Case Study
Why Social Media?
As individuals age and the elderly population continues to grow, the demand for senior care and community living options is on the rise with family members increasingly searching for options.
Several Senior Care organizations have taken the plunge and jumped into social media; for the same reasons businesses do: branding, marketing, increasing community awareness, reaching decision-makers and engaging employees.
Who Will Do It?
Very few organizations have a dedicated Social Media marketing position. Often times, the tasks of social media marketing are delegated to a marketing intern or administrative staff.
Navigating social media platforms, strategies, content and engagement need to be done correctly and on an ongoing basis. The learning curve for using each of the platforms effectively is time consuming and just when you think you have it mastered, they change the way their platforms function.
Social Media is about building relationships and trust over a period of time so when individuals are looking for senior care services, your organization will be top of mind or mentioned as a recommended resource from trusted individuals.
Social Media is more than getting to the family decision makers. It should be extended to community outreach as well. The art of social media prospecting should include connecting with influencers, referral connections, media, partners, etc. Individuals connected to those organizations could be potential prospects for the senior care organization.
Creating compelling content keeps your audience engaged and interested. Social Media marketing strategy includes creating a balanced approach to content: a little about you, a little about your industry and a little entertainment. This approach keeps the audience happy and engaged and, as a result, the social networks will serve your content up to a larger share of your audience.
Posting content on social media about activities, events, classes and highlighting special employees and/or community members draws in others who feel included and engaged.
Using social media advertising can help you reach a larger audience. For a relatively small spend, you can increase your followers, promote your events, drive traffic to your website, boost your content to reach more people.
Engage with the audience is critical. Respond to followers conversations; both the good ones and the bad ones. Answer questions and provide information.
This is a sampling of what social media management entails. Again, Who Will Do It?
The Solution
Consider outsourcing your Social Media management. Save time and money. Get access to professionals whose job it is to stay up with the industry and best practices.
e-Merge Online Marketing has experience in providing social media management solutions to many businesses and business types across the country – including working directly with many senior living communities, transitional care facilities, memory care and senior communities. Our strategic approach is to work with our clients to develop social media goals; assist with strategies to grow their audience; provide content relative to the organization as well as current, relevant industry information; schedule the messages on the social networking sites; monitor all audience conversations; create, manage and monitor all social media advertising; and finally, providing ROI reporting to show the results. All done in a collaborative manner on an ongoing basis.
Summary
Senior community organizations will continue to grow. Social media is here to stay. The fastest growing population on social media are senior citizens. Senior living communities continue to recognize the importance of encouraging connections with families and friends through the digital world. Senior community organizations continue to focus on doing more with less.
Social networking sites continue to evolve and change. Social advertising can be confusing. Creating a presence on social networking sites and checking off the “to-do list” of putting content out here and there has proven to be ineffective.
Outsourcing social media management can be a big benefit to help senior community organizations save time, money and allow internal resources to focus on what they do best (and in most cases, do what they were hired to do).
