Director, Reviews Program & Marketing
Denise Graab joined Caring.com in September 2010, and has 20+ years experience in communications, with a focus on social media marketing for the last decade. In her current role at Caring, she helps senior living communities and home care agencies understand how best to harness the opportunities of digital marketing, including getting and responding to online senior care reviews.
Articles and Webinars
by Expert Contributor
by Expert Contributor
Articles and Webinars
Caring Stars is a service excellence award and trustworthy annual list of the best senior living communities and senior care agencies based on consumer ratings and reviews on Caring.com. These top-rated senior living communities and in-home care agencies have a lot of great reviews, top ratings, recent reviews, and responses to all negative reviews too. Each year, Caring.com uses a specific set of reviews-based criteria that the communities and agencies must meet in order to be considered for the award — and the bar is purposefully set high to ensure that the program continues to truly represent those communities and agencies best meeting the needs of seniors and their families.
For years, we’ve been telling you about the power of social media for marketing senior care businesses — whether through consumer reviews or social networking. Among the savvy senior living organizations that recognized and successfully harnessed this opportunity is The Northbridge Companies.
In a recent Senior Housing News article, they featured some of the ways they’ve been reaping rewards from their efforts:
70% of their new leads are now coming from Facebook, Twitter, and referral companies (including Caring.com).
Families are arriving at their 15 communities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine armed with information they’ve read on the company’s social media profiles and/or website. As CEO and co-founder James Coughlin told SHN: “…families that are walking through the door have already pre-qualified us. They’ve done all the research, they know our rates.”
One campaign in Maine — a video that cost $1000 to produce — has gone relatively viral, with 40,000 views since April 21st, more than 1650 shares on Facebook (The Northbridge Companies will donate $1 per share to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund), and memory care leads being directly attributed to it.
The Northbridge Companies is also wisely incorporating social media into their traditional campaigns, such as direct mail and print media advertisements. “We do traditional types of marketing, but everything drives to the social media,” Wendy Nowokunski (co-founder and president) told SHN.
Visit their website, and you’ll easily find links to their social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — as well as to their blog. Visit those social profiles and you’ll see plenty of positive activity, including lots of followers, likes, retweets, and video views. They have a dedicated team for their social marketing, and have made the necessary investment in using social strategically for business results.
Well done, Northbridge Companies! You’re proving that social media can be an effective source of consumer engagement — whether to attract prospects, build relationships with residents and residents’ family members, and/or to support your staff recruiting and retention goals. Your social media investment is paying off as it should, and you’ve set an excellent example for others. Kudos!
As we've covered in our Digital Marketing Academy and in prior posts on this blog: Online consumer reviews are making a significant impact in the senior care industry.
When a family caregiver goes online to find a home care agency for aging parent(s), reviews from other consumers help to narrow local agency options, give insights about what's working (and not working) for other clients, and build awareness of one agency's overall reputation over another.
Recognizing the importance of this online word-of-mouth in helping family caregivers and older adults find the right agency for their needs, we're now using consumer reviews to prioritize listings in search results for our home care directory. Partner listings with the most reviews and best ratings will now rank highest.
For example, when an adult daughter visits www.caring.com and searches for home care agencies in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the top of the list she's shown are the partner listings with the most reviews. If two Caring.com partners have the same number of reviews, we'll secondarily sort by overall average rating across all of their reviews. (The reviews sort will also apply for the home care agencies not yet signed up for screened leads from us -- however, their listings will still be further down the list.)
This is yet one more reason to make consumer reviews among your top digital marketing (and content marketing) strategies.
Need to get up-to-speed on reviews best practices, the specific monetary value they're adding for senior care businesses, and how to optimize your online reputation? We covered all of these topics and more in a recent webinar, "The Value of Consumer Reviews: How to Harness this Senior Care Opportunity." We also offer tips for responding to negative feedback.
Not yet getting screened leads for your home care agency? Get in touch with our team: (855) 590-8989.
Already a client and need to make adjustments to your account? Please contact our Client Services team.
The Caring Super Stars of 2022 for senior care are home care, home health care and hospice agencies who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award for 2022 plus two or more additional years since this award program expanded to include home care agencies in 2017, after being the first-of-its-kind for senior living communities since 2012. These are the repeatedly stellar home care agencies that seniors and their family members praise — year after year.
ALABAMA — 6 agencies
ARIZONA — 10 agencies
ARKANSAS — 4 agencies
CALIFORNIA — 39 agencies
COLORADO — 10 agencies
CONNECTICUT — 9 agencies
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — 1 agency
FLORIDA — 30 agencies
GEORGIA — 6 agencies
HAWAII — 1 agency
ILLINOIS — 15 agencies
INDIANA — 5 agencies
IOWA — 1 agency
KANSAS — 1 agency
KENTUCKY — 1 agency
LOUISIANA — 2 agencies
MAINE — 1 agency
MARYLAND — 7 agencies
MASSACHUSETTS — 10 agencies
MICHIGAN — 14 agencies
MINNESOTA — 3 agencies
MISSISSIPPI — 2 agencies
MISSOURI — 8 agencies
MONTANA — 1 agency
NEBRASKA — 1 agency
NEVADA — 4 agencies
NEW HAMPSHIRE — 3 agencies
NEW JERSEY — 11 agencies
NEW MEXICO — 1 agency
NEW YORK — 18 agencies
Right at Home North Shore Long Island
NORTH CAROLINA — 6 agencies
OHIO — 15 agencies
OKLAHOMA — 4 agencies
OREGON — 5 agencies
PENNSYLVANIA — 10 agencies
SOUTH CAROLINA — 4 agencies
TENNESSEE — 5 agencies
TEXAS — 26 agencies
UTAH — 7 agencies
VIRGINIA — 11 agencies
WASHINGTON — 5 agencies
WEST VIRGINIA — 1 agency
WISCONSIN — 9 agencies
Congratulations to these 333 home care agencies across the United States!
***See the full list of Caring Stars of 2022.
In a recent webinar about qualifying for Caring Stars 2024, we shared the incredible journey of the Caring Stars award program and how it elevates senior living communities or in-home care agencies to the top of care seekers’ lists.
The deadline for the 2024 Caring Stars award is fast approaching: you must have the required stellar reviews profile on Caring.com by October 15, 2023. To help you understand and achieve this highly-coveted award, we’ve compiled the following critical information for maximizing your reputation on Caring.com.
Since its groundbreaking launch in January 2012 as the very first “best senior living” award based on consumer reviews, Caring Stars has evolved into a powerful emblem of excellence within our industry — now encompassing all senior living and senior care directories on Caring.com.
You read that right: Any senior living community or senior care agency listed on Caring.com can qualify for the Caring Stars award.
And unlike other now-similar award programs, there is no application process or fees for Caring Stars, and Caring Stars winners get free promotional gifts too (there are no licensing fees for winners to use the Caring Stars badge). We also don’t require that you be a Caring partner to be eligible for this prestigious award — though our free reputation management support services for partners do help.
Here's why Caring Stars can be a game-changer for your business:
Positive PR and Marketing Buzz — Being a Caring Stars recipient is more than an accolade; it's a beacon that attracts attention and trust. This recognition generates positive PR and establishes your community or agency as a go-to choice for seniors and families. You can see real examples of this in the Caring Stars 2023 winner webinar.
Engagement and Excitement — Caring Stars doesn't just signify excellence; it engages and excites your stakeholders. It fosters brand loyalty and strengthens the connection between you and your constituents, which can be invaluable for maintaining and growing the success of your business.
Recruitment and Retention Support — In an industry where recruiting and retaining staff is a continuous challenge, Caring Stars showcases your commitment to quality and can make you an employer of choice.
A Trusted Guide — Caring Stars has become more than an award — it's a trustworthy go-to guide for seniors and their families. Its credibility is why for the past two years, Fortune has used it to rank the best cities for seniors and families.
This reviews program has been proven to attract prospective customers for Caring Stars winners — boosting inquiries and conversions for Caring partners in particular. For example, in 2021 and 2022, the senior living winners partnered with Caring averaged nearly twice as many new resident inquiries and almost three times as many move-ins as Caring’s community partners without the award. This proprietary data is another signal of the power of consumer reviews in helping seniors and their families find the best service providers.
