The end of an era in late night television is upon us. Tomorrow night is David Letterman’s final farewell. We share the same birthday, Dave and I, albeit a few decades apart. While I love both the Jimmys and watch them regularly, I’m still a fan of Dave’s smart*ss humor, his spot on timing and his dead-pan facial expressions. Maybe it’s an Aries thing? (The exact date of our births is April 12th in case you want to send me a belated gift of chocolates or flowers or a bottle of sissy girl Moscato wine.)
This milestone got me to thinking about what life was like before Al Gore invented the internet and how much different it was to try build an audience back then. No viral videos. No social media. Just plain old word of mouth from your friends about how funny Letterman was the night before.
Our success as content marketers relies on our ability to connect, engage and build an audience, too. So in honor of one of our favorite funny men, we’ve pulled together a few ideas to share.
Top Ten Tips for Building a Senior Care Audience
We all know the sales cycle for independent living, assisted living and in-home care services can be a long one. It’s why content marketing is so important. It helps you connect, engage and nurture each family lead until they are ready to take action and well beyond.
Here are our top ten ways to build a senior care audience:
10– Mix up your copy. Balance evergreen topics with trending ones. Google Trends and Twitter Trends are two quick and easy ways to help you identify hot topics that don’t require you to listen to those gals over at The View shouting over top of one another. (Fun fact – we’ll be sharing more tools to identify keywords and trends in an upcoming post in June so subscribe to follow us if you don’t already!)
9 – Catchy Headlines. We write our titles last – after the whole article is written and edited. And we work hard on those titles. If you check your analytics I’m sure you will find the ones you spend time on are the ones that perform the best.
8- It’s not about you. I know. Bummer right? But we’ve talked about this topic before in a Toby Keith post. Don’t make your blog articles and social media conversations one big sales pitch. Help adult children and seniors self-educate by providing meaningful, relevant copy.
7– Fresh, frequent content. Letterman is a master at this. (As is Jimmy Fallon.) They keep viewers coming back every night by having fresh and relevant content. Not duplicate content you have posted over and over and over… Your site needs something new several times a week to keep readers engaged and Google interested.
6- Be share friendly. Make it easy for your content to be shared by placing those cute little social media buttons in prominent spots on your site.
5- Find your voice. Know your audience as well as Dave knows his. Then find a voice that connects with them. We often hear from new clients that the voice on our site is what made them call us and choose us.
4- Learn the basics of SEO. Building an audience requires people to find you right? Taking time to learn the basics of SEO – white hat tactics not the bad ones – is the best way to be found.
3- Review your analytics. Sometimes we all get lazy and think we “know” what seniors and families want to read. We don’t need no stinkin’ keyword research. We are convinced we know which articles will connect the best. Then we take a peek at the analytics. Surprise! Don’t get too big for your britches and neglect your keyword research or your analytics.
2 – Promote your posts. Social media channels can really help drive readers to your site. Experiment with the channels you use, how many times you promote each new article and the days and times you post.
And finally…the #1 way to build an audience…
Write with the reader in mind
That means the content should sound natural. It needs to be fresh, relevant and well-written. Not stuffed with keywords and phrases. Write content for people, not for search engines.
And on that note, we sign off and send our best wishes to Mr. Letterman… You will be missed.
Photo Courtesy of CBS/JOHN P. FILO