The vision for this blog is to create a community of harmonious professionals across the care continuum who encourage each other in exploring digital media as a way to support businesses and families dealing with elder care.
Written on December 13th, 2011 by tasha
I’m guest blogging this week on the Stanford Journal of Palliative Medicine. Today’s post is about Social Media and Family Caregivers. Given Pew Internet data on demographics of social media, I wonder whether Facebook is a mature enough medium for reaching family caregivers. Not many seem to use it to get health information. But there are other realistic goals for a Facebook presence.
According to Idealware, software reviewers for non-profits, Facebook is a great way to:
What’s your experience been?
Written on December 8th, 2011 by tasha
This week I have the pleasure of being one of the guest bloggers on Stanford University’s blog for the Journal of Palliative Medicine. Funny thing, the theme for this week is going to be about family caregivers! Check out my post on reaching family caregivers using the Internet.
Data include findings from Transcend Hospice Marketing and Pew Internet and American Life. Stay tuned next week when I’ll be blogging there about social media and family caregivers.
Written on November 28th, 2011 by tasha
November has been National Family Caregiver Month, which means the press was especially open to stories about family caregiving. It’s a great time to do something special to honor family caregivers. While they may not be your clients directly, they are key decision-makers and are often the ones to initiate, and in private duty contexts, actually pay for your services.
Plan November activities that make the family caregiver’s life easier and let the press know.
Sponsoring educational events or launching an educational service is known as “content marketing.” Ideas for content marketing include a workshop or webinar you can record and make available later. An e-newsletter, or an online library of educational articles (we call this an “e-library”) is another form of content marketing. If you follow best practices for Facebook or blogging, 80% of your posts will be educational for your audience; only 20% will be about you and your service.
The wonderful part about content marketing is that you have a great resource that others will be likely to share, including the press.
Here are ways that some of my clients have been getting media coverage:
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Written on November 2nd, 2011 by tasha
In honor of National Family Caregivers Month, we’re completing our series on search engine optimization by reporting on the topics family caregivers seem to be searching for on Google, Bing, etc.
To begin with, according to Pew Internet and American Life, health information seeking is the third most popular Internet activity, preceded only by email and using a search engine generally. Eight out of every 10 Internet users seeks health information online. Family caregivers are more active in their searching than any other group (including patients), often by a double-digit margin.
An analysis of health information searches relating to elder care revealed that: Read the rest of this entry »
Written on October 18th, 2011 by tasha
Anyone who has read my blog for long knows that I am passionately dedicated to helping families engage in the care of their loved ones. The recent focus on care transitions highlights the importance of what I call the “home team” (patient and family) in promoting adherence and recognizing problems before they escalate to a re-admission.
Two weeks ago, in San Diego, I delivered a workshop at the NHPCO Clinical Team Conference on using the Internet safely to collaborate across the continuum. I highlighted ways that providers can share information in HIPAA-compliant fashion, with each other, but ALSO with patients and their family caregivers. The emphasis was on tools that facilitate the four factors that tend to reduce re-admissions, as demonstrated by the research of Dr. Eric Coleman of the University of Colorado:
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