Posted by Brian Geyser on Mon, Aug 30, 2010 @ 09:43 AM
An increasing number of senior living, LTC, and home care companies are using social technolgies like Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, and Ning to engage customers, employees, and prospects and to build a community presence on the web. Companies like Terrace Communities and organizations like ALFA are leading the pack in this space. One of the biggest challenges companies face is lack of involvement and participation from community members. Launching a Facebook Page is pretty easy. Building a vibrant engaged community around your brand on Facebook or any other community platform and extracting value from it is hard.
There are lots of mistakes companies can make with their new online community sites. These blunders can produce "ghost town" communities with nothing but virtual crickets and tumbleweeds representing the brand - not good. So how can your company avoid the virtual ghost town senario? Here a few pointers:
Build community around your members, not your brand. Remember this: your online community is not about you, it's about the members. Focus most of the activities on what is important to the members. Be community-centric, not brand-centric. Increased involvement (and probably sales) will likely be a nice by-product of this approach. To quote social media expert Chris Brogan, "To me, the new unit of business should be relationships. You get more fruit from an apple tree if you nurture it and pick apples when it’s ripe, instead of uprooting the tree and forcefully shaking the apples into your barrel. It takes a bit longer, but you’re a farmer and a steward, not a machinist."
Find your champions. Seed the community with members who are committed to its purpose, who care about the community, its members and its mission. Find employee champions who are dedicated to the cause and empower them to participate.
Keep content fresh and relevant. Know what your members want and deliver it on a regular basis. Post fresh content to the site twice a week, add photos and videos every other week, start or join a discussion several time per week.
Be informative. Offer interesting content that will help members solve their problems. What are the biggest problems your customers and their family members face? Provide content related to those problems.
Build a reputation as an expert. In your staff, family members, and residents, your organization has many experts in many fields. Allow these people to share their expertise in the forums or in a blog post.
Be persistent. You can't expect to build a large vibrant community overnight. Online communities are like marathons, not sprints - gardens, not fast food joints. Nurture, and keep at it.
Welcome new members and encourage them to participate. Send new members a personalized welcome message, make them feel at home, and teach them how to get involved. Avoid sending canned welcome messages.
Create interactions and contributions around your services. Foster opportunities for customers, prospects, and staff to talk about your brand. This is called "social commerce" and it can be a powerful tool to drive interest AND sales.
Focus on inspiring, not perspiring. Don't worry so much about how many people are visiting the site, how many members you have, and how many prospects who visit the site convert to sales. It's more important to focus on creating authentic emotional connectedness, interesting conversations, and a sense of purpose within the community. The rest will take care of itself.
Have a good community manager. Your community manager can help with everything listed above and can be a catalyst for growth and a partner for success. What does a community manager do? A lot. Here's a list.
What other things can you think of that will ensure the success of your online community?
Like this post? Here are more like it:
Need Help Building, Growing, or Managing Your Online Community? Hire The Guy Who Wrote This Post.
Posted by Brian Geyser on Wed, May 19, 2010 @ 08:46 AM
I recently spoke at the LTC-100 Conference in Key Biscayne, FL about the use of social media/social networking in senior living and long-term care. The room was packed with C-level executives who were simultaneously fascinated and frightened by the topic and my analysis of the subject. The fact is that senior living executives need to begin to embrace these new social technologies and, over time, become fluent in social media in order to keep their companies (and themselves) relevant. Why do I say this? Consider these facts:
- The Internet as we know it is only 14 years old
- Facebook alone has over 500 million active users and by numbers is the 3rd largest country in the world behind China and India - Yes Facebook's population outnumbers the U.S.
- The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is Boomers and Seniors
- The fastest growing segment on Facebook is females age 55-65
- 47% of Boomers maintain a profile on the social web
- In 2009 there were 18 million active online seniors
- Seniors spend 58 hours per month online
- 96% of Millennials have joined a social network
Many of the questions posed by the executives attending the conference related to getting started; best practices; privacy,HIPAA, and risk; resources/time; and ROI. With this in mind, I started a group on the new ALFA Exchange online community to address these very issues. You can check out the first discussion post here where I share a fantastic case study of a senior living company that clearly is leading the pack in this space. If you're a senior living or LTC professional and are not a member of ALFA's new online community, it may be worth exploring.
Related Posts:
Posted by Brian Geyser on Fri, May 07, 2010 @ 06:14 PM
I am excited to announce that Terrace Communities Online (TCO), our first ever senior living social media project, has just won a Best Practice Award from the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA).