Earning the Caring Stars status isn't easy, but the journey is worth it. The focus on obtaining and responding to reviews is the key.
To be eligible for the 2024 award, here are the essential review metrics to aim for…
For senior care agencies and senior living communities with a resident capacity of 21 or higher, you should have:
At least 15 published reviews on your Caring.com listing by the October 15th deadline
Across all of those published reviews, an overall average rating of 4.5 stars or higher
A minimum of 4 reviews since October 15 of the previous year (4 published reviews between 10/15/22 - 10/15/23)
One or more 5-star published reviews with dates in 2023 (at least one 5-star published review dated on or between 1/1/23 - 10/15/23)
A published response on every 1-star and 2-star review across all time
For smaller senior living communities and residential care homes having 20 or fewer resident capacity: The qualification criteria and reviews recommendations are different. In this case, you still need to have a 4.5 stars overall average rating or higher, with one or more 5-star reviews in 2023. You also need to have a response to every negative review. But your total reviews volume requirement is lower, both in total reviews across all time and in the recent year qualification time frame. If your senior living community aligns with this smaller capacity, make sure your Caring.com listing has up-to-date resident capacity information or you’ll be judged at the higher review volume thresholds instead.
Before we dive into specific resources to help you get and respond to reviews, let’s first help you avoid a common mistake that can hold you back: asking the wrong people for reviews to meet the Caring Stars requirements faster.
We’re focused on publishing genuine reviews from cognitively healthy seniors and their families. We host their first-hand feedback about your services, and we do not publish reviews submitted by your employees, any industry insiders, or anyone else with a conflict of interest. This policy is covered in our review guidelines too.
And here are two more important tips:
Don’t collect and/or upload reviews to Caring.com on behalf of your customers. Our dedicated staff is primed to assist seniors and their families who need a hand in submitting their reviews.
Encourage senior living community residents to steer clear of using their real names as their reviewer screen names — this is a simple measure to protect their privacy, since their home address is published on the listing.
The fastest, easiest way for your customers to add reviews is via your dedicated review entry form on Caring.com. Point your customers directly to it to save them time and make it as convenient as possible for them to help you achieve Caring Stars status. Not sure of your review form link? Contact our team for help.
With our reviews-by-phone services, we also have tech-challenged seniors covered! Communities and agencies in our partner network have free access to our award-winning Review Call-in Line and “Review Us on Caring” handouts.
And that's not all!
If your senior care agency is using Home Care Pulse: we’ve been integrated with them since 2017, with a monthly reviews feed for participating agencies. Many agencies on the 2023 winner list took advantage of this option to get reviews.
For senior living communities in our partner network: we’re doing automatic outreach to the care seekers we've directed your way – collecting their reviews about their tours and choice of your community. And you have access to a nifty tool in Partner Portal to streamline your review request outreach too.
For all review collection sources in both senior living and senior care: Don't worry if we didn't make the initial introduction of the customer – we’ll accept reviews for all qualified consumers even if we weren’t the original referral source of them to your business.
To earn the prestigious Caring Stars recognition, it's also crucial that any and all 1-star or 2-star reviews on your Caring.com listing (across all time) either have a published response or are contested and removed by the 10/15 deadline.
Here are three main ways to respond to reviews on Caring.com:
For partner communities and agencies, there are New Review Alerts — these emails are sent instantly for newly published reviews, have links to contest or publish a response, and you can adjust the emails on your account at any time via Partner Success.
For those using third-party monitoring services, we’re integrated with 6 review response companies, including Consumer Fusion, Influence Network, Reputation.com, ReviewTrackers, Shout About Us, and SAVANT.
For older reviews, if you’re lacking a New Review Alert, or if you aren’t using one of our response partners, you can simply email your response to reviews@caring.com.
For an in-depth understanding of how to effectively contest reviews to have them removed, or for tips on how to optimize your published review responses, please refer back to our prior webinar, “From Complaint to Compliment: How to Respond to Online Consumer Reviews.” The Caring Stars 2024 qualification webinar also has a summary of tips for review response.
Caring Stars deserve the spotlight, and we help shine it on them. Don’t be outshined by your local competitors! Make sure your community or agency is on the 2024 winner list.
To learn more, please revisit the Caring Stars 2024 webinar recording or read through the slides. Or contact reviews@caring.com or (650) 762-8190 to reach our Caring Reviews team.
How are you currently keeping track of the screened leads Caring.com sends you?
Are they sitting in your email inbox, or a file folder of those emails printed on paper? Re-typing them all into a spreadsheet? In a text message archive on your smartphone? Or are you not really keeping track yet? We know that as an in-home care agency owner and/or business manager, you're juggling a lot. We understand you don't always have a lot of time to take a step back from the hustle and bustle of your daily work to analyze your online lead volume and how well it's positively impacting your bottom line. This may especially ring true for those running or managing small businesses without a large marketing team or digital agency to do the tracking, reporting, and analysis for you.
With the needs of our in-home care agency partners in mind: we've created and launched a simple new online tool to help you more efficiently and effectively keep track of all of the referrals we're sending to your agency — and self-serve to adjust your lead volume as you wish.
With MyPortal for Home Care Agencies, our partners can:
See and set statuses on all of the lead referrals from Caring.com
Adjust the agency's lead volume to get more (or less) leads from Caring per month
Search the lead archive by name, email, or zip code to follow up with specific prospective clients
Download the information into a CSV file as needed
And more!
It's free, easy-to-use, and all at your fingertips from anywhere you can access the Internet (and mobile-friendly too).
Here's a sample or sneak peek at the referral list feature:
Ready to get started in using this tool for your agency? Contact your Caring.com account executive or email our MyPortal manager for an invitation. Also, if you already receive screened in-home care leads from us, you can go to myportal.caring.com, click the "forgot password" link, and then set a password to gain access.
"I wanted to use the portal for reporting and analysis of the referral program with Caring, and it is exactly what I needed. The basic lead numbers and statuses are what I was looking for, and those are in there. I was also able to go back in time and see previous data from prior to the portal being available, which was really helpful." — Rick Ferrante, President of Home Care Services Santa Clarita
If you went to any senior living industry events in 2022 or joined industry conversations on LinkedIn, chances are you’ve likely seen, encountered or heard about Steve Moran of Senior Living Foresight. Described by aging expert, Dr. Bill Thomas as “the town crier of this industry” and known for being forthright in sharing his opinions, Steve’s been writing about and discussing various aspects of senior living for over a decade — covering topics spanning from resident and staff engagement and enrichment, to sales, marketing and building a successful brand.
Caring partnered with Steve early on, to support the mission of advancing our industry’s knowledge and success, and recently interviewed him to learn more about his influence in our industry and where he thinks the greatest opportunities lie for the months and years ahead.
Caring: You began writing the “Senior Housing Forum” blog back in 2011, and changed the name to “Senior Living Foresight” in August 2019, with an expanded content offering and increased event participation in recent years.
Why did you start blogging about this industry — were any of your prior professional experiences relevant to senior living blogging (if so, how)?
What were some of the industry shifts or other influences behind the name change and programmatic additions you’ve made over the years?
Steve: I worked for a senior living organization out of Beverly Hills for several years and fell in love with the business. When that company collapsed, I spent some time working in the electronics industry in Silicon Valley. I didn’t like it very much and wasn’t that good at it.
When I decided to change directions, I got to thinking about what I could do, what I liked and realized that senior living was it. I took the first job I could find which was selling emergency call systems and the same week launched the new website, Senior Housing Forum using a $5-a-month hosting plan and a free WordPress template. My original idea was that it would help me sell more call systems.
Then I started seeing ways the industry could improve and started writing about my ideas and those ideas resonated with the industry and helped leaders lead better.
Since that initial website, we have done about four major redesigns and countless minor revisions. Since we launched, we have expanded a lot. At first it was a website and an email newsletter. Today those still exist, but we have a huge LinkedIn presence, a strong Facebook leadership group, a podcast, and several livestreams every week.
At the end of the day, we are 100% committed to the idea that we want to improve the lives of people who work and live in senior living.
Caring: At the top left of your homepage near the platform logo are these words: “Increasing Occupancy. Reducing Turnover. Creating Culture.” Tell us more about why you chose these 3 areas, and if/how these themes play out across your partnerships and content.
