Beacon Hill Retirement Community Launches Resident Blog - Smart Move
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.
Comments
We at GrandCare could not agree more that the social, spiritual and mental well-being is JUST as important as physical wellness.
We have created a "communication station" - a communication portal, which allows family and friends to send pictures, messages, emails, reminders, youtube videos, streaming music, calendar appts and more right to a regular TV or to an interactive touchscreen in the loved one's home. This "channel" can also display a BLOG like the one you're talking about. We're pretty much harnessing all powers of the net without the "loved one" having to know anything about using a computer. Simply watching the TV or choosing a button on a large ATM-like touchscreen.
This is great! I have heard many wonderful things about Beacon Hill. Thanks for posting.