TCO was launched back in September of 2008 as a kind of "senior living social experiment" when I approached Robert Murano, COO of Terrace Communities with a proposal to build a private online community for his seven assisted living residences. The idea was to use social networking and social collaboration technology to connect the Terrace Communities ecosystem together under a branded virtual umbrella - allowing residents, family members, staff, referral sources, partners, and other stakeholders to connect, communicate, collaborate and share. Since then, 19,000 unique visitors have made 50,000 visits to TCO* and the community keeps growing.
Here's a SlideShare of the full article in the May/June issue of Assisted Living Executive. The Terrace Communities piece is on the last page. If you would rather read the article on the ALFA site, click here. Enjoy!
*These statistics are different from the stats quoted in the ALFA article because data give to ALFA for the article were incorrect. We mistakenly left out date ranges from our Google analytics report when we reported to ALFA. Ooops!
Check out some other cool posts:
Brian Geyser, APRN-BC, MSN is a clinician, consultant, educator, blogger, online community manager, social media strategist, and the founder of Carenetworks, LLC. He blogs regularly here at Carenetworks.com and would love to connect with you on Twitter, Linkedin, and/or Facebook.
Posted by Brian Geyser on Mon, Jan 25, 2010 @ 08:07 AM
In Part 1
of this series, we reviewed some of the important lessons we learned in 2009 from the world of social media as they apply to the senior living and long-term care industries. In this segment, we will look at lessons learned from interviews I did with real people within senior living and LTC companies who are actually using social media applications to drive business and improve the customer/prospect experience; and we look ahead to 2010 - the year that companies will "go social." To read all of the interviews in the Social Media Success Series, click here.
2009: What We Learned From The People Doing It
- The vast majority of senior living and LTC companies are not currently using social media. However, we are seeing a lot of evidence that this will change in 2010. Everyday, new blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook Pages, and online communities are being launched by companies across the country in every segment of our industry.
- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn seem to be the tools of choice right now in the industry. Blogs and branded online community sites are close behind.
- Most companies are attempting to dip their toes in the social media ocean by using internal resources. A few have hired professionals to launch their social media campaigns, or to take existing campaigns to the next level.
- Senior living and LTC companies are very interested in using social media tools to listen to what customers and prospects are saying, as well as to join in on the conversations.
- Social tools are helping companies build relationships with customers, prospects, partners and referrals sources.
- Several companies are using social media tools for recruiting and employer branding purposes.
- It often takes a team of people within each organization to manage the social media work load.
- Keeping up with advances in social technology is one of the biggest challenges companies face.
- Many senior living and LTC companies are hesitant to get into social media because they fear the things people may say about them online. They also worry about privacy and HIPAA issues.
- None of the companies we interviewed had formal social media policies or procedures in place.
- Companies are using social media to position themselves as online resources where customers and prospects can obtain helpful information about the challenges they are facing.
- Content creation and community management are two major challenges for companies in our industry.
- None of the companies we interviewed are particularly focused on ROI. They tend to be more interested in building relationships and brand awareness at this point and looking at social media as a long-term investment.
- Several companies are going all out and allowing residents, family members, and staff to post to their sites.
What To Expect In 2010
Based on trends in our industry and others, we can expect 2010 to be the year that senior living, homecare, LTC, and other eldercare providers begin adopting social media on a large scale. ALFA is dedicating resources to it, AARP has a major social media presence - including an online community, heck, even the Pope is getting in on the action!
The bottom line is that websites alone are no longer enough. The new social Web demands that companies use social tools to listen, communicate, engage, dialog, publish, support, respond, and, most importantly, build trusting relationships with customers. Here's a bonus SlideShare presentation from my favorite new media analyst, Jeremiah Owyang. Enjoy.
To learn more about using social media and online community for business, contact us. You can also join our free online marketing community specifically for senior living, home health, LTC, and hospice providers.
JOIN OUR FREE MARKETING COMMUNITY
Posted by Brian Geyser on Wed, Dec 30, 2009 @ 10:30 AM
This was the year that senior living, long-term care, homecare, and hospice providers began experimenting with social media. Social tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; blogging/publishing platforms like WordPress; and white-label social/group networking platforms like Ning and Groupsite have started to penetrate these industry segments and are slowly beginning to change the way these companies are doing business. Even ALFA, the Assisted Living Federation of America, launched a social media initiative this year and is active on multiple social sites.
