Which Social Media Platforms Should Your Community Be On?
Where are your future residents?
Last week we addressed the topic of why senior living communities should be active on social media.
Not only is social media a great way for family members to stay up to date with resident activities, but it is also a valuable tool for your marketing team.
With so many social networks out there, and new ones popping up constantly, it is easy to get overwhelmed and spread yourself too thin trying to be on all of them.
In this post, we put together a list of which social media platforms we think are best suited for senior living communities and why.
Which platforms?
There are dozens of social media platforms available today, but if your audience isn’t using them, it doesn’t make sense for your marketing team to spend their time and money on them. We have crunched the numbers, and here are the top social media platforms for senior living communities:
The most obvious and popular choice is still Facebook. When seniors and baby-boomers want to get started with social media, they start with Facebook. Of Facebook’s nearly 2 billion users, the 65+ age group is their fastest growing with over 90% of baby boomers online.
By creating a Facebook page for your community, you can reach and create conversations with decision makers and future residents in ways that traditional advertising doesn’t allow.
Google+ never grew into the Facebook fighter that some thought it would, but it is still an extremely valuable tool for businesses. Creating a brand page for your community will immediately put you into Google’s search algorithm which will help with search engine optimization (SEO) and in-turn, generate leads.
While Twitter has less active users than Facebook, it is still a very valuable tool for marketing. If we were to ignore Twitter, we would be relying only on Facebook and Google to spread our message. Twitter offers an easy way to spread a message and participate in online conversations about specific topics.
For the same reason that we recommend using Google+, communities should have their own YouTube channel. Google owns YouTube and gathers information from videos and descriptions to help Google users find what they are looking for. Video is becoming the most popular way to consume information online, so sharing fun activities at your community via video is a great way to get your brand in front of your target audience.
One of the fastest growing, yet often overlooked, social networks is Pinterest. Almost half of Pinterest’s 150 million active users are females aged 40-65 – or in other words, decision makers, baby boomers, and future residents. Half of Pinterest users make over $50k per year, and 10% make over $125k. Pinterest offers a user-friendly platform that can easily get your community in front of decision makers for free.
There is another big player that we are leaving out – on purpose, Instagram. While we love the platform, and certainly see some value in having a presence there, we don’t often see a great ROI for senior living communities. Instagram’s largest user base is 18-29 year-olds, and only 4% of adults 65+ use Instagram frequently.
So, while Instagram is an extremely popular social network, it will be harder to get in front of the right audience - the same goes for Snapchat.
Where to start?
We recommend creating accounts on the networks that you think will best serve your community and then update them regularly with the help of a content calendar.
As we continue with this social media series, we will be covering:
Content ideas
Best practices & strategies
Paid advertising
And more
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Need more help implementing and managing your marketing plan? The Grand Senior Living marketing staff excels in relationship building and has the skills to cultivate loyal referral sources. We believe in follow-up, consistency, and integrity in our marketing practices.
