Posted by Brian Geyser on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 @ 12:00 PM
Here's a great example of a senior living company building an online community using a blog as their platform. Beacon Hill Retirement Community, located in Lombard, Illinois, recently set up and launched a resident-owned "online magazine" called "Let's Talk" built on the popular blogging platform WordPress. The blog allows residents (average age of 86) to publish multimedia content to the site including articles, videos, photos, menus, polls, and more.
According to the marketing firm that helped Beacon Hill set up the blog, nearly 1500 visitors have visited the site to date. Fresh content is added to the site over 50 times per month with an average of 23 feature stories designed to appeal to seniors and their adult children along with other items geared to resident's interests. A Beacon Hill resident committee helps steer and develop content by telling management what they want to read, link to, write themselves; and also how to promote the site to other residents, peers and family members.
Management is also helping to promote the use of the site. They have installed two computers in common areas that are dedicated to Let's Talk; they've added special suggestion boxes in the dining areas; they promote the site in the monthly newsletter; and local TV stations have apparently picked up on the story.
Beacon Hill's marketing firm created the site and assists with community engagement, content creation, site management, evaluation metrics and strategy. According to the firm, Let's Talk is becoming as popular with the resident's as Nintendo Wii and the site is helping with marketing to prospects.
This is just another example of what the future holds for senior living and eldercare as more and more seniors take to the social web and social media marketing moves into the mainstream.
To learn more about how online community and social media can benefit your senior living, homecare, or eldercare company, visit CareNetworks.com. To ensure you continue to get great articles and news like this delivered as it's published, subcribe to our blog.
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Brian Geyser, APRN-BC, MSN is a clinician,
consultant, educator, blogger, 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, Oct 23, 2009 @ 01:33 PM
In my recent post on social media and HIPAA, I added a couple of resources to help you develop your own social media strategy. One of those resources included a link to the Red Cross Social Media Handbook, which includes a full PDF version of the handbook, an online communications guideline, and and a nice slide presentation that wraps it all together. The information covers the Red Cross social media strategy, national social media presence, a reference for how to create your own social media presence, social media best practices, and much more. If you're thinking about getting into social media, or need to beef up your current social media strategy, these tools offer are a good reference for you. Here is the slide presentation. Let me know what you think.