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7 Benefits of Facebook Pages for Senior Living Facilities

 

With a whopping 2.93 billion people logging onto Facebook every month, there’s little question that members of your target audience are among the social network’s many users. For this reason, creating a Facebook business page, the anchor for your brand’s presence on Facebook, is probably something you’ve already taken care of. 

 

However, many senior living facilities with multiple locations stop short of creating and managing pages for every location, thinking that one corporate page is enough.

 

Throughout this blog, we’ll outline several reasons why it’s critical to your local marketing success that every one of your senior living facilities has its own well-optimized Facebook business page.

 

 

1. Increase Your Online Reach 

 

Research shows that older adults are steadily becoming active on social media platforms, specifically Facebook. Facebook is the most used social media platform for adults 65 and older. If your senior living facilities want to reach their target audience where they’re already spending time, Facebook makes the most sense. 

 

Data has also found that localized content receives 12x the engagement as content not considered localized. And since there’s a correlation between engagement and reach on Facebook, leveraging local Facebook pages and sharing localized content will again help increase your online reach. 

 

Check out our blog on dominating organic reach for additional tips on boosting your organic reach on Facebook.

 

 

2. Build a Local Community With Localized Content

 

Local Facebook pages also provide an excellent opportunity for your senior living facilities to build a local community. A local presence on Facebook helps keep current residents updated on upcoming events and aware of changes to your facility.

 

 A local presence on Facebook also provides a space for residents with each other. Similarly, potential residents may look at your local Facebook pages to get a sense of what life would be like living there. 

 

If you’re stuck on what type of content to share to help build your local community, consider the following: 

  • Community activities, programs, and outings
  • Upcoming events
  • Safety and care
  • Changes in meal schedules 
  • Visiting hours 
  • Transportation 
  • Amenities 
  • Updates about the activity room and group exercise classes

 

If local employees share hyperlocal content, it will be more likely to receive engagements. More engagements often means more eyes on the content, which helps build your community and ultimately increases organic reach.

 

 

3. Target Specific Audiences 

 

While local organic content is a great way to connect with your local communities, social advertising empowers your multi-location business to increase visibility among these audiences. Through localized social advertising, your multi-location business can set up targeted campaigns and utilize localized imagery and text to engage your target audience. 

 

Your multi-location business can leverage various targeting options, including what age groups you want to target, what geographical areas you want to target, and groups with particular interests that are relevant to your industry. For instance, as a senior living facility, you can run an ad campaign for users who live within your location’s city and are 55 and older. 

 

If you’re still not convinced, localized social advertising can also help your senior living facility:

  • Build brand awareness
  • Improve conversion rates
  • Receive a high ROI on low costs 
  • Gain in-depth analytics 

 

4. Boost Your Local SEO

 

It might not come as a surprise to you to learn that Facebook is one of the most heavily indexed sites on the planet. Due to Facebook’s popularity, Google looks at Facebook content as a primary source for results to search engine queries. The importance of Facebook is apparent when you look closely at search results for local businesses.

 

Take, for example, this search for a Brookdale location in Round Rock, Texas. Note the prominence of the store’s Facebook page in Google’s local results, including the Brookdale website and other senior living review sites.

An image of a computer screen searching for "Brookdale Round Rock". The search results show Brookdale's Facebook page

 

Aside from the organic traffic to Facebook generated via Google search results, the evidence that Google is indexing Facebook content for local searches points to the importance of Facebook as a local signal from Google’s perspective. 

 

Google looks across multiple local websites to verify the existence of local businesses and to gauge their popularity and relevance for specific search terms. Local Facebook pages can help strengthen your SEO efforts and boost your senior living facilities’ online visibility. 

 

 

5. Develop a Positive Resident Experience Via Reputation Management 

 

Eighty percent of consumers consider reviews necessary to their property search. Facebook allows businesses to respond to reviews and manage their online reputation locally. You can grant users at specific access levels — for example, local managers, regional managers, or corporate-level users — permission to respond to reviews.

 

Note, both corporate and local facilities need to align on who will be responsible for responding to reviews and understand any guidelines that may go with it. For more insight on what it takes for your senior living facility to effectively manage its online reputation, download our Online Reputation Management Guide for Property Management Companies

 

 

A green and white call to action for the The Online Reputation Management Guide for Property Management Companies

 

 

Additionally, our Local Visibility Ranking Report for Property Management Companies looks into what senior living facilities are currently doing regarding reputation management on Facebook. The report will show the average review response time for senior living communities, average star ratings, and volume of reviews. To stand out from the competition, your senior living facility should again meet or exceed the report’s averages. 

 

 

6. Monitor Your Competition 

 

While local Facebook pages are one great way to differentiate your senior living facility from the competition, it’s also an excellent way to keep an eye on competitors on the platform. Currently, Facebook offers the Insights tool, which allows your senior living community to input a list of pages you would like to keep an eye on. The image below showcases an example of “Pages to Watch” from Facebook. 

A computer showing Facebook's example of "Pages to Watch"

 

To access this, click on Insights from your Facebook page, and find the “Pages to Watch” feature at the bottom of the “Overview tab.” Once you input the list of competitors you’d like to watch, you can find the number of page fans, the number of posts published in the last seven days, and the total number of engagements received in the last seven days. While the data only lets you look back a week, it can still be a helpful insight. 

 

For instance, if you notice that a local competitor is receiving a lot more engagement than one of your local senior living facilities but is posting the same amount, you can look at their posts to see what they’re doing differently. Keeping an eye on the competition is smart business, and if the information found is used to optimize your efforts, it can help your local facilities win more residents. 

 

 

7. Take Control of Your Data 

 

One of the best aspects of Facebook and other social platforms is their ability to track performance on paid and organic efforts. As a multi-family marketer at a senior living facility, it’s your job to understand what’s working and what isn’t regarding local social efforts and to make adjustments accordingly. Making changes based on customer feedback is vital to improving your customer experience and marketing strategies. So how exactly do you track performance? 

 

Facebook has a Business Manager that allows you to track many of the standard metrics you want to improve. However, depending on your goals, you should consider additional tracking measures. 

 

  • If increased clicks on your social posts are your goal, you can add UTM codes to your links. 

 

  • Establishing baseline benchmarks in each platform is critical if increased reach and engagement are your goals. Create monthly or quarterly reporting on your goal to see if you’re attaining it.

 

  • If only impressions matter, establish a baseline number of people who view your posts and report monthly or quarterly progress.

 

Monitoring these metrics and reporting on them can give you an idea of what works well and where you still have room to improve. To do so, you must also set a baseline of where you’re starting from and set intentions of what you want to achieve. This allows you to hold your local and corporate marketing teams accountable and understand if your local social efforts on Facebook are paying off. 

 

 

Dominate Your Social Strategy on Facebook 

 

Local Facebook pages for your brand’s senior living facilities are crucial to a winning local social strategy. Now that you understand the benefits of local Facebook pages, it’s time to start optimizing yours. At SOCi, we understand that managing Facebook pages across each senior living location can be challenging. That’s where our streamlined social media management solution comes in. 

 

SOCi's social platform with the scheduler in the background and a post on gardening tips on the left-hand side and a blow up of California with little green location markers

 

 

Our tool enables senior living facilities to manage and deploy localized content at scale while maintaining brand consistency at corporate and local levels. With our next-level local solution, your brand can publish to all major networks to amplify audience engagement with localized shareable content and increase the high-value engagement (comments and shares) your content receives. 

 

Request a demo today for more insight into how SOCi can help your senior living facility dominate its local social efforts on Facebook and reach new heights!

 

 

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