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It was the midnight and Precedence Life Care CEO Severine Petras couldn’t sleep. With a pandemic nonetheless contemporary on her thoughts, she discovered herself in a deep-dive into her firm’s social media presence.
She would usually discover an out-of-place element, like a masks not being worn appropriately or a clumsy photobomb within the background and alert the remainder of her group that the picture is “not social-media-ready.” This was not an rare incidence, a lot in order that she jokes she “gave all people PTSD, barely.”
“I spend quite a lot of time scrubbing our social media,” Petras mentioned on the 2022 Senior Housing Information Gross sales Summit in Arlington, Virginia. “Social media makes me a little bit nervous, personally.”
Petras’ apprehension relating to social media is shared by others within the business. Whereas social media could be a highly effective instrument if wielded appropriately, it will possibly additionally simply as simply result in a advertising and marketing misstep.
Juniper Communities Founder and CEO Lynne Katzmann fears that the arrival of social media has negatively impacted the best way most of the people views senior residing communities and made ageism worse, a pattern she saw accelerating during the pandemic.
“On the whole, [users] get pushed data of a selected type,” Katzmann advised Senior Housing Information. “And that’s reinforcing historic destructive views of growing older — therefore, ageism.”
Whereas some senior residing operators would like to remain off of the net solely, the web is right here to remain. Whether or not or not operators prefer it, potential residents and their households are doing their analysis by first turning to a neighborhood’s social media presence on platforms like Fb or Instagram. And prospects aren’t the one ones trying out social media. Potential workers members are, too.
Social media not a ‘standalone advertising and marketing story’
Navigating the present and future social media panorama requires senior residing operators to be cautiously aggressive to drive gross sales and recruitment. For these that may do it, the ROI could be a differentiator. However doing so requires a holistic advertising and marketing plan.
“It ought to by no means be seen as a standalone advertising and marketing technique,” Harbor Retirement Associates Company Director of Advertising and marketing and Communications Ginger Atwood advised Senior Housing Information.
When Atwood joined HRA in 2021, every of the Vero Seashore, Florida-based firm’s communities had their very own Fb pages, managed by the communities themselves. Atwood estimates that about 15% of these communities used Fb pages constantly.
In an effort to advance engagement and develop on-line attain, HRA partnered with its digital advertising and marketing company to create an internet portal the place neighborhood representatives can add photos and content material and ship it to the company stage.
After higher organizing the corporate’s social media technique, HRA noticed on-line neighborhood engagement enhance from 15% to 85% inside six months and “the standard of the posts dramatically improved,” mentioned Atwood. “Equally as essential is that social media to web site conversions elevated 35%.”
Harbor Retirement Associates operates a portfolio of 36 communities in 14 states. Whereas they’re all luxurious communities, “the customer persona is a little bit totally different from place to put,” in keeping with Atwood.
“How we converse to a prospect in Jasper, Alabama is totally different than how we converse to our prospects in Princeton, New Jersey,” she mentioned.
And whereas prospects are hopping from a Fb web page to a web site, so are potential workers members.
Bloomfield, New Jersey-based Juniper Communities discovered that potential staff would discover the corporate on Fb, then soar to different web sites like Certainly. However the firm had little visibility on them past that time.
“As quickly as that individual bounced off Fb to Certainly, we misplaced them. We misplaced the power to trace if they really ever utilized,” Katzmann advised SHN.
So, Juniper modified its technique. The corporate started utilizing recruitment adverts a few yr in the past, and has constructed a touchdown web page with a easy type that staff can fill out. Juniper may also now monitor precisely what number of Fb customers jumped from a Juniper commercial to an internet utility, one thing they couldn’t do if the customers went to a different website like Certainly.
Senior residing operators ought to break their on-line social media technique into two segments: an natural facet and a paid commercial facet, in keeping with Chris Mohrman, VP of selling with WelcomeHome, a senior residing CRM software program firm.
