Nursing homes and long-term care facilities play an incredibly important role in the world. They are home to over 1.3 million people in the USA alone and provide care to those who need it most. However, like nearly every other industry and business out there, nursing homes are changing.
In particular, the world of nursing home marketing has changed, as well. Websites and social media are incredibly important, as they can help you reach and connect with more people than traditional methods. While there are many great tactics like SEO or email marketing, integrated digital marketing strategy has proven to be one of the best ways to build and boost your business, no matter your industry.
With that in mind, this article is going to look at blogging strategies to help build a brand and audience for your nursing home website.
Be Consistent
One of the most important things when it comes to building an audience and creating a brand is consistency.
Your blog needs to have a consistent voice and message in everything you post. If your topics, content, voice and tone is always different, readers may struggle to get on board. Your readers come to your blog expecting to read about a certain topic in a certain voice, so be sure to give that to them.
In addition to being consistent with your voice and content, you also should be consistent with your posting schedule.
You should pick a day and time where you post, so your readers know when a new blog post will be live. If you go from posting twice a week, to only once a month, your readers are likely to become confused or frustrated. Deviating here and there is okay, but do your best to remain consistent.
Provide Relevant and Valuable Content
Of course, your blog audience and overall brand will grow if you provide and produce relevant content. Your content should show your knowledge in the nursing home industry and you should be sure to carefully select topics your readers will like. You need to be sure your content is not only original and relevant, but also provides value.
The more people get out of your content, the more willing they will be to return to your blog. Content created within your blog should be easy to understand, as well. The content you produce should also answer pressing questions your readers have and offer them actual solutions. Developing high quality and relevant content isn’t alway easy early on, but it can be the difference between a thriving blog and one that barely gets looked at.
Know Your Audience
The importance of knowing your audience cannot be understated. The audience of your blog will heavily impact the sort of content you produce. For example, those researching nursing homes and checking out blogs will have different content needs than sports fans. Your audience should be in your mind before you create or publish any piece of content.
You should be sure to get specifics of your audience as well. Discovering who is reading your blog isn’t always easy, but it is incredibly beneficial. Bloggers should find out the age, gender, interests, lifestyles and more of their audience. All of this data and information can help you craft the perfect blog content to turn one-time readers into full-fledged members of your audience who relate to what you post.
Encourage Social Sharing
In order to grow your brand and build an audience, you need to get more individuals invested and interested in your content. One of the best ways to spread your blog to more people is to encourage social sharing. However, in order to get the most shares from your readers, you need to make it easy. If sharing your content is confusing or takes too long, very few people will do it.
You should have social share buttons directly in your blog, and potentially even include a call-to-action as well. You can include share buttons to all platforms, but be sure to focus on the most popular social media platforms within your target market.
You can also share your blog content in emails and social media posts, but it looks better and more authentic when others are sharing it. If someone sees their friend sharing your content or blog, it is much more likely that they will go check it out.
Promote Conversation and Have a Community
A great way to create a brand and grow your audience with your blog is to build a community and converse with your audience. While many types of marketing are one-way, blogging is more of a two-way conversation. When someone sees a commercial or listens to an ad, they have no real option to respond. But it is easy to leave comments or critiques on blogs, opening up the floor for communication.
By responding to your audience and engaging them, you are building a relationship with your readers. These amplified relationships can help readers and customers be more loyal and trust you and your company.
Answering questions and responding to comments often are also great ways to build a community, which is important to the success of any website or blog. Remember, your site or blog is nothing without them, so be sure to strengthen those relationships and promote conversation.
In conclusion, we hope that this blog post has been able to help you learn helpful blogging strategies to build your brand and audience.