Building Relationships With Assisted Living Social Media
Recently Blake Hadley from Senior Care Social and Kay Van Norman from Brilliant Aging presented a webinar titled Helping Residents Embrace a Wellness Mindset and Thrive “In-Community”.
I wanted to highlight one idea from this webinar that I feel is an area that most senior living communities will find beneficial. It has to do with the ability of senior living social media to foster relationships within the community, the residents, your senior living team, and the adult children of your community’s residents.
Senior Care Social Media, What To Focus On
WHEN YOU CELEBRATE your team’s victories, it means you care about people. Caring about people means you care about your residents and the people within your local community. When people within your local area see these types of posts, they will understand that your caring attitude is an integrated part of your community culture, which in turn will increase the conversion of social media followers to scheduled tours. Ultimately you’ll be building your census.
Assisted Living Social Media Should Include Showing Kindness
Does that sound like a silly statement?
Back in 1936 Dale Carnegie understood assisted living social media marketing. Well, to qualify that statement… He didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. But he said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
How To Show Kindness To Your Team with Senior Living Social Media
Your senior living social media content strategy should be consistent, human, transparent, and empathetic. If you post content with the intent to sell, you may find that your content doesn’t go anywhere.
Without people engaging with your content, the content will not be shared or seen. The algorithms in social media software systems share content that receives engagement.
Below is an example of the difference between a social media post attempting to sell assisted living services and one that shows kindness, empathy, compassion, and love.
Notice the engagement rates. The first post is a stock photograph, and the second post was an actual resident. The first post had virtually no engagement, and only a few people saw the post, where the second one had 327 engagements, 26 comments, and almost 10,000 views.
A simple way to start creating content about your team is with social media signs.
Social media signs for senior living communities make capturing photos simple. Not everyone is comfortable with taking photos. Signs are a great way to make it easy for your team members to feel comfortable.
Another great opportunity with social media signs is for your team members to take photos with your residents.
Great social media content helps establish that your team loves the residents and your residents love your team members.
If you’d like to use social signs to start creating content for your social media accounts, you’re welcome to download this set of complementary social signs here.
Build Your Census With Fantastic Social Media
Treat every team member as if that person were your only fan in the world. Remember the old adage, “You can tell the character of a person by the way he or she treats the waitress.”
We’re all busy. It’s easy to skip over the little things. It’s easy to think, “Oh, I don’t have time to snap a photo.” But having worked with dozens of assisted living communities over the years, we’ve seen it over and over. The communities that use their social media platform to show kindness develop a mindset that changes hearts, changes how their community is seen, and grows their census.
Brilliant Aging Teaches Senior Living Communities How To Thrive
A thriving senior living community begins with fostering a culture of well-being. Each resident should be willing to accept the responsibility for the well-being, but at the same time, this is a shared responsibility between the resident and the staff.
This responsibility can create a level of satisfaction among the residents that are not dependent upon amenities. All of the supporting data on resident satisfaction supports that amenities are not the sole cause for satisfaction. Instead, resident satisfaction is strong social connections, a supportive emotional and physical environment, and a culture of mutual social support.
To learn more about Kay’s training, please see her website at Brilliant Aging.
Build Your Census With Help From Senior Living Marketing Experts
About the Author: Adrian Lefler is the Vice President of Senior Care Social, a senior living marketing agency that offers senior living social media, senior living SEO, senior living website design, and senior living social media. If you would like to book Adrian or another member of the team to speak at your event, please reach out on our contact us page.
