Customer Service
10 Things Social Media Can Do For Senior Living and LTC
Senior living communities are dynamic, social places. Every senior living community offers a unique blend of people, environment, activity, culture, and energy. Whether you’re an active adult retirement community, an assisted living residence, a CCRC, or a skilled nursing facility, new media tools (like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs) and community platforms (like Groupsite.com and Ning) can help you put your physical community’s style and personality on display to the world.
But, they can also help you do a whole lot more. Here are just some of the many things these Web 2.0 technologies can help your organization do:
- Set yourself apart from the competition. Most senior living companies are not yet using social media, but the ones who are will have a leg up as social media goes mainstream.
- Expand your online reach and drive traffic to your website. Google now uses a social media index in its search algorithm. A senior living company with little or no social media presence is increasingly irrelevant to Goolge.
- Engage prospects, nurture leads, and drive sales. Social media tools allow you to have a 2-way conversation with the people you are trying to attract – seniors and their adult children.
- Publish company news as it happens and create buzz for community news, activities and events. Now anyone in your organization can post information to your website in real-time, keeping content relevant, fresh, and sharable.
- Post information about jobs and recruit top talent. Job seekers are increasingly using social media as a way to find jobs and connect with companies in the senior living and long-term care industries.
- Gain new business insights and stay on top of best practices. Everyday, senior living professionals from around the country share their thoughts and experiences via Twitter, Facebook, and other online communities.
- Build better relationships. Build your professional network, develop relationships with potential partners, connect with new referral sources, and enhance existing relationships.
- Provide a platform for word-of-mouth. Allow your best residents/families to share their love for you with the world. Give them a place to post information, perspectives, stories, and tips.
- Provide support. Help residents and family members get the answers and support they need in a faster, more efficient way.
- Share best practices. Share knowledge and insights across your organization in real time and keep that knowledge stored forever in a searchable database. Provide a place to capture and exchange knowledge and information – positioning your company as an experienced expert and trusted resource.
For Immanuel Senior Living, Social Media is a No-Brainer [Part 2]
This is the latest post in our Social Media Success Series, which features interviews
with innovative senior living, eldercare, home care, and long-term care providers who are using social media as a business/marketing tool. If you would like to have your organization considered for inclusion, contact us.
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For this post, we pick up where we left off with Roxann Rogers Meyer, Director of Sales/Marketing for Immanuel Senior Living, the leading provider of senior living in Nebraska. For Part 1 of this interview, click here.
12. What is your primary goal for using social media?
To get people to understand senior housing options and to be a trusted resource in the community for retirement living. Our goal is to transform lives through innovative programs and services for seniors and their families.
Immanuel Senior Living On Facebook
13. Are you planning to expand your social media reach?
We continue to look at more ways we can reach people with new social media tools and we’re looking at industry experts to see what they’re doing
14. Are people responding to your social media efforts?
Yes, people are responding. Lora recently shot video with the Flip Cam of one of our community’s Christmas parties and put it on our website and social media sites including Facebook, Youtube and Twitter and we received a response from a fan on Youtube who commented, “Original human interest adds to your videos. Great job.” Another time Lora put pictures up on Facebook about a recent fund raising event that took place at our community and also tweeted about it and received a response from someone who had attended, telling us what a fabulous event it was.
15. Have you seen a return on your investment so far?
It’s hard to put a hard dollar amount on the value of social media, but I think educating the public and helping them understand what active aging is all about is priceless.
16. What are your biggest challenges so far?
The number one goal of our marketing department is maintaining our occupancy goals. We exist to support the senior living consultants at each of our communities in reaching prospective residents and adult children. So we’re adding social media to our traditional marketing and communication strategies. It doesn’t replace what we’re currently doing. Time management is another important factor to consider and also doing things that make sense. Other challenges include staying on top of the current trends in social media.