Steve: The initial idea was to ask ourselves, “What are the big problems that we can help industry leaders solve?” and it was those three things. We continue to believe that when senior living organizations get those things right, they will make the world a better place for their residents and family members, for team members and for their local marketplace communities. I would add though that in some sense the list is backward. It starts with culture and when you get culture right you will have lower turnover, and when you get those two things right you will have higher occupancy.
Over the last year, I developed a new keynote speech titled, “Look to the Sky,” where I talk about how to create a culture where everyone loves coming to work every day. While working on that speech, I came to realize that it all starts with having a purpose for your organization — that purpose has to be profound and something that every single team member in the organization can call their own.
For us at Senior Living Foresight, it is making the lives of people who live and work in senior living better.
Caring: What have been some of the most surprising or most exciting things you’ve learned about the senior living industry since you started covering it?
Steve: The first thing is that almost everyone in the industry really cares about making the world a better place for older people. There is also a certain level of restlessness and frustration about the state of the industry as it is today, meaning there is a recognition that as great as it is, we can be better.
At the same time, we are a pretty risk averse industry which makes us timid about changing even when we know we should. It’s easy to understand, change equals risk and not changing feels less risky, even though it may not be. There are so many companies that didn’t change that are out of business like Kodak, Palm Pilot, Blockbuster Video and more.
Caring: You have a lot of opinions on how large providers are doing with respect to their overall business. What are two or three things you think they need to do better immediately?
Steve: You would ask me that wouldn’t you?! The biggest challenge that large providers have is that their systems for doing business become more important than people. This in turn means that people are viewed as more of a cost center than as an asset. Team members have great ideas about how to make their communities better. They understand problems better than corporate leaders, they understand solutions better than corporate leaders and they want to be heard. Mostly they feel like they are not valued and not heard. If I had a poor performing building, I would start by going to that building (or those buildings) and say, “We are struggling here, you know it and I know. What are your ideas for making it better?” Then really listen and figure out which things make sense and how to make them happen. It sounds stupid simple — actually it is, but it will yield results and rapidly.
Caring: Sometimes your opinions are viewed as controversial or challenging of the status quo. Are you finding your approach effective for initiating positive change in the industry? Have there been instances in which you regretted how you approached a subject, or conversely, instances you wish you’d done further with ‘pushing the envelope’? What does it take to get you to change your point of view on a subject?
Steve: Heavy question. First, I am a huge, huge fan of senior living. It is making a positive impact on the lives of residents and team members and yet we have big challenges that are reflected in occupancy and staff turnover.
Early on, I would write scathing articles about something in senior living, then realize they were simply rants and I didn’t publish them. I have also written articles, then rethought the topic and written a follow-up article saying, “I changed my mind.” I am sure if I went through every article, there would be a few I wish I hadn’t written but there are none that stand out as embarrassingly cringe worthy.
One of the most curious parts of writing critical articles is how often I will get messages from people inside the organizations I am critical of, who say, “I am glad someone had the courage to say that.”
Part of what makes this hard is that I am someone who welcomes criticism, even if I disagree with it. I love the fans, and the kind words.
It is much harder to be critical today than it was when I started out. Back then, I knew very few people so it was easier to blast away. Today when I write something critical, I can usually put names and faces of people I know, people I have met and even spent time with that will be upset with what I wrote.
Right now I have an article I wrote several weeks ago that I have not submitted for publication because I know a significant number of people will be unhappy about it. But it is something that needs to be talked about.
Finally I try to never write a critical article about anything without offering up an idea for a better way to do things.
Caring: In this industry, there’s a lot of emphasis on lead generation. What do you think the lead generation landscape looks like in 5 years?
Steve: There are several clumps of low-hanging fruit that are mostly unpicked when it comes to lead gen.
Just getting out into the marketplace, building relationships with people who can help you help residents.
Making the community more available to people who need a place to do an event or have a meeting. I am talking about groups with no obvious tie to older people. Scouting groups, mom’s groups, social clubs, climbing and fishing groups. The more people a community touches, the more leads that will show up.
We are terrible about telling stories of changed lives. Giving a spouse who is not yet ready for senior living a new lease on life. Relieving the guilt and worry of a daughter or son. Telling those stories rather than simply saying we do that are hugely different. We are not telling stories about residents who come back to life, who fall in love, who find new hobbies, who are continuing to change the world. There are so many stories.
The most recent thing I am thinking about is this question: How do we make senior living more fun? For residents, for adult family members, for team members. Right now, pretty much no one would describe living in or visiting senior living as fun. But I believe that could change.
Caring: You’ve regularly written about your own personal experiences caring for aging loved ones and the numerous senior living community tours you’ve taken. What are the top 3 things you think a senior living community should do on every tour they give?
Has your experience covering the industry helped your loved ones in their search for senior living? Are there things you think communities or organizations like Caring can do to help ensure any consumer can optimize their senior living search experience (that they don’t need the industry insider ‘leg up’ to be successful in their search)?
Steve: I wish I had a better answer to this question but shopping for senior living is hard. Choosing to move a family member into senior living is life altering and very hard to roll back. I wish senior living communities would spend a lot more time thinking about how to reduce the friction when it comes to learning about senior living. A very simple one is putting pricing front and center on your websites.
Here is what I wish Caring.com would do, maybe we can even work on this together. There needs to be a series of very short tutorials for family members on what senior living is, how to make these decisions, and what to expect. Maybe we do them with music and with comedy — I don’t know, but I think it would help people know what to do. Or maybe we take some of your prospects and do some videos of them asking questions and then we answer them. I have looked at what you have and I don’t know if it quite really hits the mark. What if your tutorials were the one place everyone had to go? I have so many ideas about this.
(Caring Note: Thank you for this suggestion and others! We have some exciting updates coming to our website in 2023 — to further support the millions of people who access our senior living content during their search and selection process.)
Caring: When you think about our industry, what keeps you up at night? What most excites you and brings a smile to your daily work? What are you most passionate about, and find most meaningful in your senior living work?
Steve: What keeps me up at night: I talk to a lot of people who are terminally discouraged about senior living, but I am not one of them. While there is a lot still to be done, the industry is evolving and changing. I see lots of small evidences of positive change nearly every day.
My very public confession is that my passion is more for the front-line workers, many of whom would live on public assistance but choose to work in senior living instead. More than any other time, they are making better money and having more of a voice.
I find meaning every time I hear from a leader who is leading better because of some bit of content we have produced. We get those messages nearly every day via email, private messenger, in the form of online comments. It means we are making a difference in the lives of people. We are making the lives of those who live and work in senior living better.
***
We appreciate Steve taking time to answer these questions, hosting the Senior Living Foresight platform for relevant and constructive industry discussions, and sharing about his passion for senior living.
We’d love to hear from you too! Please comment on our LinkedIn post or email us to share your thoughts on any of the topics in this interview, or others you think are important for our industry to reflect upon.
The Caring Super Stars of 2022 are senior living communities who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award for 2022 plus two or more additional years since this first-of-its-kind program launched in 2012. These are the repeatedly stellar senior living communities that seniors and their family members praise — year after year.
ALABAMA — 1 community
ARIZONA — 2 communities
ARKANSAS — 2 communities
CALIFORNIA — 24 communities
DELAWARE — 1 community
FLORIDA — 11 communities
GEORGIA — 5 communities
IDAHO — 1 community
ILLINOIS — 4 communities
INDIANA — 3 communities
IOWA — 2 communities
MAINE — 1 community
MARYLAND — 1 community
MASSACHUSETTS — 6 communities
MICHIGAN — 7 communities
MISSOURI — 4 communities
NEVADA — 1 community
NEW HAMPSHIRE — 1 community
NEW JERSEY — 3 communities
NEW YORK — 2 communities
NORTH CAROLINA — 1 community
OHIO — 3 communities
OKLAHOMA — 2 communities
PENNSYLVANIA — 5 communities
SOUTH CAROLINA — 2 communities
SOUTH DAKOTA — 1 community
TENNESSEE — 3 communities
TEXAS — 12 communities
UTAH — 6 communities
VIRGINIA — 2 communities
WASHINGTON — 2 communities
WISCONSIN — 1 community
Congratulations to these 122 senior living communities across the United States!
