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 May 25th, 2011 by tasha
In my last blogpost I spoke about realistic expectations for social media success. Many people expect the moon from this new medium. Not gonna happen! And remember, social networking is NOT sales. But there are some reasonable outcomes to anticipate as a result of your social media endeavors. And they do contribute to your overall marketing mix in a way that can eventually impact revenues.
Written on May 10th, 2011 by tasha
Those of you who know me know I’m a bit of a data wonk. I like data. I don’t think that our reality can be completely represented by numbers. But just as we prefer to make evidence-based health decisions, I think it is wise to make evidence-based marketing decisions.
So what should you keep track of in terms of measuring the “success” of a social media endeavor? I can share what the standard marketing approach is, but I also think that we have a slightly different critter in the context of our older audience and elder care/health care focus.
This will be a two-part blog, with the first talking about realistic goals or outcomes of a social media campaign and then next covering ways to measure those outcomes.
Read the rest of this entry »
Written on April 26th, 2011 by tasha
As a general rule, Facebook is the place to connect with your customers. The goal is to offer posts that are educational and inspirational such that people who are your clients (or could become your clients) are motivated to LIKE you and have your “bon mots” appear on their News Feed once a day. This is called B2C (Business-to-Consumer) social networking.
But you can also use Facebook as a way to network with your referrers and allied businesses. Most professionals think of LinkedIn as their Business-to-Business (B2B) network. And for “talking shop,” LinkedIn is the more appropriate venue. But your referrers may or may not be on LinkedIn. With only so much time in the day, they may simply have chosen to devote their efforts to one social networking channel, the one where their customers go: Facebook.
There are ways to reach your business audience on Facebook while also connecting with your consumer audience.
Read the rest of this entry »
Written on April 12th, 2011 by tasha
The big concern about Facebook and other social media is that it takes time. Indeed, the purpose of a Fan page, blog or Twitter account is to develop relationships and community with your fans, subscribers and followers. Just as it takes time to have meaningful conversations, it takes time to create engaging posts. And you don’t develop trust and rapport by simply talking about yourself. Like any good friend, you need to be giving out at least as much energy as you are taking in.
You need to regularly offer content that inspires or educates your target audience.
According to an ExactTarget social marketing study:
Even as a non-profit, if your hand is always out asking for money or time, more than you are giving away information and useful resources, you will lose followers.
So how do successful social marketers create engaging content in a manageable amount of time?
Written on March 22nd, 2011 by tasha
You may be deciding to wait a bit yet before you jump onto the social networking bandwagon. (Somewhere between 33-40% of American Boomers, are participating on sites like Facebook. You can probably afford to sit this out for another year or so, but I would not advise for much longer if the adoption curve keeps growing as it has.)
While you are waiting, however, your employees are not, at least in their personal lives. The younger your employees, the greater the chance that they are participating on Facebook, sending tweets or maybe even have their own blog. And though many may argue that what they say on their own pages is their private business, this IS the World Wide Web. It’s a new world out there. The rules are different.
“I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on the Internet.” What I share below are principles and questions to consider. Social networking is a very young medium. It’s still evolving. But based on my swimming in this Internet ocean since its early days, and my work as a researcher needing to protect confidentiality and HIPAA rights of participating subjects, I mention in this blogpost issues I think it’s fair to address. How you address them will depend entirely on you, the flavor of your business, and what your lawyer advises.
Let’s start with the biggest issue: HIPAA