17. Did you have to try to convince someone at your organization to try social media?
I had to create a presentation for the executive leadership team on the value of being involved in the conversation. Especially when you see the numbers and the amount of actual dollars attached to it, it’s not hard to convince your CEO and CFO that it’s money/time well spent.
18. Are employees on board with your efforts?
Yes, employees are excited by what we’re doing, They’re following us, watching the videos and commenting on what’s going on. They also forward our stories and videos on to their family and friends.
Immanuel Senior Living On Twitter
19.How are you measuring success?
By the number of followers and fans, how often our communities are featured in Google, and how often the media is picking up on the stories that we’re doing.
20. It sounds like your success measures, while important, don’t necessarily translate into sales or a higher, more stable census (your stated number one goal). How can your executives justify the expense of engaging in social media if you’re not able to prove that it’s having a direct effect on the bottom line?
Our executives justify the importance of being involved in social media because, above all, it’s vital to be part of the conversation. And while it may not necessarily translate into a reservation right now, it begins the conversation and may turn into something in the future. In addition, Immanuel Senior Living also measures success by the number of people we educate about who we are, what senior living is all about, and the benefits of staying active in a retirement community. I think that if you can show someone—be it a prospective resident, an adult child or even a grandchild— what their loved one is up to and the amount of fun they’re having/activities they’re taking part in—that’s worth it.
Recently I also put up a couple of winter pictures of one of our communities, with the caption, “Baby it’s cold outside. Glad we’re staying warm and cozy at the Village, where the fire is so delightful so let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” There was a response from a person on Facebook—who’s not even a fan, but is a prospective resident, who said, “I want to live here….someday.” To me, that begins the conversation and gets people to think about senior living in an entirely new way.
21. Can you offer another interesting short story about your social media efforts thus far?
We shot a short 2 ½ minute video of an 89 year old resident who directs the resident chime choir at one of our communities and tweeted it and put it up on our Facebook Page and Youtube Channel. I then pitched it to the media who were able to view exactly what I was pitching. They in turn decided to come out and film the video for themselves and turned out to be a great story.
Also, we sponsored an Aging Conference and I shot a video of the dancing grannies – ladies who range in age from 62-82 years old. I put the video
up on our social media outlets and, currently, it’s been viewed 179 times and has a five star rating. Also, Immanuel Senior Living has been featured in a blog on how senior living communities should brand their Youtube channel. Here’s an example of one of Immanuel’s YouTube videos:
22. What’s the one piece of advice you would give other senior living, home care, eldercare, or dementia care companies about getting into social media?
Don’t just post something about your community. Look around and find interesting articles, blogs, tweets, etc. that you can share with your fans or followers of active seniors in general, what other communities are doing, or just a quote. It encourages collaboration and not silos. it also shows that you’re keeping in step with what’s going on in the world. Also, with social media, it’s constant—you can’t just post something and a month later, post again. You constantly have to monitor, check and react to it.
Contact Information
Roxann Rogers Meyer, Director of Sales/Marketing
rrogers@ihsi.org 6757 Newport Ave. Suite 200 Omaha, NE 68152
__________________________________________________________________________
For more on how your company can benefit from social media and online community, contact us. You can also join our free Online Marketing Community for marketing professionals in senior living, homecare, LTC, and hospice. Just click the image blow:
For Immanuel Senior Living, Social Media is a No-Brainer [Part 1]
This is the latest post in our Social Media Success Series, which features interviews with innovative senior living, eldercare, home care, and long-term care providers who are using social media as a business/marketing tool. If you would like to have your organization considered for inclusion, contact us.
For this post, we interviewed Roxann Rogers Meyer, Director of Sales/Marketing for Immanuel Senior Living, the leading provider of senior living in Nebraska.
1. What online properties, aside from your website, do you own/operate and how long have you been using each?
We’ve been using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn since October 2009.
2. Do you have a blog?
We do not have a blog right now, but it’s something we’re looking into launching in the near future.
