site’s content on your own. It’s really a no-brainer.
If you’re interested in migrating your existing site like we did, or you’re due for a new site all together, drop us a line. We can help.
AARP Promotes Social Media for Boomers [VIDEO]
Alright, you be the judge. AARP or CareNetworks for best social media video. First ours…
Now Theirs…
I’m thinkin we’ve got ‘em beat. What say you?
Follow The Home Care 100 Conference on Twitter
The Home Care 100 Executive Management Conference is an exclusive annual event attended by some of the top home care and hospice companies in the country and brightest minds in the industry. It is being held February 13-15, 2011 at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California this year. I’ll be presenting at the closing general session on how social media is being used in home care and hospice and how social technologies can and will transform industry marketing and communications practices in the coming years. While only 100 companies can attend this event, anyone can follow all the happenings and join the discussions on Twitter using hashtag #HCare100. You can also follow Lincoln Healthcare Events, the company that runs Home Care 100, on Twitter here.
If you’re a home care or hospice professional and you’re on Twitter, don’t miss this opportunity to virtually attend and participate in this exciting event!
Seabury Retirement Community Talks Social Media
This post is part of our Social Media Success Series, which features interviews with innovative and fearless socially networked senior living, home care, and LTC companies that are achieving positive business results using media and other social technologies. To have your organization included in this series, contact us.
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Seabury is a premier New England retirment community that combines wellness, active lifestyle and healthcare on 66 acres in the Bloomfield Connecticut countryside. I recently connected with Courtenay Knox, Seabury’s Social Media Coordinator, who submitted this post.
Seabury has always been on the cutting edge of technology. We created our first webpage early on in the development of the “world wide web.” In fact, fellow organizations often ask us why our website is a “.com” rather than a “.org.” The reason for this is that Seabury developed its first website when the only domain available was “.com!”
With the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Media marketing, Seabury realized that to stay on top of our field we would have to move towards a more interactive and dynamic website. We wanted to be able to engage our audience with fresh content and pertinent, timely information on successful aging. We wanted to start a conversation with the world and let them know that Seabury is an expert on aging successfully. Historically, Seabury has always done this on a local level. We host experts in the field to present lectures to our residents, we publish articles in traditional print media, and we strive to offer services based on the most up-to-date research on successful aging. Because we have so much to offer our residents, why not share it with the world via our website, Twitter, Facebook, and blogging and more? And so began our journey towards social media.
Renee Bernasconi, Seabury’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications, knew that the key to launching a dynamic website would require daily maintenance. There would have to be a point person whose responsibility would be to write a blog and respond to comments, update Seabury’s Facebook status and send out informative “tweets.” This job would require someone with good writing and communications skills. Because Renee knew I had been writing Seabury’s monthly fitness bulletin for several years, she knew I had the skills necessary to write articles and cull valuable information that would be of interest to our audience. Thus the Social Media Coordinator position was born.
Renee and I began working with our IT company to develop a fully updated, user friendly, dynamic 2.0 web site. After many months of planning, the site was launched in mid-October 2010, and continues to grow. We consider the site to be a continually evolving entity as we further develop our tabs and constantly update content. Our home page has two “Latest News” tabs that are changed biweekly. We also have direct links to our Twitter and Facebook pages, both of which are updated on a daily basis, as well as links to our Flickr and YouTube sites. Also featured on our home page is a link to our blog: “We Know Aging.”
While our foray into Social Media is still in its infancy, we anticipate extended growth over the next few years as more and more people (especially those over 50) begin to accept social networking. We hope to establish a presence online by building a branded, customized blog, creating an exciting Facebook page, and attracting high-quality followers on Twitter. Ultimately, when consumers are searching the internet using key words such as “successful aging”, “active aging”, or “expert long term care”, we hope Seabury appears at the top of the fold.
In the meantime, we will continue to develop our site and create content as if we were receiving thousands of hits per day, so that when that day does come we are fully equipped to handle the volume!
Contact Information:
Courtenay Knox
200 Seabury Drive
Bloomfield, CT. 06002
Direct phone: 860-243-6007
Main phone: 860-286-0243
Toll free phone: 1-800-340-4709
Fax: 860-243-6072
courtenayknox@seaburyretirement.com
www.seaburyretirement.com
Like this post? Here are more like it:
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Need Help Building, Growing, or Managing Your Online Presence? Need a Speaker for an Upcoming Event? Hire The Guy Who Founded CareNetworks.