Since August when I launched this blog, I have posted many articles about companies in our industry, both small and large, that are beginning to use social technologies to derive business benefits. Some posts feature interviews with industry insiders who share their experiences and offer great insights into what's working, and what's not. Other articles provide information, tips, and resources designed to help your company navigate the social media landscape. In case you missed any, here is a list of my Top 10 Most Popular Posts for 2009:
- California's Largest Retirement Community Kicks Butt Using Social Media [Interview]
- Home Care Company Uses Twitter To Build Brand Awareness And More [Interview]
- 7 Best Social Media Tools For Senior Living And Long-Term Care
- Social Media And HIPAA: What You Need To Know
- Nation's Largest Senior Living Company Embraces Social Media [Interview]
- How Senior Living And Eldercare Companies Can Build A Winning Social Media Team
- Senior Living Companies: You Must Blog Now!
- Beacon Hill Retirement Community Launches Resident Blog - Smart Move
- Blog, Twitter, And Facebook = Big ROI At SeniorsForLiving.com [Interview]
- Web-Savvy Senior Living Companies Are Making The Move To Social Media. Are You?
What We Have Learned: A Year In Review [Part 1 of 2]
Below is a summary of important lessons from the world of social media as they apply to the senior living and long-term care industries, along with links to more detailed content if you want more juice:
- Social technologies are transformative and are here to stay. The statistics are mind blowing. This video drives that point home.
- The static, brochure-style website is going the way of the dinosaurs. Dynamic, interactive websites that encourage dialog and participation and help you build relationships with customers and prospects is where it's at. If you don't have social and community-building elements built into your website, it's time to rethink your online strategy.
- Your customers are online, in a big way, and they love social networking and social media. This video from MSNBC is one example. The fact that seniors are Facebook's fastest growing demographic, by far, is another.
- Many experts, including myself, believe that social media/networking can and will have a profound impact on the quality of life of seniors living at home and in retirement communities - allowing them to stay connected to friends and family like never before. This study from the University of Alabama, and others like it, aim to prove that point with real data.
- Social media can be used for employer branding purposes and to help you recruit top talent. Sites like LinkedIn and Twitter can help you attract and engage both management and care staff. Branded online communities, like the one over at Terrace Communities, can function as a recruiting tool by posting jobs in the discussion forums and asking prospective employees participate in the online community during the interview process.
- Privacy and HIPAA issues, while important in our industry, should not prevent companies from adopting social technologies. With the proper strategies, policies, and guidelines in place, senior living and LTC companies can safely participate on the social web.
- A company blog is a critical tool in the social media tool box. It can drive traffic to your site, position your company as a trusted resource, and help you build community on the web. Whether you have a company blog or have yet to build one, these articles can help with your blogging strategy.
- Keeping up with the fast paced world of social media can be a job in and of itself, and presents as one of the biggest challenges for companies in every industry. New tools and applications enter the market every day. For companies in our industry, these 7 tools are the best place to start.
- Most senior living and LTC companies I've interviewed believe that social media ROI is difficult, if not impossible, to measure. Lucky for us, a couple of smart social media pros have shown that this is not necessarily the case. These articles cover the all-important ROI issue.
In part 2 of this series, which will be published next week, I will summarize what we learned from the interviews I conducted in the Social Media Success Series.
Build Your Social Media Presence In 2010
Thinking about starting a company blog? Interested in getting into social media but don't know where to start? Fascinated by the prospect of online community? Contact us. CareNetworks is the only company dedicated soley to providing social media strategy and solutions to senior living and LTC providers.
Brian Geyser, APRN-BC, MSN is a clinician, consultant, educator, blogger, social media strategist, online community manager and the founder of Carenetworks, LLC. He blogs regularly here at Carenetworks.com and would love to connect with you on Twitter, Linkedin, and/or Facebook.
Posted by Brian Geyser on Fri, Sep 04, 2009 @ 09:48 AM
The Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) now has a section on their website called "Social Media 101" which shows off some of their new "ALFA 2.0" initiatives and provides links to their new blog (ALFA Re:Source 2.0) and various social media outposts including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Linkedin, and Widgetbox. It's great to see organizations like ALFA finally getting into the game. AARP has taken it one step further by adding an online community their site - a very smart move. ALFA will be examining social media strategies among senior living companies in the September/October issue of Assisted Living Executive, so keep an eye out for that. We will be covering that story here as soon as it's published. We need to see more stories from industry leaders about innovative senior living companies like Terrace Communities and Living Well Assisted Living at Home who are using online communities and social media to reach a wider audience and engage their customers, prospects, staff, and referral sources in new ways. We will keep you posted on the ALFA 2.0 initiative as it develops. In the mean time, if you are a senior living company or eldercare service provider using social media, tell us your story.