3. Why did you choose each of these particular social media tools?
Because social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are where our target audience is searching and these are the tools they are using. As a retirement community, Immanuel Senior Living is in the midst of a perfect storm. The 2000 census found that there were 35 million Americans at the age of 65 or older. In addition, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that by the year 2030, approximately 71.5 million Americans will be over the age of 65. That means the percentage of people 65 or older will more than double from 2000 and will make up nearly 20% of the entire projected U.S. population. In addition, adult children and prospects are actively using these popular social media sites to network and gain information.
According to a digital marketing firm iStrategyLabs, from January to July of 2009, the number of Facebook users older than 55 jumped by more than 500 percent. In addition, people 35 to 54 now are the largest age group on the site, accounting for 28.2 percent of users in this country.
For us, it’s the opportunity to connect with these people and show them what kind of lifestyle they or a loved one will have if they choose to come live in our community. It’s also an opportunity to educate the general public on senior issues and aging.
4. Why haven’t you launched a blog yet?
We decided against blogging right from the start because while it’s important to have a social media presence, it’s also important to put out fresh content on a regular basis. We felt if we launched our social media sites & also started a blog—that would be a lot to handle all at once. Right now we are going through a brand study and once we’ve completed that, we will make those decision about when to launch the blog. As for content, ideally, we would like several blogs from various perspectives including a day-in-the-life of a resident, from a CEO’s perspective as well as health care.
Immanuel is the leader in senior housing in our area, so we have a lot of expertise on a variety of topics. We are considering using WordPress to build a blog, and then linking it to the homepage of our website, but that too is still in the developing stage.
Immanuel Senior Living Homepage
5. Who manages your social media sites?
Our corporate marketing assistant, Lora Ullerich.
6. How much time does it take Lora to manage your social media activities per week?
She usually checks in several times a day, tries to tweet/retweet at least once a day and post fresh content on Youtube and Facebook once a week. It’s something that you continually have to keep up and not just post and ignore.
7. Are your senior executives planning to use the social media tools you’ve chosen?
We have asked some key members at each of our communities if they are interested in joining in the social media conversation. People like activity directors, wellness managers, health care directors and others who can provide some interesting insight into the day-in-the-life of a senior living community. The key again, is, someone who can consistently provide fun, interesting content that is also meaningful for our audience.
Immanuel Senior Living YouTube Video
8. How are you using each tool and who are you trying to reach?
Again, we’re trying to reach prospective and current residents along with adult children to educate them about the lifestyle at Immanuel Senior Living and to gain insight on how we’re doing.
9. Do you have a social media strategy?
Our social media strategy is to inform and respond to issues regarding Immanuel Senior Living, the senior living industry and those affecting seniors.
10. Are you getting help from outside professionals or are you trying to do it all on your own?
Staying on top of the current trends in social media involves research, attending conferences/webinars, and looking to experts in the social media realm who continually are putting out fresh content and answering questions.
11. Do you have a social media policy or set of guidelines? How are you addressing HIPAA?
We are currently working on one. We are looking at what other industry experts are doing and then fine-tuning it for our purposes. Since we’re not talking about a senior’s health issue, there’s not necessarily a HIPAA violation–at the same time, our resident’s privacy is something we take very seriously. For some videos, we do have consent forms signed and make sure our residents feel comfortable being part of the story. If they don’t feel comfortable, we do not feature them in the story, video or picture. Each community is the resident’s home and we are fortunate enough to work there.
Part 2
Be sure to read Part 2 of this post where Roxann provides insight into the realities of social media time management, success measurement, and ROI; and shares some real-life stories about how Immanuel is benefiting from their social media efforts. Stay tuned by suscribing to this blog via RSS or email.