***See the full list of Caring Stars of 2022.
Are you familiar with Caring.com’s annual Caring Stars award program? It can help boost sales and marketing (as well as support staff recruiting and retention) for your senior living community or home care agency!
Launched in 2012 as the first of its kind in the senior living industry and now open to home care agencies as well, the Caring Stars award honors service excellence based on consumer ratings and reviews on Caring.com. Senior living communities and home care agencies achieve the “Caring Stars” award through lots of high praise in online reviews from their customers — older adults and family caregivers — and by responding to any critical feedback in negative (1-star and 2-star) reviews.
The Caring Stars award helps families narrow their choices to the best of the best, and quickly find the right senior care providers for their elderly loved ones. The integrity of our reviews program and the extensive vetting we do of the Caring Stars helps instill confidence for family caregivers and older adults in requesting more information about the agencies and taking a tour of the senior living communities. In fact, in our analysis of directory listings for our partners with the award vs. those without:
Caring Stars winners have averaged twice as many inquiries and 3x the move-ins as partners without the award
Every year, Caring Stars also generates positive content, media coverage, and social buzz — and boosts morale — for winning communities and agencies. Some Caring Star winners put the badge or winner widget on their websites, within e-newsletters, and in their billing statements, as ‘social proof’ of the high quality services they’re delivering. Caring Stars also frequently get featured in their local newspapers which helps raise awareness about their high quality services with more people in their area. Both the award and review excerpts make for good content on their social profiles as well. And the award gives senior living communities and home care agencies an opportunity to celebrate staff for a job well done, and build enthusiasm and pride in their workplace. Some communities even host a Caring Stars celebration with residents, and we at Caring.com enjoy visiting some of these resident parties as well.
More than 650 communities and agencies were recognized as Caring Stars 2021. Congratulations to each of these senior care providers for earning such accolades from their customers!
The deadline to qualify for Caring Stars 2022 is October 15, 2021.
There is no application for the award — it’s based on the reviews on your Caring.com listing. To be a Caring Star of 2022, we recommend you plan to meet or exceed the 2021 winner criteria. We also recently held a series of free webinars to help senior living communities and home care agencies better understand how to get and respond to reviews, and how to qualify for Caring Stars 2022:
June 2021 – Senior Living: How to Optimize Your Online Reputation: Peruse the slides — slide 41 has specific goals for communities; or watch the webinar recording
June 2021 – Home Care: How to Optimize Your Online Reputation: Peruse the slides – slide 42 has specific goals for agencies, or watch the webinar recording
July 2021 – How the Major Reviews Websites Vary, presented with ReviewTrackers: Peruse the slides, or watch the webinar recording
August 2021 – How to Ask for Reviews, presented with Consumer Fusion: Peruse the slides, or watch the webinar recording
Have questions? Please contact our reviews team at reviews@caring.com or (650) 762-8190.
***
SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT CARING POSTCARDS: We moved our postcard processing operations to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2019, and then sunsetted the reviews-by-postcard program in 2021 (blank card distribution ceased in March 2021, and the postage permit on return cards expires 9/30/21). We now offer a review call-in line. Contact reviews@caring.com for assistance in using this free service for partners only.
Editor’s note: This article is published each year with updated dates and info.
The Caring Super Stars of 2021 for home care are agencies who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award for 2021 plus two or more additional years since this award program expanded to include home care agencies in 2017, after being the first-of-its-kind for senior living communities since 2012. These are the repeatedly stellar home care agencies that seniors and their family members praise — year after year.
ALABAMA — 3 agencies
ARIZONA — 8 agencies
ARKANSAS — 6 agencies
CALIFORNIA — 27 agencies
COLORADO — 5 agencies
CONNECTICUT — 4 agencies
FLORIDA — 25 agencies
GEORGIA — 4 agencies
IDAHO — 1 agency
ILLINOIS — 12 agencies
INDIANA — 3 agencies
IOWA — 2 agencies
KANSAS — 2 agencies
KENTUCKY — 1 agency
LOUISIANA — 2 agencies
MAINE — 1 agency
MARYLAND — 8 agencies
MASSACHUSETTS — 8 agencies
MICHIGAN — 13 agencies
MINNESOTA — 2 agencies
MISSISSIPPI — 2 agencies
MISSOURI — 7 agencies
MONTANA — 2 agencies
NEBRASKA — 1 agency
NEVADA — 2 agencies
NEW HAMPSHIRE — 1 agency
NEW JERSEY — 9 agencies
NEW MEXICO — 1 agency
NEW YORK — 13 agencies
NORTH CAROLINA — 7 agencies
NORTH DAKOTA — 1 agency
OHIO — 14 agencies
OKLAHOMA — 3 agencies
OREGON — 5 agencies
PENNSYLVANIA — 8 agencies
PUERTO RICO — 1 agency
SOUTH CAROLINA — 5 agencies
SOUTH DAKOTA — 1 agency
TENNESSEE — 6 agencies
TEXAS — 24 agencies
UTAH — 4 agencies
VIRGINIA — 7 agencies
WASHINGTON — 4 agencies
WISCONSIN — 6 agencies
Congratulations to these 271 home care agencies across the United States and in Puerto Rico!
***See the full list of Caring Stars of 2021.
April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month, a time to educate the public about the impact of this disease, raise funds for a cure, and increase focus on supporting those affected. Join the conversation, demonstrate your expertise, and attract new clients with original content on Parkinson’s care. Avoid getting lost in an abundance of similar coverage, though, by making your article(s) and social shares hyper-local and/or very specific to your senior care business.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Highlight any specialization your team has in helping to care for Parkinson’s patients.
Interview a nearby neurologist or social worker about Parkinson’s disease — get their expert insights about how it impacts the lives of those it affects and learn their top tips for patients and family members.
Google “Parkinson’s” and the name of your city/state to find local resources to support those in your area. For instance, a Google search for “Parkinson’s San Mateo, CA” returns results for San Francisco Bay Area organizations focused on Parkinson’s disease, as well as local support groups. Find out what’s near you and include those resources in your coverage this month.
If your organization has participated in cany local “Moving Day” events in your area, write about those activities (including how much you helped raise for the cause) and share photos on your blog or social profile(s).
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Caring for a resident with Parkinson’s disease? Consider sharing his/her story (with the resident and resident family member’s permission), and/or interview him or her for your community blog about life before and after the disease. Include how you’re supporting his/her quality of life.
Certain foods have been found to reduce Parkinson’s risk. Consider including those on your community’s menu this month and talking about that in your community e-newsletter or blog.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Profile stories of clients who live with Parkinson’s disease and share how you support them. Be sure to get permission from the client and/or client’s family members before doing so.
Sometimes doctors and family members miss the signs of Parkinson’s disease, or because symptoms can vary dramatically from patient to patient, it’s possible for an initial misdiagnosis. That’s unfortunate because getting an accurate diagnosis and treatment early can help slow the progression of the disease. In your content this month, talk about Parkinson’s risk and warning signs and how having your agency’s caregivers in the home regularly can help older adults and their families spot those concerns more quickly. And if your agency has inspired a family to get their loved one evaluated, diagnosed and treated, share that story — you may motivate others to take similar action.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Parkinson’s Disease Resource Center — includes a range of articles and informational resources to help those you serve
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
National Parkinson Foundation — This organization has a range of tools to help the older adults and families you serve.
Davis Phinney Foundation for Parkinson’s — Their Living Well Challenge is an educational webinar series featuring movement disorder experts on topics relevant to people affected by Parkinson’s disease.
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
As we previously discussed on our blog and in our Digital Marketing Academy webinars, senior care reviews online are playing a significant role in helping consumers find the best service providers for their loved ones.
Search engine-marketing agency BrightLocal reports that more than 90% of Internet users in the United States and Canada are reading reviews online during their product or service research. We've seen this level of engagement among senior care searchers as well: Consumers are clicking on business listings with senior care reviews and skipping those without them - whether they're on a search engine page of listing results or researching in an online directory.
Many family caregivers and older adults also tell us directly in periodic surveys that they find consumer reviews very useful to their research of senior care providers. The firsthand experience feedback in a senior care review provides insights about what current or former clients like (and dislike) about the senior living community or home care agency, and how the listed business may or may not meet their needs as a prospective client. Even those who get a referral from a doctor, hospital discharge planner, or social worker are still going online to find out what other consumers have said about that senior living community or home care agency - before picking up the phone to schedule a senior living community tour or in-home care assessment.
