Why Does Blogging for the Senior Care Industry Matter?
Blogging is a seriously underutilized marketing tool in the senior care industry. The truth is that seniors are increasingly web-savvy, and in many cases, it is their even-more-web-inclined adult children who search for information on senior living facilities. By creating an elder care blog and keeping it updated with useful and entertaining posts, you will boost your senior care facility’s search engine results rankings, attract new prospective customers, and build brand awareness.
Blogging can be a powerful tool for marketing a senior care business, as long as you regularly provide useful and engaging content that attracts prospective customers and proves your site’s legitimacy to Google. While some of your posts can be focused specifically on your senior care services, other posts should explore topics or solve problems that prospective customers and their families are interested in. This approach ensures that you attract attention from prospects at all stages of the commitment cycle, including those who don’t yet know if they are interested in a senior living facility.
Best of all, blogs continue to work for you and help you reach your marketing goals long after they’re posted. While you are busy running a thriving senior care business, your blog is working hard to attract new clients and help create a warm, engaging, and credible image for your brand.
Where Do I Get Blog Topic Ideas?
Coming up with topics for your elder care blog doesn’t have to be super difficult or time-consuming. Elsewhere on the Verblio (formerly BlogMutt) blog, we’ve put together tons of resources for coming up with business blog topics, from lists of blog topic idea generators to our own master list of 50 ready-to-go blog topic ideas.
When it comes to senior care-specific blog ideas, though, a great place to start is by checking out the best senior living blogs, identifying what works and resonates with their audience, and determining what’s actionable and applicable for your marketing strategy from there. Yes, that’s right—we’re suggesting you get inspired by seeing what other similar blogs are doing well—and then aim to appropriate for your audiences.
Your blog topics don’t always have to be completely original, as long as you put a fresh spin on the content and the topic is still relevant and timely to your perspective (or current) customers.
Here are a couple of great examples to emulate.
A Place for Mom
The A Place for Mom blog publishes new content frequently and does a great job of mixing things up, covering everything from senior living trends and inspirational senior tales to possible problems seniors may encounter.
Their frequent posting schedule and attention to keyword searches has helped them rank very highly on Google for many popular senior living topics.
- This post about how the aging population is embracing technology is written in an upbeat, approachable way, while incorporating specific stats and concrete examples.
- “Inspirational Women Over 60” shows senior readers that the golden years can be full of excitement and achievement, instead of being something to fear.
Our Parents Senior Living Blog
This blog really focuses on the topics and keywords seniors and their adult children are searching for most, and then addresses them in an accessible, reassuring manner.
- “Caring for an Aging Parent When You’re an Only Child” gives practical tips and is written in a warm, empathetic manner that makes adult only children of seniors feel understood.
- Many adult children of seniors are faced with the painful situation of their parents refusing to eat. By homing in on such a specific topic, this blog post gives actionable advice while also being very comforting. Both great qualities of a senior living facility, wouldn’t you say?
9 Best Blog Topic Sources For Your Senior Care Business
Now that you have a better idea of what to aim for with your senior living blog, here is a handy list of examples and blog topic sources you can refer to anytime you are stuck or need extra inspiration:
- Caring.com is focused on caregivers and adult children, addressing their unique needs. Popular topics include how to identify when your aging parent needs assisted living, and blogs about recognizing the signs of dementia in your loved ones.
- Minding Our Elders is another blog specifically written for caregivers, with posts full of useful information as well as frequent encouragement to caregivers who sometimes need reminders to take care of themselves instead of only focusing on their aging parents.
- For something different and fun, check out the Roaming Boomers, a travel blog specifically for baby boomers and seniors. For prospective customers who are still active and healthy enough to travel and enjoy their retirement in adventurous ways, this blog offers a great combination of inspiration and practical travel tips.
- The AARP’s blog has an entire dating and relationship section devoted to giving tips to seniors who are re-entering the world of dating and sex. Mixing a few of these topics into your senior living blog will help it stand out from the more traditional elder care blogs.
- The New Old Age blog from The New York Times is unfortunately no longer publishing new posts, but their archive offers a wealth of inspiration with long-form pieces focused on the unique challenges of the U.S.’s ever-growing aging population.
- The Sunrise Senior Living blog keeps their content fresh with a great mix of practical tips, lifestyle, health, and wellness advice, and other blog posts focused more specifically on assisted living.
- We already discussed A Place for Mom, but this blog gets so many things right we’d be remiss not to include it on this list.
- Graceful Aging is actually a senior-oriented video series, but most of the topics covered in their videos would also make excellent blog posts and prove quite shareable on social media accounts.
- SeniorCare.Net should provide you with plenty of topic ideas, especially focused on health, wellness, and finances for seniors.
We hope these topic sources have you all fired up and ready to harness the power of blogging for your senior care business. If you need help getting a blogging strategy organized, try downloading our free editorial calendar template by filling out the form below, or contact Verblio if you’d like to get blogging off your plate.