Brookdale Senior Living and Social Media: One Year Later [INTERVIEW]
Just over a year ago, I interviewed Eric Marsh over at Brookdale Senior Living for the post Nation’s Largest Senior Living Company Embraces Social Media. Because it’s one of our most popular posts, and I wanted to see how things have progressed since then, I contacted Eric to get some insights. Here’s what he had to say.
Q: How long have you guys been doing SM as a company?
We have been using social media for two years. We began with a single Facebook fan page, and have grown to what we have currently — two Facebook fan pages, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile and a Youtube channel.
Q: Now that you’ve been using social media for quite some time, what is your total “reach” on all of your social sites?
Her are our numbers:
13,000 e-mail subscribers
328 followers on Twitter
1,138 Facebook likes across our two fan pages
Q: Has there been any change in how your company social media accounts are managed? In other words, has your SM team grown or changed from 1 year ago? How?
Our team has grown. We added an additional person who helps us manage social media, among other things. Early in 2010 we added a Facebook page for our Ultimate Chef program. Then, during each Ultimate Chef America event we blog live with comments about the competition, photos and videos.
We also added Facebook recommend buttons to all of our pages. Doing this is just another way to get our messaging out and gives our users the ability to show their friends that they support Brookdale Senior Living.
Q: How much time is dedicated to your social media efforts now compared with 1 year ago?
It’s difficult to say exactly how much time we are spending for social media. An educated estimate would be a few hours a week. We are spending a bit more time on it this year since we are now managing the Ultimate Chef America fan page as well.
Q: Has your social strategy changed at all over the past year?
I wouldn’t say our strategy changed, we just have more to manage now, which shows growth and progression. Having the Facebook recommend buttons has been positive; we have been pleased with the results thus far.
Q: Do any of your local AL communities have their own social media accounts/blogs/etc.? If so, who manages them? Who monitors/moderates them?
Our corporate policy dictates that all social media be managed by the corporate office. We allow our communities to add content to our corporate pages, but we moderate it and control it.
We understand there is value in having separate accounts for our communities but since we are such a large corporation, we have challenges that many senior living companies don’t experience. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for us to manage 560 social media accounts.
Q: In our last interview, you mentioned that several of your communities were implementing MyWayVillage. Have you found that product to be useful? How?
Yes, in our initial pilot communities, we have found that Connected Living at Brookdale powered by MyWay Village is a resounding success. We have more than 45 percent engagement on the portal, the classes are some of the best attended, and the ambassadors provide high tech, high touch for our residents and families to live a connected life. The ability to stay socially connected is very important in the overall health and wellness of our residents.
Q: Have you been able to capture leads using social media? If so, provide some data and examples of how it works.
Through the last six months we have data that shows users connecting to our Web site through our Facebook pages and submitting lead information. Although it’s limited at this time, we are excited to see social media functioning as a lead generator.
Q: You mentioned in the last interview that you use social media for recruiting. How’s that going?
Our recruiting team continues an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The importance of social media in recruiting and networking continues to grow and challenge perceptions and opinions. Our social media policy, use, strategy and recruiting methodology continue to evolve with our learning and experience. As we continue to cultivate our use of social media, it will become a more important tool in the recruiters’ tool box as well.
Q: Have you been able to attribute any move-ins directly to SM? Do you have any data or comments on ROI?
We have not been able to attribute any move-ins yet, but we are excited about the possibilities since we have seen leads begin to trickle in.
Q: Can you share some data on how SM has impacted your overall web presence (i.e. increased website traffic, SEO enhancements, improved reach, etc.)
We have certainly seen an improved reach through our efforts on Facebook. Our Ultimate Chef America competition has been a great way to broaden the scope of our marketing efforts. People may not be familiar with Brookdale but we have been able to reach them through local efforts. The same goes for the recommend buttons.
Q: Do you think social media enhances your more traditional marketing/PR initiatives/campaigns? If so, how?
It certainly enhances it. We post every press release and article that our Public Relations Manager, Holly Botsford, writes for our Web site. These postings represent another avenue for reaching those who may not be familiar with us, were it not for social media. Social media also facilitates conversations and “buzz” about our company and our product offerings.