Contact Information
Roxann Rogers Meyer, Director of Sales/Marketing
rrogers@ihsi.org 6757 Newport Ave. Suite 200 Omaha, NE 68152
__________________________________________________________________________
For more on how your company can benefit from social media and online community, contact us. You can also join our free Online Marketing Community for marketing professionals in senior living, homecare, LTC, and hospice. Just click the image blow:
What Every LTC Organization Needs To Know About Their Website
The New Social Web
The internet is the fastest growing global communications medium in history. According to Google, over 1.4 billion people use the internet today, and 200 million new users get online every year. For most LTC organizations, a company Web site is their tiny island in this vast ocean of information and technology; a relatively inexpensive way for the organization to help consumers find them and discover what they offer. But the internet is changing rapidly. The days of static, information-only company Web sites are over, and a new era of dynamic
online social media has begun.
Blogs, Webinars, wikis, podcasting, forums, list serves, e-books, viral videos, and online communities are transforming the way companies market themselves and connect with consumers. Smart companies and organizations around the world are adopting these technologies to build lasting relationships with customers, and engage prospects like never before. However, most long-term care organizations have yet to embrace these powerful online tools and company Web sites throughout the industry are showing signs of atrophy.
Today when Suzie Baby Boomer shops around for the best assisted living facility or home care agency for her mother, she does it online. What will she find when she lands on your website? What kind of online experience are you offering? How are you helping Suzie with the real-life problems and challenges she is facing as a caregiver? How well does your website represent your brand? What is your value proposition to Suzie, her mother, and the rest of her family; and how does it compare to the company down the street offering the exact same thing?
Your Web site
When customers, prospects or others visit your Web site, what do they experience? Take a look at any LTC organization Web site and what do you see? The vast majority have static Web pages that never change, with pictures and a bunch of canned messages like, “We provide exceptional, individualized care to your loved one,” or phrases like “compassionate staff,” “supportive services,” “safe, secure setting and home-like environment.” These are examples of what David Meerman Scott, award-winning marketing strategist and best-selling author, calls “gobbledygook.” When prospective customers see the same overused language (gobbledygook) on every Web site, they get suspicious, if not totally bored.
The fact is that most of the information provided on LTC company Web sites these days is a pitch about how wonderful the organization is. The messages are one-sided, controlled, and feel like a big press release for the organization. This model of using a Web site solely to advertise or promote your organization’s services is becoming outdated as social media technologies are moving into the mainstream and consumers have almost unlimited access to information from other outlets they perceive to be more credible than yours.
Today’s internet is social, interactive and dynamic and, as a result, customers are smarter than ever. Customers today want more than one-way, company-centric messages that tell them how great you are. Customers and prospects want informative content, participation, and dialog, not propaganda. They want authenticity and transparency, not controlled spin. Customers and prospects don’t expect LTC organizations to be perfect. But they do expect them to acknowledge that they are not, and to demonstrate that they are always working toward perfection. So, how does your website stack up?
Take look at your organization’s Web site from the prospective of your customers and prospects. Does it:
- help them solve their problems?
- provide them the information they need, when they need it?
- educate them with relevant, compelling, informative, and dynamic content?
- enable them to experience your organization and interact with the people who work there?
- brand your organization as a trusted resource?
- help customers and prospects connect with each other?
- demonstrate that your organization is worth doing business with?
- engage them and help them make purchase decisions over time?
Now think about your Web site from your perspective. Does it:
- help you build strong, lasting relationships with customers and prospects?
- enable you to communicate with them and show them that you really care?
- allow you to learn about what they think is important?
- foster a sense of community among staff, who otherwise may never connect with each other?
- honestly reflect the passion, commitment, and dedication of your staff, showcase their unique personalities, and demonstrate the exceptional care that they provide?
- set you apart from your competitors and convince prospects that YOU are the right choice?
If the honest answer to most or all of the questions above is NO, it may be time to re-think your Web site strategy. Your Web site should be a medium through which you build relationships with customers and prospects over time; a resource and support destination where customers, prospects, staff, and management can connect, communicate, collaborate, and share. LTC companies that embrace the social web and tap into its power will be rewarded by a new breed of smart consumer who is hungry for participation, unbiased information, and relevant content. Can you deliver?
For more information on how to transform your Website into a dynamic social hub, contact us.