Google Reviews, Social Media, and More: How To Manage and Maintain Your Senior Living Community’s Reputation
Have you ever looked at a product or service you were interested in online, read a review, and changed your opinion—for better or worse—after reading it? You would be among the millions of people who do their own research online before they buy a product or read more about your service. When the internet was not as prevalent as it is today, consumers received information from stores, manuals, or phone calls.
Nowadays, we like to make our own decisions before picking up the phone or deciding to respond to a special in a marketing email. Google or Bing provides all kinds of information within seconds, so it is essential that your community keeps up with the times and maintains a reputation that is just as good online as it is in-person.
This type of interaction your senior living communities receive daily via sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp leads to a crucial make-or-break decision for your senior or adult child lead.
What is maintaining an online reputation all about, anyway?
Maintaining an online reputation is about building trust. In senior living, developing a relationship with our leads – whether that is a family member or a senior couple – understanding their needs, and creating a reputable environment online and offline with swift responses are the ingredients to a successful online reputation.
How do I develop a relationship with leads online for my senior living communities?
Maintaining your online presence can be highly beneficial to a senior living community. When a lead such as a senior couple or family member browses your positive reviews, they’ll feel more reassured about your community. To start with, below are just a few of the many ways you can build and maintain a strong online presence.
Online Reviews: Which Sites To Track and How To Manage Them
There are a few tasks and processes to keep in mind when managing your online reviews.
- Tracking and responding to all online reviews
- Facebook, Google, and Yelp reviews
- SeniorAdvisor, Caring.com, and other industry third-party referrers
- Assembling an internal task force for managing reviews
- Who is notified of all reviews?
- Who writes the public responses?
- Who has the authority to approve the response to the reviews?
- Who is the point of contact, perhaps a regional operations manager, who will be added in the review response?
- Ask satisfied and happy families to leave a review! They will be the voice your leads will want to hear from most, actual residents and family members.
Social Media Activity
When’s the last time your Activities Director logged into Facebook to post a photo or video of everything the residents were up to that day? Maintaining a solid online presence with your existing consumers – your residents and families – as well as potential leads who are searching for the perfect community for them means being active on social media.
- Facebook is a great social media tool to post photos, videos, or your events. You can also join local groups to network and receive more awareness for the community.
- Instagram may not be as popular as Facebook for our target audience, but it is still a great place to enhance your online presence. Use hashtags, follow your local partners, and watch your online community grow!
- Pinterest is a niche tool that some senior living communities use to showcase their beautiful and modern floor plans or common areas. Making an account on Pinterest could be a great visual representation of your community.
Take Control of Your Online Reputation Now
As the VP of Operations for Sales and Marketing, the thought of managing everything to do with your communities’ digital landscape can be daunting, including websites, digital listings, reviews, social media… the list goes on.
That’s why many senior living operators—both big, small, and in-between—choose digital marketing agencies such as Craft & Communicate to take control and manage all of those needs for you. So reach out if you are struggling to make sense of the digital landscape. With years of reputation management and senior living marketing experience, we are here to help you maintain your brand image and values.
Create more visibility and engagement with a senior living marketing and public relations firm whose members can be committed round-the-clock to your online presence. Contact Craft & Communicate today.
