We’ve had a phenomenol few years of growth here at SCS. We are grateful and humbled by the number of great senior living and retirement companies that place their trust in our fun-loving, hard-working crew. Creating senior living content is all we do around here and we are passionately committed to being the best in the industry.
In the past six months, we’ve taken on a number of small- to medium-sized companies. Many of them were tackling content on their own or had been taken to the cleaners by some of the less than honest content mills claiming to specialize in our industry. It’s given us great insight in to the mistakes people are making with their senior living content.
We thought it would help if we took a little time this week to help you learn more about what NOT to do with your senior living content.
Don’t Do This With Your Senior Living Content
- Write without a Strategy: As with all things marketing, sales and PR, you must begin with a strategy and goals. While good senior living content will pull readers in, you need to engage them, nurture them and keep moving them forward. Strategy is how you do that.
- Lack a Personality: Believe it or not, we’ve had several new clients tell us lately that their hired content guns told them their content shouldn’t have personality. It should be formal in tone and lacking a voice. Can you imagine? Your content needs to reflect who you are as a company. What’s important to you, how you are different and why families should put their trust in you. That voice is what connects with the reader.
- Skip the About Us Page: Some companies have been told to skip an About Us page or anything similar because content shouldn’t be about them. While the last part is true, content is all about the senior and their family, they definitely want to hear your story. I can’t imagine an industry where an About Us page is more important than ours! You will be caring for them or someone they love. You bet your boots that want to hear why they should place their trust with you.
- Skip the Visuals: We were fortunate enough to earn a new client in the senior referral space last fall that is so much fun to work with! He even referred another new client to us that was struggling with senior living content. Both had worked with a writer that told them to skip the visuals because senior living was a serious issue and photos diminished the seriousness of what families were facing. What the…?? While stock photos are something you must use wisely, not breaking up blocks of texts with visuals overwhelms the online reader. The brain process visuals much faster than text. One of my pals from grad school works for Forrester Research. If you are a data junkie, you can read more about visuals on their site.
- Consider Your Audience: Our last tip is to learn more about your audience. Who is initiating the contact? How did they find you? What are they struggling with? Creating senior living buyer personas is the best way to get to know your audience. Don’t assume you know…do the work. You might be surprised to find it’s not just the adult daughter and the senior. There might be another referral source out there that you can write targeted content toward.
We hope learning from others mistakes helps you create senior living content that Google and the seniors and families you are trying to reach will all love! 
And if you recognize you don’t have the time or in-house talent to create your own, zip us a note. We’ll be happy to help. From single site providers to national chains, no client is too big or too small…
Growth Photo Courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net