Q: What are the downsides you’ve experienced with using SM? Do you have any horror stories or crisis incidents you are able to share?
We have been fortunate that we have not had any horror stories. The only downside I would say is time and resources. Ideally, we would love to have an entire team do nothing but social media but in the current business landscape that just isn’t possible. However, I do think we do a great job with what we have.
Q: Do you have social media policies in place for your employees? For your site visitors and community members?
Our corporate policy dictates that our associates are not permitted to represent our company through their individual social media accounts. We want to make sure that all our messaging comes through our corporate office. We do this to ensure that our messaging and branding is consistent.
Q: Do you have any interesting stories to tell related social media and residents, family members, or staff?
One of our favorite uses of social media is to promote the heart-warming stories of our residents and our associates. We think it is an important message for people to see seniors making purposeful contributions and having life-changing experiences. We also firmly believe that “our people make the difference,” and enjoy having a different venue for sharing their stories and accomplishments.
Q: Which one SM tool do you think is the best and why?
I prefer Facebook. I think it’s the best way to start conversations and receive comments. I also like how when a user clicks a Recommend button, the information goes on their profile so the message provides value-added visibility for the company.
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For more interveiws like this one, read all of our Social Media Success Series posts. To learn more about how social media can help your organization, contact us.
How ‘Open Community’ Applies to Senior Living, LTC, and Home Care
Here at CareNetworks, we’re taking part in the virtual book tour that our good friends Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish have launched to explore the concepts in their new book, Open Community: a little book of big ideas for associations navigating the social web. This post is Lindy’s take on the Open Community concept and why it’s important to you.
Building Community on the Web
We come from the association industry and for many of us “membership” people, community is old hat. It’s what we do. It’s central to our work. And yet, for some reason (actually a lot of reasons) what we know about community isn’t always translating well to building community online. Maddie and I have talked to thousands of association executives who have voiced their frustrations about the social web – from the overabundance of tools and the disorderly experimentation of staff and members, to the lack of organizational support and the unwieldy processes for monitoring and managing social media, and that’s just the beginning. It’s easy to get bogged down in the newness and the detail, and miss the bigger picture – not the 10,000-foot bigger picture, but the “just high enough to make practical sense” bigger picture.
What is “Open Community?”
So we started writing the book, and the idea that kept popping up is the concept of “Open Community.” Here’s the gist. Your Open Community is your people who are bonded by what your organization or company represents and care enough to talk to each other (hopefully about you!) online. To be clear, the Open Community concept is not about building an online community platform or internal, private social network. That could be one tactic in your arsenal, but one of the most important first steps toward building community online is accepting that your Open Community is out there, not just on your web site. Your stakeholders are connecting on their own terms in the social spaces where they spend the most time, and you need to be where they are. Sometimes, rather than hosting every conversation and leading every initiative, your company can (and should) simply be present and act as a supportive participant.
Open Community and You
The concepts we present in Open Community are important for the Senior Living, Long-Term Care and Home Care industries, too, because they get to the heart of why building community on the web can help companies like yours achieve business objectives. If you follow this blog, you already know why relationship building online is so valuable to companies and you already know that connecting with customers and prospects on the web is a smart business idea. Social sites like Facebook and Twitter are showing rocketing growth in usage among people age 50 and older (your audience) and therefore that social media sites can be a good way to interact with people in the places they are choosing to spend their time.
Engaging Your Open Community
But being able to harness what we call the “messy ecosystem” around your brand or your industry, being able to nurture and care for and engage the open community in which your staff, customers and prospects operate, those are the things that will lead to return on investment. How do you get your Open Community to rally for you – to share your ideas and content, to participate in your events or simply to spread good word-of-mouth about you. Unless you are able to build real relationships between real people, it cannot be done.
We hope our book will help you develop a good understanding of how to embrace the Open Communities around your companies – to engage them in the right way so that the full power of social media can be unleashed when you need it most.
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To purchase Open Community, click one of the following links:
- Open Community on Amazon
- Open Community on Kindle
- Open Community on SocialFish
- Open Community on Engage365
To learn more about how to put Open Community to work for your company, contact us.
CareNetworks Nominated for Best Senior Living Industry Blog and Website!
