Using social media to promote your aged care facility

Engaging with your community, marketing your services and creating awareness around your brand is crucial to the success of any business, including aged care. Social media is a powerful tool that can help you do just that.

 

 

You can utilise social media when it comes to communicating with clients, families, communities, showcasing what you do and how you do it and positioning your aged care facility as a leader and quality information source in the sector.

A little effort goes a long way on social media, so learn how to get started with posting quality content and start reaching and sharing with your community and beyond.

If you’re wondering why on earth you need to be on social media as an aged care business, here are a few convincing reasons:

• You can attract more clients
• Engage with your clients and their families
• Build a community
• Position yourself as a leader in the sector
• Your competitors are already there
• Build brand awareness for your business and its values

I’m on social media, now what?

Many aged care businesses do understand that they need to be on social media, but once they sign up they can’t work out what on earth they should be posting. Fair enough — it can be tricky, especially when you’re managing your social media without a plan.

A simple social media strategy and content plan will help you take control of your social media marketing efforts and get the most from them. A strategy is essentially looking at your business objective and how you can align this with a goal on social media. This is a template for a social media strategy, and there are plenty of them online that will help you make a start.

It can help to start by thinking about what you want to achieve and work backwards from there. For example, if you want people to understand your facility’s approach and values, showcase what you and your workers do. This might be photos of everyone enjoying a recent event at your facility. If you want to position yourself as leaders and advocates of quality, compassionate care, post related articles or even write them and share on social media.

Social media marketing tips for aged care

Let’s dig deeper into what content you might post to support your aged care facility’s marketing and community engagement.

Share exciting updates

Post photos of new equipment, programs, initiatives and achievements. Share your community involvement. Your updates will make those who are already part of your community feel proud and inclined to share with their own circles. Further, you will reach new people who may be impressed with what you are doing and who could be prospective clients.

Note: always make sure you have permission to share images or photos you have taken or that have been sent to you.

Virtual tours

Not everyone can be bothered putting in the effort to go and physically tour every aged care facility that they would like to. Especially with Covid-19 in mind which means more people are inclined to research online instead of venturing out where possible. Offering virtual tours of your aged care facility via social media can give prospective residents a closer look at what you do and what your facility has to offer.

Plus, video content has a tendency to gain more traction on social media than other content types, so you have a better chance of reaching more people.

Showcase your staff

Your team of aged care workers are a crucial element of your aged care offering, and your prospective residents and families will want to know more about them. Plus, aged care workers deserve more recognition and should have their hard work and achievements celebrated!

Showcase everyone at your aged care facility with Q & A’s and photos to help everyone get to know your team and in turn, get to know your facility.

Promote your organisation’s ethos

Post content that is in line with your facility’s values and mission in the sector. Share quotes about quality care, respect, community, compassion and kindness. These can be designed alongside your business’s logo quickly and easily using a free online program.

Articles from reputable sources can be shared to inform your audience and show them what your organisation is aligned with.

Engaging with your social media community

Hopefully your quality social media content is engaging and results in comments and messages. Make sure you take the time to respond to questions or acknowledge comments. To save time, you can set up auto-responders for messages.

These are custom and can provide answers to commonly asked questions or simply request that queries are redirected to phone or email.

If you have any negative feedback, turn it into a positive by engaging constructively and showcasing your exceptional customer relations skills. If a situation does arise and someone is behaving inappropriately via social media and you can’t resolve it, simply block the person and move on.

Social media marketing — free or not?

For the most part, social media is free. You can spend money to reach more people by creating ads or ‘boosting’ your posts directly to your chosen target audiences, but this is optional.

In saying that, you can experiment with as little as a few dollars to expand your content’s reach and potentially reach many more people who may be interested in your facility. Try hitting the ‘boost’ button on one of your more popular Facebook posts as a simple exercise to get started and measure your results by recording how many people are reached and/or engage with your content.

Get started on social media for your aged care facility and expand your community reach.

For more information about getting the most from social media for your aged care facility, take a look here.