Given how much your target market is engaged with senior care reviews: You need to be actively monitoring and building your online reputation, as well as measuring the impact that reviews are having for your senior care business. We've helped some of our referral partners do this analysis through reviews in our online directory, and will share this data to help you measure the monetary value of an online review too.
Contrary to some common misperceptions, the majority of online consumer reviews are not complaints, and instead are 4-star or 5-star positive reviews. In fact, on Caring.com, most consumer reviews in our senior living and senior care directories have positive ratings, and some studies have shown that the number one reason consumers write online reviews is altruism — to help others, not to slander a business.
So when you get the occasional negative review, then what to do? Even if you do everything right, the families and older adults you serve aren’t always happy, and sometimes there are other factors you can’t control that lead to grumpiness in online reviews.
How you respond to their critical feedback online may or may not change their perspective, but it can help persuade prospective residents who subsequently read the negative review(s) on your business listing. In fact, according to one survey by MarketingCharts.com and social marketing firm, Bazaarvoice: 7 in 10 survey respondents indicated that a brand’s response to an online consumer review changes their perception of the brand, most commonly by making them feel that the brand really cares about customers (41%), that it has great customer service (35%), and that it is trustworthy (22%).
Don’t be this guy.
In a Spring 2014 survey Caring.com conducted, we found that 67% of family caregivers and older adults are using online directories to find potential senior living communities and home care agencies, and relying on reviews to help narrow their choices. These firsthand testimonials provide insights into what current or former clients liked and disliked about the business, and how the listed business may or may not meet the prospective clients’ needs. Online reviews influence consumer confidence, and are far more trusted than advertising. When you ignore a negative review on your business listing, you allow the disgruntled former client to persuade your target customer at a ‘moment of truth’ — and that scenario is unlikely to work in your favor, especially if there are extremely critical falsehoods in the content of the review.
Whether you use a third-party service or software, or have your in-house team track the feedback you get on the Internet, be vigilant about what people are saying about your business online and take strategic action to manage your reputation.
Learn the guidelines and procedures that each website has for responding to online reviews about your business. Contest or take action to remove a negative review if there are factual errors, and/or when you believe the review doesn’t meet the website’s review guidelines (and they erred in posting it). If there are no factual errors or guideline issues — and it’s simply negative opinion, explore your options for posting a response.
At Caring.com, we’ve seen dramatic increases in the “Provider Response” feature being used by senior living communities and home care agencies over the last couple of years. From 2012 to 2013, there was a 61% increase in the amount of provider responses posted in our senior living and senior care directories, and from 2013 to 2014, the volume more than tripled. These savvy providers are paying attention to what’s being said about their service offering, and taking the opportunity to post responses to both negative and positive reviews on their listings.
For assisted living and memory care communities listed on Caring.com: To earn the annual Caring Stars award, the stringent criteria require responding to negative reviews on your listing. You simply cannot qualify for a “service excellence” award if responding to critical feedback isn’t part of your service package.
Important to Note:
If you have an enhanced (paid) listing on Caring.com, you will receive automated alerts when new reviews are posted. Those review alerts will include convenient quick links to online forms where you can input information to contest a review or post a response.
For all listed businesses on Caring.com: Our team is available to address your review questions and post your responses via reviews@caring.com or our customer service Help Desk.
It’s natural to be angry or offended when someone badmouths you online. But you better cool down before you respond to critical feedback – especially when you think the consumer’s opinion is unfair, wrong, or ill-intentioned. Remember, it’s the prospective client you are most influencing, and they may be more empathetic or receptive to the disgruntled former client and be more suspicious of you, especially if your words of the response reinforce any negative perceptions they may have about you.
Prospective clients know you’re not perfect, and they want to read both positive and negative reviews. In case they too have a problem or complaint at some point, they want to know they’ll be dealing with a reasonable person — not someone who goes ‘off the handle’ with negative feedback.
Tips:
Don’t go on the attack against reviewers
over a difference of opinion or their word choice. For example, many consumers still use the term “nursing home” to apply to any senior living community with care services. If your community is not a skilled nursing facility, use the correct language for your service offering without berating the reviewer for their word choice mistake. Another common example: You may think your typically top-rated chef only makes the freshest, most delicious food. However, some reviewers may still call your community’s food terrible. That’s their opinion and they’re entitled to it — you have many options for how you respond to that person’s taste buds, and dismissing them through your words online shouldn’t be among the tactics you consider. A third, frequent example that comes up with negative reviews on Caring.com: Your opinion about the quality of phone service at your front desk or home care agency office may be radically different than the reviewer. Rather than argue that your sweet, mild-mannered receptionist is never rude, take the opportunity to thank the reviewer for their feedback, which you’ll take into consideration as you maintain delivery of excellence in all areas of your business.
Be very careful with your tone
in any published response. Demonstrate that you’re open to hearing all feedback, and available to address concerns. Be an excellent communicator who handles challenges with grace and professionalism, isn’t argumentative, and is service oriented. Even if the person who reviewed you is totally out of line, it’s better to avoid being edgy, aggressive, arrogant, or rude. While a restaurateur may get some great press or accolades from such an approach, these styles don’t translate well in the senior care industry where you’re expected to be sensitive and kind in responding to complaints from those you serve.
Redirect the conversation to your customer service channels
— provide your email, phone, Help Desk, etc. — where you can collect and share information about details of the complaint outside of the public eye, including sensitive information that shouldn’t be discussed online, such as information covered in HIPAA privacy law. If you encounter a less-optimized review website that is unlike Caring.com and does not allow you to include your phone number or email in a review response: use language to refer to ways your trained customer service team can be reached.
Avoid going tit for tat
— resist the urge to debate the merits of every nit in the review. This approach will help you to avoid further damage to your online reputation, respect the privacy of the involved parties, and stay focused on positively influencing the prospective client.
Be authentic and conversational.
Don’t sound like a robot. Your legal and PR staff may provide a “template” or text for you to use in all of your review responses, but if you overuse that approach, you can inadvertently come across as an insensitive, detached entity that doesn’t really care about hearing negative feedback or applying service changes to address concerns. When the same template response appears on every negative review, it can send a message that you’re not truly listening to the feedback of individual consumers, nor tailoring your response to meet individual needs. With this “same response to every negative review” approach, you can create a perception that your response is nothing more than a PR tactic, rather than true customer service.
Have empathy.
Remember that family caregivers and older adults have a range of challenges that may be contributing to their negative words and tone toward your organization. It’s not an excuse for their behavior, but is a perspective that can help you craft a response demonstrating kindness and senior care expertise.
Be thankful for feedback.
The reviewer took the time to alert you to their complaint, and now you have an opportunity to address it. Had they simply shared their opinions at an offline cocktail party, it would be out of earshot for your staff and you’d be left out of the conversation. With the online review, you have the ability to hear the message, reflect on the feedback, and respond as necessary.
In fact, consider approaching all negative reviews about your business with this question, “What can be learned from this feedback? Do we have opportunities here for improvement? How so?”
The answer may be as simple as: “Even though we did our best for that individual, we didn’t meet their needs/preferences, and we need to get more reviews from our happy clients to balance that online word-of-mouth.” Through Caring.com’s Digital Marketing Academy and monthly webcasts, we’ve covered our programs for generating senior care reviews, and will continue to cover that topic in upcoming posts on this blog too. In the meantime, please contact reviews@caring.com to learn more about how to get consumer reviews on your Caring.com listing.
Any senior living community listed on Caring.com can receive senior care reviews from their cognitively-healthy residents and residents’ family members. These consumer reviews can be positive, negative, or in-between, and are published (or removed) based on the Review Guidelines.
In our research and data, Caring.com has found that reviews can significantly boost prospective resident inquiries, community tours, and new resident move-ins for our senior living partner communities. And for our community partners who earn the coveted Caring Stars award for service excellence based on reviews: they average double the inquiries and three-times as many move-ins as our partners without the award!
Below are the ways your community can build its collection of great reviews on our site.