Don’t you just love it when somebody you don’t even know recognizes how awesome you are? That’s assuming, of course, that you are in fact awesome. Well the good folks at SeniorHomes.com set up a little contest to give people the opportunity to recognize awesomeness on the web and some lovely person out there nominated us for Best Senior Living Industry Blog and Website for 2011(and no, it wasn’t my mom). As Willie Wonka once said as he helped his guests off the chocolate river boat, “A small step for mankind, but a giant leap for us.” So, if you’re one of our socially savvy clients, a regular reader of this blog, or a member of one of our ultra hip online communities, help us get out the vote. Click here to cast your vote for us. If we win, we’ll hook you up with an all expenses paid trip to our chocolate factory, where all of the social media candy is made. Ah… that last line was a bit of a joke. Again, to quote Wonka, “A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men.” Thanks for your support!
Brian Geyser and the CareNetworks Crew
How Emeritus Senior Living Tames the Social Media Beast: Part 2 [INTERVIEW]
This post is part of our Social Media Success Series, which features interviews with innovative and fearless socially networked senior living, home care, and LTC companies that are achieving positive business results using media and other social technologies. To have your organization included in this series, contact us.
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Emeritus Senior Living (ESL) is currently the nation’s largest assisted living (AL) provider with over 460 AL communities in 43 states. Their services range from Alzheimer’s and memory care, to skilled nursing, retirement living, independent living, and rehabilitation services. I recently caught up with Chris Kim, ESL’s eMarketing Specialist, and asked him how Emeritus leverages social media. Due to the length of the interview, I broke it up into two parts. To view part one, click here.
Q: What is your total “reach” on all your social sites (i.e. how many individuals do you have direct conctact with via FB, Twitter, Blog, RSS, email, etc.)?
We currently have a total of 2220 fans on Facebook that we interact with pretty regularly. We actually found that our number of fans go up regularly by about 5-10 fans per day. During contests and various other promotional seasons, this doubles or even triples each day. Likewise, our Twitter account consists of roughly 470 followers who many times reposts and shares our posts. I don’t have the exact numbers for Blog RSS and Email subscription but it’s a large number!
Q: Have you been able to capture leads using social media?
Capturing leads through Social Media was never really our goal so unfortunately, I do not have any data on this. Some of the metrics we look for however are how many visitors are coming from Twitter and Facebook to our website? How many visitors are going from Emeritus.com to our social media outlets? The numbers vary quite a bit but our social media do drive quite a traffic. This is because almost everything we post on our social media are directly from our corporate blog and resource center. Since one of our goals is brand reputation management, we’ve had potential customers inquiring about our services on Facebook. This is usually followed by many employees in the field, other residents, as well as our marketing team to direct them to the right page on Emeritus.com to get them the best information they seek. In cases like these, I think they certainly have aided in converting the lead into a move-in.
Q: Have you been able to attribute any move-ins directly to social media? Do you have any data or comments on ROI?
We unfortunately do not have any solid data on ROI. However, as stated in the question above, we work to direct our fans and viewers on our SM to the right places for whatever information they may be seeking. Once in awhile, we’ll get potential customers asking for information from a specific community. We make sure to message them and direct them to the right contacts to find the information. Likewise, we work closely with each community to make sure they reach out to these customers as soon as possible.
It is also truly great to see that when a resident moves in to a community, we’ve had many family members as well as residents themselves who post up a quick testimonial and great feedback on the experience they’ve had so far. It has been a blessing through social media to see that!
Q: Can you share some data on how social media has impacted your overall web presence?
Each month, I check our analytics tool to see what kind of traffic our Social Media outlets are driving to our website. We found that our Facebook page drives anywhere between 500 to 1,500 visits to our website each month. During seasonal promotion and contest months, the number of visits can spike up quite a bit.
It’s great that you mentioned SEO enhancements. As an online marketing specialist at Emeritus, SEO is definitely one of the biggest initiatives we have at Emeritus. One thing many social media marketers tend to forget is how great of a link building opportunity Facebook and Twitter is. It’s a great opportunity to directly show a fan base exactly what they are looking for. We’ve found that by sharing our resources, there are a lot of third party vendors as well as customers who are more than willing to share the resources on their blogs and websites. It seems to work great because we regularly see industry blogs linking to our website for our contests as well as resources and guides we provide!
Q: Do you think social media enhances your other marketing/PR initiatives/campaigns?