“The paid facet is a little more easy… since you get to resolve the message and the message is shared with a selected viewers, ” Mohrman advised SHN. “With the natural facet, I believe there is a chance, nevertheless it will get a little bit tougher.”
Nonetheless, the street to web advertising and marketing success is littered in cautionary tales. In 2021, a Precedence Life Care nursing director fell sufferer to an internet harassment marketing campaign that included a pretend Fb profile and spoofed messages containing racist and vulgar language.
Via the assistance of a personal investigator and the police, Precedence Life Care was in a position to clear the worker’s identify. However by that point, the story had unfold to a number of information publications. To Petras, the dear lesson was that social media use requires cautious thought and planning.
“You need to defend your self, and you need to do the appropriate factor on your staff and on your residents,” Petras mentioned.
Getting ‘Sylly’
Juniper Communities purchased into the significance of Fb early on. The Bloomfield, New Jersey-based firm maintains community-level Fb pages for all of its communities, as a result of it “acknowledged the worth of Fb as a instrument for our households to see footage of their family members and to have visibility into what’s occurring at that exact neighborhood,” Juniper VP of Enterprise Growth and Gross sales and Advertising and marketing Cindy Longfellow advised SHN.
Juniper’s Fb technique is certainly one of honesty and accuracy, in keeping with Longfellow. She and Katzmann spent a portion of this week in State Faculty, Pennsylvania, the place greater than 40,000 undergraduate college students had simply returned to Penn State College from winter break.
At Penn State, the primary week of the semester when lessons primarily include receiving the syllabus is named “Sylly Week.” For college students, it’s every week of reunion and partying. However, for the residents at Brookline Unbiased Senior Residing at Juniper Village, Penn State’s Sylly Week means dressing in “sylly” outfits of pink, white, or brown and having fun with ice cream from Penn State Berkey Creamery.
Juniper usually will put up photos and context on Sylly Week which can be consultant of what it was wish to take part in this system. That concept — exhibiting enjoyable, spontaneous moments — is what the operator goals to attain.
“The overwhelming majority of content material on our community-based social media pages is precisely that – it isn’t staged, it’s within the second,” mentioned Longfellow.
The profit is twofold. First, the grownup kids of residence can see and work together with their family members on a Juniper neighborhood web page. Secondly, potential households will see not a staged, well-lit {photograph}, however an correct depiction of what life there may be actually like.
That technique holds water, in keeping with Jeff Gronemeyer, VP of recent enterprise growth with Conversion Logix.
“For seniors, it’s extra essential to be transparently sincere than it’s to be staged,” Gronemeyer advised SHN. “I might argue that all the things we’ve is over-staged proper now.”
The over-staged presentation of senior residing communities can have a destructive impression on changing leads, in keeping with Gronemeyer, as a result of potential residents are sometimes searching for causes to not transfer in, quite than causes a neighborhood is an efficient match.
“The extra sincere it’s, even when it’s obtained hiccups, even when it’s not completely lit, the extra [seniors] are going to be actually in a position to establish with it,” Gronemeyer mentioned. “The hot button is selection and quantity… a number of movies and a number of channels.”
Whether or not the purpose is to speak with present residents and their households or to drive model consciousness and finally move-ins, Fb stays the largest and most essential channel, in keeping with Gronemeyer.
“[Facebook] offers you a content material platform and it permits you to ship focused adverts to the customers. And that’s an enormous benefit,” he mentioned.
Certainly, natural social media can account for as a lot as 10% of conversions, in keeping with Teddy Helfrich, VP of Gross sales with WelcomeHome. He added the paid social media engagement is constantly a lot decrease.
Helfrich advised SHN that there are three major elements that decide the success of an internet social media technique. The primary is how gross sales administrators deal with digital leads, the second is the sophistication of the operator together with CRM capabilities and chatbot efficacy and the third is how gross sales personnel reply to the lead themselves.
