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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.

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Letting the media spread the word

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:
Read the rest of this entry »

Feed your Facebook when you have limited time

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?

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Increase your revenue by increasing length of service

Written on July 20th, 2010 by tasha

It costs less to sell more services to an established customer than it does to acquire a new customer. This maxim of commerce is even more appropriate in times of shrinking budgets. We all have to work smarter. Today’s blog post is particularly inspired by Stan Massey, VP of Strategic Planning at Transcend Hospice Marketing, who did a great presentation on the topic of longer lengths of stay as a way to increase revenue.

If you want to increase revenue by 10-20%, you can do it by increasing the number of clients you see. This is good. But acquiring a new referral often involves “taking” that referral from a competitor. Not an easy task. (See our last blog post on Blue Ocean Strategies.)

Signing a client on to service 10%-20% earlier than you usually do, however, can add up to revenue gains even greater than 10-20%. Many of your expenses are likely frontloaded or on a per-client basis (e.g., marketing expenses, the initial assessment). These expenses are fixed, meaning they do not increase if you serve the client longer. This translates into more profit with a longer length of service since the fixed expenses have already been covered. Read the rest of this entry »