5 September 2012

Is Social Media Becoming More Powerful Than Traditional Marketing In Filling Care Home Beds?

Is Social Media Becoming More Powerful Than Traditional Marketing In Filling Care Home Beds?

Would you like 2,574,302 people to watch a video about how bad your company is? It doesn’t bear thinking about does it?

Well, that’s just what happened to United Airlines when they broke the guitar of one of their passengers, a country singer by the name of Dave Carroll from Canada.

Dave’s expensive Taylor guitar was broken by reckless United Airlines baggage handlers. After 9 months of getting the run around United officially refused to pay any compensation for it.

Dave was so fed up he composed a song called United Breaks Guitars and posted a video of himself and his band singing it on YouTube where, as of 13th July 2009, it has had over 2.5 million views. Not only that, it has been featured in major national newspapers and on TV shows across America.

STOP PRESS – Dave’s Video has now got nearly 12, 500,000 views & been turned into a book!

You can watch it here:

That’s a huge amount of negative publicity for United Airlines all due to the power of social media which has given everyone access to a global stage.

So what has this got to do with filling the beds in my care home I hear you ask?

Well quite a lot actually. This has totally changed the game. Here’s how.

1. As United found out to their cost there is now officially no place to hide. Anyone who has a bad experience in your care can publish their opinion instantly using their online social network. Blogs and sites like twitter, facebook, myspace, youtube and many others provide an online community for a massively increasing number of people. And this is where many of them go to get recommendations of suppliers both good and bad.

Not only that, but the search engines like Google & Yahoo love these sites and will put this content in their search results or even send it to you everyday with things like Google Alerts if you want. There truly is nowhere to hide! If you are searched for online everything will show.

2. This can also work massively in your favour, because the opposite is also true.

Until now one of the best ways to promote your care home was to build a great reputation and to have clients & health professionals recommend you to their friends, family, work colleagues and acquaintances; In other words referrals. This still works a treat plus those referral systems have gone digital as well.

If you do a good job there is now a whole new world where you can be recommended by people in their social network and talked about positively. And this happens instantly and can spread virally.

3. As if this weren’t enough already, now here’s comes the real game changer.

Social media sites are a massive opportunity for you to take control and distribute your own wealth of positive information about your care home business. Instead of having to rely on traditional methods of advertising you can take your own message to the world and interact with potential customers and clients on a scale totally unimaginable just a few years ago. And in so doing you can totally dominate your own market place.

Just imagine the positive exposure you can achieve from this. One piece of new content per month distributed to only 50 sites will produce 600 new opportunities for people to find you on the internet all driving traffic to your web site. Compare that with your current internet presence.

Now picture what it would be like competing against a home that has that kind of power at its disposal when you don’t.

At Care Home Marketing Expert we have cutting edge technology that can help you achieve this in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take. We can create audio, video and written content and automate its distribution to up to 93 social media, video sharing, social bookmarking sites, podcasts and your blogs.

The web 2.0 revolution is here. Embrace it & it will give you an overwhelming competitive advantage. Shun it and you will almost certainly end up in trouble. That may seem overly dramatic, but it’s already happening. Just ask United Airlines.

Wishing you wealth and happiness (& a good reputation).

Simon Beck

For further information on how we can help you use social media to dominate your market place and get those beds filled please call me on 01977 232 233 or email me

Like What You've Read?

Enter your details below to get more great Free Tips on How To Market Your Care Home & Fill Your Beds

Simon Beck

Simon Beck is the founder of Care home Marketing Expert and author of 'Full Beds Forever - How To Market Your Care Home in 3 Simple Steps'. He is also a regular guest speaker at many of the care industry shows such as Naidex, The Care Show & Health+Care.