Our social media definitely does enhance other marketing campaigns. I won’t say it dictates our initiatives but its just one more outlet we can utilize to promote our marketing campaigns. If we are sending out a press release on various events or newsworthy updates, we post them directly onto our social media. What better ways to keep our customers directly updated with our happenings than through social media? This way, they’re able to give us direct feedback on what their thoughts are. We get quite an excited response when we post news articles!
We also work very closely with our marketing team and PR team. A lot of times, we post news articles that are picked up from our press releases so what better way to enhance our presence than to use social media!
Q: What are the downsides to using social media? Do you have any horror stories or crisis incidents to share?
One of the downsides, which also happens to be a great upside, is that it is completely open to the public. Our Facebook profile is 100% open to the public. Fans can post whatever they’d like and we try our best not to delete them, but to address them appropriately. We’ve seen viewers post negative comments that are borderline slandering, but unless they are completely out of line, we still address them accordingly.
One incident we had awhile ago was that a former employee, who was a bit disgruntled by their experience with Emeritus, created a fake account to post many negative comments. We unfortunately were not able to find out who the specific employee was, but again, by addressing each negative comment accordingly, they stopped posting fairly quickly.
It helps a lot when our customers and family members also help in addressing the issue. A negative comment is usually followed by a reply from a customer or family members with great positive testimonials.
Q: Do you have social media policies in place?
We currently do not have a formal SM policy in place but we are actually working in collaboration with our Human Resource Department to get this in place. Originally, we left it somewhat open with the idea that our main policy is to manage and address everything that happens on our social media venues. When we first opened up our Facebook profile, it was actually not open to the public. We simply posted resources and news articles which didn’t help others interact with us. So we finally opened our page to the public and the only thing we really wanted to maintain was a positive atmosphere and community where we address things in a positive manner, address any issues that come about, and most importantly, provide our fans with fresh, new posts on a daily basis.
Now that our Facebook and Twitter profiles have grown to a much bigger scale than what we had originally started with, we feel that having a solid structure and guideline will help manage our profiles a bit better.
Comment:
Emeritus’ Facebook Page alone is an amazing example of how LTC companies can use free social media tools to expand their reach, engage customers and prospects, and build community around their brand. Emeritus may just have the best Facebook community in the industry right now. Kudos to the Emeritus team, and thanks for the interview!
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To learn more about how to leverage social media for your senior living company, retirement community, skilled nursing facility, home care agency or hospice organization, contact us.
Have you seen the CareNetworks YouTube video? Check it out and share with your friends…
How Emeritus Senior Living Tames the Social Media Beast: Part 1 [INTERVIEW]
This post is part of our Social Media Success Series, which features interviews with innovative and fearless socially networked senior living, home care, and LTC companies that are achieving positive business results using media and other social technologies. To have your organization included in this series, contact us.
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Most senior living, long-term care, and home care companies across the country have either started dabbling in social media, or have at least come to realize that it’s something they must start thinking about. With boomers and seniors flocking to social networks, and sites like Facebook and Twitter being adopted by every demographic, these companies are being forced to go where no senior care provider has gone before.
But how can senior care companies leverage these tools to best serve their business interests and their customers? What tools work best and what strategies are proving to be most fruitful? To answer these and other questions, we go right to the very creative people and innovative companies in the industry, like Emeritus Senior Living, who are helping to define how social technologies work in the senior care space.
Emeritus Senior Living (ESL) is currently the nation’s largest assisted living (AL) provider with over 460 AL communities in 43 states. Their services range from Alzheimer’s and memory care, to skilled nursing, retirement living, independent living, and rehabilitation services. I recently caught up with Chris Kim, ESL’s eMarketing Specialist, and asked him how Emeritus leverages social media. Due to the length of the interview, I broke it up into two parts. Here’s what Chris had to say:
Q: When did Emeritus start using social media, how did you get started, and what were your initial objectives?
We started our initial social media efforts back in June of 2009. Like many companies utilizing social media for the first time, we first had to really organize our thoughts and brainstorm some ideas on how we can best utilize social media as a tool. I came on board with Emeritus as the online marketing specialist in July of 2009 and started putting together a general strategy around social media. We knew right off the bat that social media shouldn’t be used as a marketing venue to convert leads, but rather we took on an approach to use social media to engage with our customer. The questions we asked were “what kind of content do our customers like to see? How do we engage with our viewers? How do we take the feedback provided by our viewers and leverage to our benefit in creating marketing initiatives?