Dedicated review submission form — Every listing in the Caring.com directory has a unique link for cognitively-healthy residents and their family members to submit their feedback about a senior living community’s eldercare services. This custom link is accessible for the senior living community to share with its customers via the “Write a Review” button near the top of the reviews section on the listing. Consumer reviews submitted via that online form are typically processed within three (3) business days, so it’s the fastest, easiest way for the agency to get new reviews, particularly with more older adults and their adult children online nowadays than ever before.
Partner Portal reviews campaign(s) — We make it easy for our partners to send requests for reviews to their happy customers, with a step-by-step, simple-to-use review request wizard in Partner Portal. See how now.
Phone review program — We offer a toll-free phone number that residents and resident family members call to give their review by phone. Our review collection agents will guide callers through a brief, relevant interview to record quality reviews detailing the consumers' firsthand experiences with our partners' senior living or skilled nursing services. Contact our reviews team to get the phone number for your happy customers. Alternatively, senior living communities partnered with Caring.com can send us the names and telephone numbers (send to reviews@caring.com) of cognitively-healthy residents and their family members (with their explicit consent for sharing that info with Caring.com) and we’ll call them for their reviews. Note: This option can take longer than online submissions, given extra steps involved (from reaching the reviewer by phone, to transcribing the review from the recording phone call, as well as uploading and processing the review against the guidelines). It's a good option though for folks who aren't comfortable online yet.
All senior living communities with reviews on their Caring.com listing can publish a response - for both positive and negative reviews - and listed businesses also have the option to request removal of the review if there are fact errors or guidelines concerns.
Our partners will receive a New Review Alert emailed to their inbox the instant any new reviews are published on their listing. Those alerts include convenient quick links to publish a response or contest the review, and by using the alerts, the message reaches our highest priority processing queue. Updates for who on your team receives the alerts can be made in Partner Portal. (Please contact partnersuccess@caring.com if you need help with Partner Portal.)
Have questions about online reviews? Our reviews team can be reached by email or phone: reviews@caring.com or (650) 762-8190. We also have an entire section of this blog dedicated to information about the reviews program — please do check out the best practices and case studies we’ve showcased in the Reviews Info center.
Caring.com today announced that we have acquired SeniorHousingNet.com, a senior living and 55+ lifestyle website formerly part of the realtor.com® network. The SeniorHousingNet.com acquisition expands Caring's core senior living directory and advertising offerings to include 55+ active adult communities and senior apartments.
Caring.com and SeniorHousingNet.com are instrumental tools in supporting consumers in their search for senior living and senior care. Caring’s team of highly trained, empathetic Family Advisors also provide information and senior living community suggestions by phone. All of these services are free of charge for seniors and caregivers, helping them research and select senior living options matched to their unique situations.
“For over a decade, we’ve provided a comprehensive range of senior care information for families caring for senior loved ones. We look forward to extending our expertise and support to more Baby Boomers, retirees, and active seniors seeking 55+ communities,” said Caring's CEO, Jim Rosenthal.
He added: “Acquiring SeniorHousingNet.com also enables us to expand digital marketing opportunities for our partner network of senior living communities and in-home care agencies, as well as SeniorHousingNet.com’s current advertisers.”
The SeniorHousingNet.com directory will now be powered by Caring.com, and Caring’s Partner Success and Engineering teams worked to ensure that the integration is seamless.
Read the full press release here.
Any in-home care agency listed in Caring.com's home care directory for senior care searchers online can receive online reviews from their cognitively-healthy clients and clients' family members. These consumer reviews can be positive, negative, or in-between, and are published (or removed) based on the Review Guidelines. The reviews are so important to senior care searchers online that Caring.com uses them to rank the results for the in-home care directory. Caring.com has also found that listings with reviews can get more inquiries, and agencies with online reviews are more likely to get callbacks from prospects (and ultimately conversions to new clients) than agencies without online reviews.
Given how helpful and influential online reviews are, here's how your agency can build its collection of great reviews on our site.
Dedicated review submission form - Every listing in the Caring.com directory has a unique link for cognitively-healthy clients and their family members to submit their feedback about a home care agency's services in reviews on Caring.com. This link is accessible for the agency to share with its customer via the "Write a Review" button at the top of the reviews section on the listing. Consumer reviews submitted via that form are typically processed within three (3) business days, so it's the fastest, easiest way for the agency to get new reviews, particularly with more older adults and their adult children online nowadays than ever before.
Home Care Pulse program - For agencies partnered with Home Care Pulse, we have integration between their telephonic surveys of home care clients and our reviews program. It's easy to opt-in and there's no additional charge to have the feedback pushed to Caring.com as reviews.
Phone review program — We offer a toll-free phone number that your agency clients and their family members can call to give their review by phone. Our review collection agents will guide callers through a brief, relevant interview to record quality reviews detailing the consumers' firsthand experiences with our partners' in-home care services. Contact our reviews team to get the phone number for your happy customers. Alternatively, home care agencies partnered with Caring.com can send us the names and telephone numbers of cognitively-healthy clients and their family members (with their explicit consent for sharing that info with Caring.com) and we’ll call them for their reviews. Note: This option can take longer than online submissions, given extra steps involved (from reaching the reviewer by phone, to transcribing the review from the recording phone call, as well as uploading and processing the review against the guidelines). It's a good option though for folks who aren't comfortable online yet.
All home care agencies with reviews on their Caring.com listing can publish a response — for both positive and negative reviews — and listed businesses also have the option to request removal of the review if there are fact errors or guidelines concerns.
Our partners will receive a New Review Alert emailed to their inbox the instant any new reviews are published on their listing. Those alerts include convenient quick links to publish a response or contest the review, and by using the alerts, the message reaches our highest priority processing queue. Contact your Caring.com account executive if you need to make changes for who at your agency is getting the alerts. (Don't know who your account executive is? Please contact Sales_Homecare@caring.com for help with your account.)
Have questions about online reviews? Our reviews team can be reached by email or phone: reviews@caring.com or (650) 762-8190. We also have an entire section of this blog dedicated to information about the reviews program — please do check out the best practices and case studies we’ve showcased in the Reviews Info center.
Does your agency’s leadership, sales and marketing staff have a firm grasp on how to convert online leads into new clients? Are you tracking the performance and calculating the ROI of your digital marketing? How is your sales cadence for online leads the same or different than how you approach leads from other marketing channels? Do you regularly monitor and manage your online reputation in consumer reviews?
There are some very important trends in the home care industry to which you need to pay attention. Agencies who recognize and plan for these dramatic changes in the way we do business will prosper over the coming years. Those who try to cling to the past may not survive.
We’re speaking about some demographic changes that are already impacting the way our industry markets and sells our services. In the coming years, these changes will completely change the way we do business. This is because future consumers will select care for their parents much differently than how consumers have done so in the past.
The biggest reason is a shift in the normal behavior of those that are searching for care. We all know that the ultimate decisions to hire a home care agency are made up most often by the adult children of seniors, often an adult daughter. As the younger Baby Boomers have become the ones searching for care for their parents, they are displaying a different set of habits and approaches. Let’s face it, the adult daughters of today are very different than the adult daughters of a generation ago.
But if you think they are different now, just wait! They are going to be very different in the coming years as the Gen Xers and the Millennials start caring for their parents. The way we market to and sell these younger generations, people who have grown up using the Internet, will need to be totally different than how we have done it in the past.
In the past, successful agencies primarily spent time and money on developing relationships in their area with other professionals who work with seniors. These relationships generally took a lot of time and effort to develop. But once established, the referrals that resulted were practically clients, requiring very little skill and effort to convert them to active clients billing hours every week.
But now, many are going online and shopping for homecare before being referred, and even after being referred. Online leads are inexpensive and easy to acquire, but much tougher to sell. They require a very specific strategy; one that is very different than the strategy you use with professional referrals. Do you have both strategies in place in your agency? Or are you making the mistake of handling all leads the same?
In a new series of training videos for Caring’s home care agency partners, renowned sales trainer Peter Droubay takes you step-by-step through the keys to unlock home care sales success. Each video covers a specific, highly-relevant home care agency sales and marketing topic, and provides detailed insights and tips for helping your agency optimize its success with online leads.