“When you’re not participating… in an genuine method, you’ll lose site visitors in the direction of residents which can be approaching,” Helfrich advised SHN. “You’re additionally going to lose alternatives at attracting potential workers. Recruiting is as a lot gross sales and advertising and marketing effort as precise gross sales and advertising and marketing.”
By exhibiting the senior residing business because it actually is, operators stand to earn the belief and curiosity of a a lot youthful demographic, the demographic that largely makes up the potential expertise pool.
“There’s in all probability a big swath of the 18-22 demographic that doesn’t contemplate senior residing their first selection for employment,” Helfrich mentioned. “However in the event you can present that they’re engaged and that senior residing is a enjoyable, mission-oriented and vibrant place to work… it’s going to be a simple path to get them into your inbox.”
The platform they’re most engaged in is TikTok, he mentioned.
Operators are exploring how they’ll leverage TikTok, a comparatively new video-sharing social media platform that has been a lightning rod for in a single day fame and authorities oversight.
TikTok on the clock
Gronemeyer, a hobbyist billiards participant, admits that TikTok tutorials have improved his billiards recreation. TikTok, a video-based social media platform, is notable for its ease of use and bite-sized content material.
The TikTok algorithm doesn’t take engagement equivalent to likes, shares and feedback into consideration. As a substitute, it focuses on how a lot time customers spend watching movies. Most viral movies boast a mean watch time of greater than 100% of the complete video. By prioritizing that metric, TikTok incentivizes creators to be brief, snappy, suspenseful and informative.
The sort of engagement on TikTok results in a hyper-aggregated expertise the place a billiards participant like Gronemeyer for instance wouldn’t want to make use of the app very lengthy earlier than it discovered he preferred billiards movies. And it is aware of seniors, too.
“My mother, when she desires to want somebody a cheerful birthday, by no means will get it proper on Fb. She simply can’t determine the tagging and posting,” Gronemeyer mentioned. “However she navigates TikTok like a champ.”
Focus group suggestions usually contains the word that potential residents or a senior residing neighborhood don’t wish to merely go from sitting and watching an occasion to easily going to a different occasion the place they simply sit and watch.
“If my mother seems to be at a TikTok and sees [her peers] doing a cooking class or having a wine tasting or singing a track or doing a dance problem or no matter… she will get a imaginative and prescient of that constructing in a more true sense,” Gronemeyer mentioned.
Senior residing content material has at occasions been a viral sensation on TikTok with some youthful folks shifting into energetic grownup or unbiased residing communities out of necessity or by chance. And most lately, the TikTok account Retirement House – which depicts a forged of senior adults making video content material – has garnered international attention and earned a following of greater than 3 million followers.
On TikTok, not everybody in senior residing is bought. LCS Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Rick Westermann, for instance, remains to be skeptical of the platform’s usefulness in advertising and marketing.
“Everybody says, ‘What are you going to do about TikTok, Rick? I’m not going to do something about TikTok,” he mentioned on the Senior Housing Information Gross sales Summit in December.
Some within the federal authorities additionally see the app as a possible cybersecurity and espionage danger, given it’s topic to a legislation that requires China-based tech corporations to share all of their information with the Chinese language authorities.
TikTok has been beneath scrutiny since 2020, when the Trump administration mentioned it was exploring a nationwide ban on the app. In latest months a lot of state and local governments have mulled banning the app on official authorities networks and gadgets. Moreover, the U.S. Congress has moved to ban the app on government devices.
However that hasn’t stopped another senior residing operators from diving headfirst into the d social media platform. Juniper Communities has on its workers two TikTok influencers the corporate plans to contain in its TikTok technique with the thought that their on-line attain will entice others to the corporate.
“I imagine the business ought to come collectively on a collective social media technique, which goals to extend our affect … present some larger stability to the destructive statements we see about our business and growing older normally,” Katzmann mentioned.
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