It took a little while to get things rolling but soon our objectives really became clear. Our main goal is to use our social media outlets for brand reputation management, build an online presence, and build a reputation of being an authoritative figure in the industry. If you look at our website, we’ve continually been building out our resource section with a glossary, guides, various resources to not only help residents and potential customers, but to draw in those who may be simply looking for some information. By utilizing our social media outlets to really promote these new resources, we were able to build a following.
Likewise, we found that our social media profiles created a great opportunity to connect with our employees out in the field, as well as build relationships with 3rd party partners who help promote some of our great content and resources we provide on our social media sites.
Q: What social media tools do you currently use? I see you have a corporate blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Do you have others? Do any of your individual communities have their own? If not, why not?
We are currently using Facebook and Twitter as our main social media venues. We do have a corporate blog that we update regularly with resources, events from communities, as well as our Brain Health Blog we run in partnership with Dr. Paul Nussbaum, a leading expert in brain health.
We also have a LinkedIn profile that is closely managed and run by our human resources department. This is to really connect with employees as well as 3rd party vendors who we may work with in various ways.
Likewise, our YouTube channel is something we recently started building in. In partnership with Dr. Vicki Rackner, an expert in doctor-patient relations, we are working towards creating a resource video library that touches on topics from care giving, health, and other topics. We also work with other departments at Emeritus to promote videos for employee candidates and to provide a visual look at our company culture.
As for Facebook and Twitter for our AL communities – We currently encourage all of our communities to use our corporate Emeritus Facebook Page instead of creating their own. We found that we get great engagement from viewers when we post more localized resources and events on our corporate Facebook Page. It really provides for an online community that is not just for corporate marketing purposes, but does a great job of reaching out to the local markets as well. Likewise, we realize that Facebook and Twitter provide many ways for current or previous customers and employees to respond to occasional negative feedback on our services. We want this to be as open as possible. We feel that by having a centralized profile where anyone can write their experience, we can address these issues openly and really show that we care about the feedback. We manage our social media outlets closely to make sure all issues are addressed.
Q: There seems to be quite a bit of fan participation on your Facebook Page. How do you make that happen?
When we first started our Facebook page, our main goal was to get our fans to participate and give us feedback as often as possible. We found that something as simple as directly asking our fans to give us feedback on various topics definitely helped. On any given resource, news article, or event we post, we try to ask what their thoughts are on that topic. For example, we provide a brain health assessment test on our website that gives visitors a quick assessment on how healthy their brain is. What we’ll typically do is promote the brain health assessment test on our social media sites and end the promotional statement by asking participants to share what score they received. Our viewers are genuinely interested in what we post, our job is to get them to tell us what their thoughts are on what we post. By doing so, we’re actually able to adjust our strategy accordingly by posting topics that we’ve found are more popular.
Another thing we strive for is being current with our communities’ events and being timely with our updates. Being timely is very important as we receive great participation and engagement from our fans after an event at a community. For example, say a community hosts an Alzheimer’s related event. We’ve found that people who attend the events follow our Facebook Page and are happy to see photos and event details – and they will often engage with us.
We also run contests on our Facebook page pretty regularly. On a seasonal/quarterly basis, our marketing team creates a contest around a topic that we feel are seasonally appropriate. For example, we had a very successful contest this past Valentine’s Day by asking participants to share a story of how they or their parents met each other. We had some great stories with that one! It is such a great way to get fans to engage with us, and it also doesn’t hurt that its free! We usually get a nice kick in number of fans during these contests.
Q: Who manages your corporate social media accounts? Do you have a social media team? How much time per week do they spend on SM?
Our social media accounts are all managed by me. We do not have a specified social media team but I work very closely with our marketing team, as well as the communities to obtain the best resources, events, and news stories to post on our social media. Social Media is really only a small part of our online marketing initiative so I don’t spend too much time on it. Perhaps a few hours per week. It really helps that I have the support of our marketing team to always provide photos and fresh resources to provide!
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In Part 2 of the interview, you’ll learn about ESL’s total online reach, lead generation results, ROI, SEO, how social media enhances ESL’s traditional marketing efforts, social media downsides, and policy issues. Be sure to subscribe to our blog via RSS or email to make sure you don’t miss it.