Peter DroubayPeter has decades of sales and home care experience, was among the featured experts in the Home Care Pulse 2020 Growth Summit, and is sharing this new sales training free of charge to Caring partners. You’ll just need an access password to view the video, which can be provided to you by your agency’s account executive at Caring.com. (Contact sales_homecare@caring.com if you’re unsure of the contact info for your account rep. You can also contact that email to get signed up to access a partnership with Caring.)
When we launched the Caring Stars award program in 2012, it was the first award program of its kind to recognize assisted living and memory care communities based on consumer ratings and reviews. Online reviews (and social media) were still relatively new to our industry, and we had the largest collection of senior care reviews online. By using this extensive feedback to highlight the best communities, we envisioned that the program would both help family caregivers and older adults in their search and selection for assisted living or memory care, and provide insights to community operators about the senior living preferences of residents and their family members.
For the first five years of the program, the criteria stayed the same — we required a collection of recent and positive reviews, a high overall rating, and response to all negative reviews, for example — and only assisted living and memory care communities could qualify. For 2017, we're raising the criteria bar significantly and will expand the program to include independent living communities, non-medical home care agencies, care homes, and assisted living and memory care communities.
Before we head into this new territory, though, let's look back through the years and share some of the honoree highlights. As you'll see, previous years' Caring Stars have had twice as many inquiries and move-ins as partner listings without the award, achieved local media coverage, boosted staff morale, and differentiated from their competitors.
We honored 120 communities in 24 states that first year. These Caring Stars of 2012 were promoted in our Caring Suggests newsletter (reaching hundreds of thousands of family caregivers and older adults nationwide), we featured them on our Facebook and Twitter profiles, and sent them certificates for their lobbies. The Caring Stars of 2012 were also included in media coverage on Senior Housing News and in local newspapers, like the Florida Times-Union / Jacksonville.com.
“This honor shows us that we are doing exactly what we set out to do with each of our communities: positively impact the lives of our residents, families and employees, every day." —The Carillon at Boulder Creek (2012)
As more communities began learning about and prioritizing senior care reviews online, and as excitement for the new Caring Stars program built up, the winner list grew to 383 communities in 40 states in 2013! More winners began to showcase their award in their lobbies, on their websites, and in their local newspapers, including the Gwinnett Daily Post, The Dallas Morning News, The Florida Times-Union, Savannah Morning News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, The Orange County Register, and others. Broadmore Senior Living at York homepage. We started analyzing the reviews on winner listings to identity service trends, turning that into an article for consumers on our site: Top Assisted Living Trends — What You Can Expect From a Great Assisted Living Community.
In 2013, we also published interviews with Caring Star community leaders, to give further insights to consumers about what makes these communities so special. Included in this series are: The Bristal at Lynbrook, American House Sterling Heights, Azalea Estates of Fayetteville, Broadmore at York, and Elmcroft of Arlington.
It was this year that the Caring Stars program was recognized in the National Mature Media Award category for Consumer PR campaigns.
“Our mission is to deliver high quality care for our residents, and this award helps demonstrate how well we’re delivering on that promise.” — Bradford Court Assisted Living (2013)
In 2014, there were 400 senior living communities in 38 states who were recognized as Caring Stars, and our team began visiting some of the winner communities.
The Willows at Meadow Branch in Winchester, Virginia earned the award for the first time. There were only 10 winners in their state that year, and they were so thrilled to be honored. Their community is highly competitive with another local assisted living community, and they used the Caring Star award to differentiate themselves by showcasing the recognition in as many ways as possible. For example: they took the award badge and created staff lapels, ribbons, and outdoor banners, updated their information packets, and put the award on their billing statements to gently remind their customers about the high quality of their services.
At their press conference and award ceremony, they invited some of the folks who had posted reviews on their Caring.com listing to come share their testimony and join in the celebration. They also sponsor a local community event and transported their residents to it in vintage cars with Caring Stars window decals. They put the award badge on unique wine glasses, napkins and other decorative items to proudly display this distinction to the public. They were also successful in generating media coverage (including local radio spots), and even received a mayoral proclamation from the City of Winchester. In the weeks following the announcement, when I contacted their marketing director, she was very busy processing many new move-ins.
Another Caring Star of 2014 was Atria at Willow Glen. We visited one of their monthly resident meetings to present the award to their executive director and staff, and enjoyed refreshments with the residents. At that particular meeting, the executive director polled the residents about their social media use, and many hands went up when he asked if they were using Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. The event was covered in their local newspaper too.
To help all Caring Stars with their social promotions, we started offering some image "memes" they could use on their social profiles and websites — here's an example from the page of New Hope Valley Assisted Living & Memory Care Community. We posted them on our profile too.
Like prior years, the Caring Stars of 2014 were in the media spotlight, with coverage on Senior Housing News, The Tampa Tribune/The Sun, Ambler Gazette, Midland Daily News, The Pilot, and others.
“We would like to thank Caring.com for recognizing our community as a Caring Star based on the feedback from families about our services. Our residents are part of our extended family. We work daily to provide first-rate care for our residents, and this award helps validate our delivery on that promise.” — Sun Towers Retirement Community (2014)
In 2015, the honoree list doubled to 805 assisted living and memory care communities in 43 states.
That year, we unveiled a new top-tier or elite honoree group: the Caring Super Stars, which is communities that have earned the award in the present year and two other years (for a total of 3 or more years as a Caring Star). Like we had done in prior years for the Caring Stars, we had a senior care expert take a look at reviews on the Caring Super Star listings to identify trends among the "best of the best" in assisted living and memory care, turning that into an article for consumers on our site. The Caring Super Stars of 2015 were also featured at our booth at the annual Argentum (formerly ALFA) conference, where we too earned an award for digital marketing.
Brookdale at Fremont was among the winners in 2015, and they held a party for residents, residents' family members, and staff to celebrate. They were only one of four winners in their county that year, and were featured in their local newspaper as well as on the national website Senior Housing Forum, after taking Steve Moran on a tour.
Homestead Hills websiteMany winning communities incorporated the badge into their Facebook or website pages, and we particularly loved the photos we saw of residents and staff celebrating, such as this pic on Facebook from Robbinswood Assisted Living in Grand Haven, Michigan or this pic on Twitter from Shelby Crossing Health Campus in Shelby Township, Michigan. Some communities posted photos of their lobby certificates, such as Lorien Health System's Harmony Hall, Somerby of Mount Pleasant, and the The Terraces of Roseville.
It was another great year for media coverage as well, with clips on: Senior Housing News, Providence Business News, KCBD NBC 11, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, The Oklahoman, WIOD-AM 610, BizTimes Milwaukee, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, WOBM 92.7FM, the Westford Eagle, The Clarion-Ledger, The Times — Northwest Indiana, Paso Robles Daily News, The Aging Experience, The Island Now, and more.
“We are honored that Comfort Senior Care Home has earned this recognition, and thank the families who shared their feedback in reviews on Caring.com.” — Comfort Senior Care Home (2015)
We announced the Caring Stars of 2016 at the annual SMASH sales and marketing conference, with a list of 787 communities in 44 states. For the first time, we revealed publicly some of our data about the impact of being a Caring Star. Specifically, after analyzing winner listings over a two-year period and comparing them to referral listings without the award, we found that on average Caring Stars get twice as many consumer inquiries and move-ins!
That drummed up media buzz and attention for Caring Stars winners again, with coverage on: Senior Housing Forum, the Long Island Herald, Redlands Daily Facts, TBNweekly.com, , ValpoLife.com, The Osprey Observer, Berks-Mont News, The Edmond Sun, , The Courant, and more.
We also celebrated the award this year with the residents and staff of Merrill Gardens at Campbell. There was a piano performance, dancing, a champagne toast and much merriment in honoring this community, which is a two-time Caring Stars winner and close to becoming a Caring Super Star in the future.
The social promotions and website postings continued this year as well. Pacifica Senior Living put the badge on each of its winning communities' web pages (such as Newforest Estates), and winners linked the badge to their listings to help consumers understand the award and read the reviews. Holiday Retirement issued a press release that they published on their website. Belmont Village Senior Living and Enlivant spread the word on LinkedIn, and the memes shined brightly on Facebook pages of Bella Vista Memory Care, The Hearth, and many others. The Carriage House team with their certificate Sunshine Retirement featured their smiling staff in a post on Facebook about The Carriage House at The Verandah at Graywood, and posted a press release as well.
