Is your senior living content working as hard as you are? It’s no secret that most providers are struggling with lower occupancy and shorter lengths of stay since the COVID-19 pandemic began. And recent news headlines continue to make it tough for families to feel confident about our industry. Marketing budgets are tight as a result of it all.
That’s why it’s more essential than ever to make your senior living content work harder.
There’s no denying how important it is to keep investing in digital. As Baby Boomers continue to drive decision-making for themselves and their parents, most searches begin online.
But there are ways you can make the most of every piece of content you create, especially blog posts. If you aren’t already doing so, we have a few suggestions to help you get the most bang for your content buck.
More Ways to Use Your Senior Living Content
Here are a few ideas for making your well-written senior living blog content go further:
- Use blog posts to nurture leads: Believe it or not, we still see providers investing marketing dollars in blog articles that they never use to nurture leads. While some incorporate them into automation, there still aren’t many that encourage sales teams to visit the blog often and send individual articles to seniors and families. A link with a quick “thought this might be of interest to you” note is literally all it takes. Your community stays top-of-mind in a way that’s not so annoying. Most providers have a feature that allows your teams to sort blog articles by category, making it even easier to find relevant stories.
- Work with local papers: Another industry struggling to get back on it’s feet after the pandemic is print newspapers. We know seniors and their families still read local papers. But for print publications, who often rely on small business advertisers, times have been tough. Many have cut their staff significantly. This leaves you with a great opportunity to turn your blog posts into an article and share it with the local paper for publication. We have clients that do this on a regular basis and have their story published almost word-for-word.
- Use existing content in your e-newsletters: We talk with senior care companies often who say that they’d like to start an e-newsletter, but don’t have time to create more content for it. These same people have rockstar blogs. <insert head slap here> It can be as simple as choosing a theme for the newsletter (i.e. summer safety or fall prevention) and pulling 3 or 4 related blogs together into a newsletter. Add a CTA to encourage email subscribers to reply in some fashion, and you are done. While it’s nice to create a fresh, new article or two to tie things together, it’s not a must. And when time and money are limited, that’s important.
- Grow your email subscriber list: With Facebook and other social media platforms making it tough for organizations and businesses to be seen without buying ads, it’s essential to grow your email list. Use your blog posts to encourage subscribers. Make subscription forms easy to spot on your website. Talk about and promote it offline, and tell people where to sign up. Or you could be like Oatly, and use billboard campaigns to drive people to subscription landing pages. Consumers use more than one channel, so you should make sure you have content that meets them where they are.
- Combine and create a guide: Finally, blog posts can be turned into great guides with a little finesse and some good editing. Just like we suggested for creating an e-newsletter, pick a topic or theme and look for blog articles related to it. For example, create a guide for rightsizing that combines a post on tips for selling your house with one on choosing a realtor and another on whether you might want to hire a senior move manager. These are evergreen topics you should already have on your blog. (Right?)
We hope these budget-stretching ideas help you make better use of your senior living content! Drop us a note if you have any questions.
Join Our Blog Services Wait List
We know it can be a grind to create quality senior living blog articles on the regular. Your marketing and sales teams likely have long “To Do” lists every day already. That’s where SCCS can come in. We can support your blog with writing, editing, or both. Drop us a note to learn more or to join our wait list today!