How Senior Living & Eldercare Companies Can Build A Winning Social Media Team
Senior living and eldercare service providers who dabble in social media quickly realize that, in order to do it right, they need a small internal crew of Web savvy staffers who can manage and be responsible for the organization's social media efforts. Just check out any of my recent interviews with industry organizations using social media to prove my point. Even if you decide to hire a pro to do some of the work for you, people inside the organization still need to be involved. Here are a few ways to build your internal social media team without breaking the bank:
- Identify your crew. Look for people from different departments (admin., marketing, recreation, nursing, social services, food services, dementia care) who are already using social media in their daily lives (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.) and who would be jazzed about helping your organization get into it, or get better at it.
- Recruit your best staff. Try to get your stars from each department involved, even if they're not all social media savvy. Include your company's social connectors, like your receptionist and your popular direct care staff, in the mix.
- Promote a social culture. Let everyone from staff to customers to partners know about your social media strategy, empower them to get involved, and give them tools to do it.
- Participate yourself. Top managers and senior leaders of the organization must participate on a regular basis, even if just once a week. It's hard to get your staff involved, engaged and excited if you're not stepping up too. Plus, you want to have the perspective of senior leaders added to the mix.
- Communicate expectations. Decide what you expect from each member of the team and put it in writing. Make sure each member is able to dedicate a little time each day or each week to meeting the expectations.
- Identify a social media manager. One person within the organization should ultimately be responsible for all social media activity, including posting content, monitoring social media outposts, and responding to company-related activity. The marketing person may be a good choice. Sometimes it makes sense to have two co-managers. You can also hire an external pro to do some of this for you, but you will still need a point person within your company to work with the pro. To get a sense of what a social media manager does, check out this list.
- Cover yourself first. Have policies and guidelines in place so everyone knows what they can and cannot do online. Make sure you address HIPAA in your policies.
- Measure progress. Set goals with time lines and develop ways to ensure that you are achieving them. Here are a few resources for measuring social media success:
- Social Media Success Doesn't Start With ROI
- KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog
- STATS: 84% Of Social Media Programs Don't Measure ROI (make sure to check out all the comments on this post for some goodies!)
Getting Professional Help
For some organizations, it may make sense to hire a pro to do the heavy lifting. The benefits to having an outside seasoned professional on your team can far outweigh the costs. Their experience, objectivity, technical skill, and guidance can be invaluable in a social media world that just keeps changing. Just make sure the person has a verifiable social media and online community building track record. Ideally, the person would also have direct experience in the industry and segment your company belongs to. For more about professional social media services to our industry, visit carenetworks.com.
Oh, and you may want to aviod this guy:
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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.
Comments
That being said - the difference between action and follow through in reality, and in planning, are often very different things.
In this particular case, I would argue that developing an entire team and creating a broad social plan doesn't make sense for senior housing - yet.
We have a number of clients in the senior space - in fact, we're fairly well known in that arena. And while there are are more prospects (both the seniors themselves - as well as caregivers) currently moving toward the social realm - it has been our experience that devoting a lot of time in those arenas right now is not going to create a positive return on investment.
Now...in the next year or two, this may change. That's the beauty (and the struggle) of the Internet. It's constantly evolving...