Does your senior living content speak to older adults and their families in a voice that connects?
We talk about voice often with our own clients, because it’s just so important.
While visitors might not be able to pinpoint the reason they aren’t feeling it, they’ll bounce from your website if the voice isn’t authentic.
Voice is a key factor in distinguishing content that educates and elevates the online discussion from junk cluttering up the internet.
Voice Explained by Seniors and Families
We asked a few clients we’ve worked with for many years to lend us a hand with a project we’ve been interested in doing for some time.
They ranged from memory care and assisted living communities to tech companies in the aging services space and a regional senior care advisement company.
Our goal was to speak with a few older adults and families who were searching for senior care solutions.
We wanted people who were early searchers. Those who didn’t know the industry or what options might be available.
The original plan was just to keep this information to ourselves. It wasn’t intended to be a formal survey.
We were largely interested in making sure the content we create is connecting and engaging the right audience. That it is positioning our clients as leaders in a very crowded industry.
Our clients were able to help us out and we ended up working with 25 families.
Unfortunately, the coronavirus kept us from meeting with these families in person in a formal focus group, but email and Zoom saved the day.
Informal Focus Group on Voice
We asked our informal focus group members for feedback on copy alone… not anything related to how a site looked.
While visual appeal still likely influenced our folks to some degree, we were able to capture some solid insight about how content voice influenced their feelings about providers.
Not surprisingly, adult children looked at things differently than their parents.
Some of the feedback we heard again and again, was also not surprising.
Seniors and their families used the following words and phrases to describe how they found clients’ website copy and what they felt it said about the client:
- Helpful
- Dependable
- Trustworthy
- Experienced
- Genuine
- Substantial
- Credible
Another question we asked was equally important: how did our clients’ content make them feel after visiting.
Here’s the feedback from that question:
- Less anxious
- More confident
- Might consider calling
- Hopeful
It’s also notable that while adult children were overwhelmingly giving us feedback that related to experience and credibility, seniors saw it differently.
The prospective residents themselves were the ones who shared phrases, such as:
- “Obviously a lot to do there”
- “Like that they talk about meals and nutrition”
- “I like how well they explain things”
- “The blog topics are interesting”
- “Appreciate they talk about financing”
Less Desirable Senior Living Content
To keep things objective, we also had our informal focus groupers visit a few sites we identified as being obviously written by content mills.
While we thought we could predict the outcome, we were still anxious to get their feedback.
The results were predictable, while still offering us some new insight.
Here are a few comments that stood out:
- “Spelling mistakes and typos”
- “Waste of time; didn’t help answer questions”
- “Confusing language”
And my personal favorite:
- “Offensive language”
When we followed up on this last one, fearful that maybe the senior living provider’s site had been hacked, we got an answer we weren’t expecting.
Our surveyor said they didn’t like that the writer talked about “placing mom in an assisted living, like she was a piece of furniture to drop off.”
Good share right?
Next week we will move on to share tips for finding an authentic voice that reaches and engages senior living prospects.
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And if you have questions, shoot us a note. We’ll be happy to help!