Care Home News Sections

In the digital age, creating engaging content is more important than ever for care businesses. It’s not just about advertising your services anymore and it’s not about copy and pasting from Chat GPT; it’s about connecting with your audience, establishing trust, and standing out in a crowded market. Here’s why it’s crucial and how you can do it effectively.

Why is Engaging Content Important for Care Businesses?

1. Builds Trust: Good content helps establish your business as an authority in the care industry. By providing valuable information and insights, you show that you understand the needs and concerns of your clients and their loved ones.
2. Boosts Visibility: Regularly posting fresh, engaging content on your website and social media channels helps improve your search engine rankings. This means more people are likely to find you organically when they’re looking for care services, potentially reducing your paid search spend.
3. Engages Your Audience: Engaging content draws people in, keeps them on your site longer, and encourages them to interact with your brand. This can lead to stronger relationships and more word-of-mouth referrals.

How Can Care Businesses Create Engaging Content?

1. Know Your Audience: Before you can engage your audience, you need to understand them. What are their concerns? What questions do they have about care services? Use this information to guide your content creation.

 

2. Tell Stories: Stories are inherently engaging. Share success stories of your residents, tell the story of how your care business was founded, or share the day-to-day stories that happen in your care home. These stories humanize your business and make it more relatable.

 

3. Use a Variety of Formats: Different people prefer different types of content. Mix it up with blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media updates to appeal to a wider audience.

 

4. Provide Value: Aim to educate, inform, or entertain with every piece of content you create. Whether you’re offering tips for choosing a care home, explaining different types of care services, or sharing uplifting stories about your residents, always strive to provide value.

 

5. Include Calls to Action: Encourage your audience to take the next step by including clear, compelling calls to action. This might be inviting them to schedule a tour, sign up for your newsletter, or contact you for more information.

Creating engaging content requires time, creativity, and a deep understanding of your audience. But the benefits are worth it. By consistently providing valuable, engaging content, you can increase your visibility, establish trust, and ultimately, attract more clients to your care business.

Our in-house teams are all so busy – How do we fit it in?

We understand care homes are busy places, all focused on providing person-focused care and attention for their loved ones.  But creating content can still be managed well so that the workload is spread and the content is regular but manageable. The key is to involve the team and make sure everyone understands why  it’s important for everyone.  The thing about articles is that a lot of the time the people tasked with creating them can’t see the point in them.  Explain to your teams why  this is important both from a business perspective and from a human perspective.

By doing this, you can then decide on what the titles of your articles will be, how long they need to be and when they need to be done by.  A great starting point is to aim for 6 good news stories and 6 pieces of advice in ONE year.  That’s one article a month.  If you break it down even further, it’s really only about 30 words a day!  When the average person speaks about 16,000 words a day, you just need to be writing 0.1% of that.

Breaking it down into small, manageable amount of work makes it more likely to get done.  And why should you get it done?  Does it even make a difference?

YES.  Here’s how:

• Google loves fresh, relevant content. It helps people find our website
• It could ultimately mean we spend less on paid search
• Unlike lots of marketing, content doesn’t go out of date – it builds into a library over time.
• Our residents’ families love seeing the activity from the home – it builds and nurtures connection.
• Our future residents need help and advice right now at the start of their care journey
• We want the best people to work with us – let’s show what it’s like to be here.
• It’s a platform for our team and the great work they do.

Apart from doing wonders for your website’s SEO, ranking and traffic, quality content about the home reassures residents’ families and helps the emotional connections that are the lifeblood of care homes.

For those people at the start of their care journey, it puts you firmly in the picture when someone can see that you have a regular flow of interesting things to read, when your competitor does not.  This is true of the advice articles, but also plays a big role in helping families to visualise their loved one in your home.

You don’t need to be creating reams of copy every day.  A mistake made by a lot of companies who decide to create content in-house is that they set a pace that’s hard to maintain, both from an interest level and workload.

Agreeing what you’ll write and when

You can divide your content into two categories:

1. News from the homes – what is happening or has happened in the homes that is positive and demonstrates that what you say in the advertising and marketing is true?
   1. Special birthdays
   2. Open days/parties/community groups

• Team long service & new additions/promotions

1. Awards, accreditations

2. Insight & Advice – what will help your potential clients at the start of their journey in care.
   1. What are the FAQs you are asked by new enquiries?
   2. How can you help guide people?

• What does your home do specifically that makes a difference?

To summarise, content is massively important for the long-term health of your website, the ongoing cost-effectiveness of your marketing, and for the connection between your home, the team and all the potential residents.

Remember, you don’t have to do it alone. There are marketing agencies like us that specialize in the care industry and can help you create a powerful content strategy. But we often find too, that there is usually someone within a care home who is the storyteller, the social media hack, or the photographer – so before you engage an agency, maybe look at what might be already under your nose?  Great content always starts with a great care home.

When you’re ready to take your content to the next level, don’t hesitate to reach out.  If you are looking to do it yourself, we hope you found some of this useful.