According to the marketers surveyed in Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2017, it is more difficult to identify good leads today than it was three years ago. Why? One reason is the increase in competition. A beautiful, well-optimized website just isn’t enough to stand out from the crowd — especially when it comes to Senior Living. If you want to get in front of the right audience, you need to invest in a holistic marketing strategy, one that includes blogging.

Why Blogging is Important for Senior Living

Blogging is one of the most underutilized top-of-funnel marketing tactics in Senior Living. While it no doubt requires a time and resource investment, the payoff is significant. Blogging builds trust, drives engagement, and increases authority for your brand.

1. Build Trust

Choosing to move yourself or a loved one out of the home and into a senior living community tops the list of difficult life decisions. When researching potential communities, your prospects are looking to you to answer questions like, “Will mom be happy there?” and “Can I trust you to take care of her?” As a marketer, your job is to answer these questions and put their mind at ease. Blogging can go a long way in helping you do so.

When creating content for your blog, consider the most common queries asked of your sales and client-facing teams. Content that anticipates the needs of your prospects shows them that you are interested in establishing a strong relationship, which builds trust.

Pro Tip: A healthy blogging strategy includes a combination of evergreen and current content. An example of evergreen content for Senior Living is a blog post that explains what Respite Care is and how it can be helpful to family caregivers.

2. Drive Engagement

In addition to being helpful, your blog posts should also be entertaining. At G5, our Senior Living clients that blog see the greatest engagement with articles that contextualize life in the community. Recapping events and posting photos of happy residents is one of the most cost-effective forms of self promotion — and it’s shareable, too! Your residents’ family members in particular will love seeing the smiling faces and are more likely to recommend your community if they feel their loved one is in good hands.

Pro Tip: When using your own images in blog posts, optimize them for search by renaming the file to include SEO keyphrases. You should also compress and resize images before uploading to your site as oversize images can significantly slow down load times.

3. Increase Authority

One of the best ways to separate your community from its competitors is to establish yourself as an authority in the market. That means sharing resources from reputable organizations, promoting awards and affiliations, and working with other professionals in the industry to create unique, relevant content.

Pro Tip: Invite influencers to write guest posts for your community. Doctors, social workers, even financial advisors will help improve your credibility among digital audiences.

Get in Front of the Right Audience

Blogging not only gets you in front of the right audience, it also helps you stay there, and that means higher quality leads for the top of your funnel.

Get started with a content marketing strategy that will get you (and keep you) in front of the right audience. Download our Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing eBook.