We've truly enjoyed watching this award program grow in popularity over the years, and make such a difference for family caregivers, older adults, and the senior living communities listed on Caring.com. We're looking forward to continuing this program in the years to come, with the exciting changes ahead for the 2017 award. Subscribe to this blog to get alerted when we announce new Caring Stars and Caring Super Stars each year (see right column, "Get Updates" field)
Think your senior living community or home care agency should be among those honored? Get in touch with our team ASAP to learn more about how to qualify, and visit our Caring Stars info center as well.
***See also: Caring Stars 2017: Senior Living Communities in the Spotlight
Trusted Family Homecare provides “professional, affordable, and caring in home living assistance for seniors in the Ventura County and Los Angeles County area,” and has been receiving great reviews for the services they provide. And that’s by design: Owner Daniel Thom started the agency after personal experience with in-home caregivers for his aunt, who had ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease. He wanted to make sure other families in the area had a good choice for their in-home care needs.
“Some of my aunt’s caregivers were good, and some weren’t – it was the ones who were bad who particularly struck a chord,” he says. “I didn’t want other families to have a similar experience that we did with her caregivers. I wanted to provide an agency that families could rely on for consistent quality care, and that would help them understand important information like knowing how to pay for home care, such as through veteran’s Aid & Attendance pension benefits. We didn’t learn about that stuff until after the fact, and it would have been helpful to know it while she was still receiving care.”
While Daniel had the best of intentions and true empathy for the experience of family caregivers, in the early years of his agency, he was managing the agency/business while also working a full-time (9 to 5) job. He didn’t have any spare time to spend marketing the agency on his own, but did want to grow the business as quickly as possible. So, he hired a consulting firm who educated him on the industry and recommended specific marketing strategies for growth, with Caring.com among the recommendations made.
Thus, Trusted Family Homecare began its partnership with Caring.com in 2015, and started with a small volume of leads, “only what I could handle,” Daniel says. “The 9 to 5 really hindered me in getting more clients. I had to walk away to make a phone call, could only do meetings at certain times, and was a 1-man band. I could only do so much. Even if I had more money to buy more leads, I wouldn’t have been able to service those individuals, so we had to really closely manage the amount of leads coming in.”
To do so, Daniel worked with a Caring.com home care account executive to progressively increase Trusted Family Homecare’s referral volume from Caring.com and grow the agency. The agency went from getting a handful of leads per month in 2015 and 2016, to increasing their lead cap to dozens of referrals per month in 2017. The partnership has been so successful that this year Daniel was able to quit his day job and focus fully on the home care agency, nearly tripling his lead cap with Caring.com from November 2017 to March 2018.
“Working with Caring.com has been great,” says Daniel. “I’m able to connect with my Caring account executive on a regular basis. He returns my calls and emails, and answers all of my questions. And he’s worked with me on multiple occasions to make sure our account had a lead volume matched to what I could afford, as well as what I could fulfill on given our staffing and availability. It’s definitely been a positive experience.”
Another reason Daniel’s been able to progressively increase the lead volume for his agency is because he’s doing an excellent job in converting the referrals he receives – often closing 10-13% of the leads.
“I call the referral right away. Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, I stop and make the phone call within 30 seconds of getting that referral alert – unless of course, I’m already on the phone,” he says. “In fact, I just landed a new client from a Caring.com referral yesterday. The lead came through Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, I met with the client and had a caregiver set up. We started care for them Wednesday night.”
Caring.com isn’t the only referral source that Daniel is using to grow Trusted Family Homecare, but it is where he’s getting the largest volume of leads.
“We are absolutely getting good service from Caring.com,” he says, “and now that I have more time to focus on the agency, why not continue to grow through what’s worked before: continuing to increase our opportunity through Caring.com!”
Dianne D.’s 90-year-old father, Enrique was living with family members when he and they decided it would be better for him to be in an assisted living community. Dianne turned to the Internet to research senior living options in the Los Angeles, CA area, and found her way to Caring.com where she asked for more information about local communities, and how to pay for assisted living.
Enrique doesn’t have any pets, he likes to play cards and watch TV, he doesn’t have a need for memory care and he isn’t a diabetic. But he does use a walker and needs help with activities of daily living (ADLs), including bathing, as well as transportation. Dianne wondered which communities had accommodations and amenities best matched to him and their budget.
Dianne wanted to tour possible senior living communities within two weeks of her call to Caring, and through our referral network, we were able to immediately accommodate her in setting up a tour at a community that seemed matched to her father’s needs and preferences, and the family’s budget as well. That initial call of 22 minutes talking to a Caring.com family advisor was well spent time and effort, as Dianne and Enrique have now found a new assisted living home where he can be comfortable and happy.
“Thank you so much…you make life so much easier at such a difficult time,” she recently said to our staff.
Earlier this month, we took our support of this family caregiver even further by picking up the tab for one month’s rent at the assisted living community Enrique moved into. Dianne had entered our monthly move-in drawing (held among those using our senior housing referral services), and she was randomly selected as the recipient for October 2017’s drawing.
Show your support: give a like for Dianne and her father on our Facebook page (or for Twitter users: perhaps a retweet from our feed). Thanks!
Allyn P. currently owns a couple of residential care homes in the Western United States and is in process of buying more. He doesn’t want us to be more specific, because he’s had so much success with his Caring.com partnership that he wants to keep us a secret.
“As soon as I signed up one of my residential care homes, I think within 72 hours, I had a total of 7 very qualified leads! And within 48 hours of signing up, I had my first move-in from the second lead I received from Caring.com. It was pretty shocking actually,” Allyn P. said. “At that point, I didn’t want any of my local competitors to know about Caring.com.”
Before upgrading his first residential care home listing on Caring.com, he’d tried a few other marketing channels, including advertising on a very popular search engine, advertising on a very popular reviews website, and working with offline local referral agents. He thought online directories and Internet referral agencies had a fee structure that wasn’t really in line with the budgets of residential care homes, so he explored other options.
“None of them worked, especially for the money I was spending,” he said, “And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure about Caring's site either at the start. I was extremely skeptical, but that feeling shifted to ‘Wow, this is a real thing!’ rather quick. I dropped the others, because Caring.com was supplying me a steady flow of qualified leads, resulting in more move-ins!”
One big reason that Allyn P. has been so successful with his residential care home listings on Caring.com is because he’s taken advantage of the review collection services in the partner package, including leveraging Caring’s reviews-by-phone service that wasn’t available with any other lead generating businesses. In fact, despite his second residential care home being fully occupied, he still upgraded his second listing to the partnership package anyway, just for the reviews program that Caring.com offers. (Even though the second home was full, he was able to offer prospective residents a place on the waiting list, or offered them a tour of his other residential care home nearby with vacancy).
He states, “It was absolutely worth it to upgrade my second home’s listing just to take advantage of Caring.com's review collection program. I absolutely believe the industry’s business owners are missing the fact that their online reputation is essential to growth and keeping their facilities full. Families are absolutely reading reviews and they need to be current and extensive to be effective.”
His focus on reviews has paid off: the first residential care home (starting in mid-2020) rapidly went from zero to 10 reviews and earned the Caring Stars 2021 award. He continues to focus and build his reviews in 2021, and has added 2 more reviews for a total of 12. His second residential care home is off to a great start in 2021, too, with 4 reviews and more on the way. His goal is to get each of his residential care homes to earn the Caring Stars 2022 award.
Senior living searchers seek out online reviews in their research and selection process. Reviews help Caring.com partners elevate in the directory rankings, and attract more potential residents and their family members to the listings. Allyn P. has seen this effect with both his residential care home listings — they’ve had about 1,000 pageviews in a short period of time (in months rather than years).
“Online reviews are huge for credibility for bringing people to your door,” he said. “People will call you when you have great online reviews, that they believe.”
He continued, “We have reviews on other sites that are 5-stars, but are older and just contain a few words. This is not really helpful to prospective families and they don’t believe them anyway. I’m always directing our residents/residents’ families to the reviews on Caring.com because they’re lengthy, current and believable. Caring’s collection of reviews-by-phone has made a HUGE difference to my businesses.”
He has also done an excellent job converting Caring’s referrals into customers too. Within 6 months, he achieved seven (7) move-ins just for one residential care home — realizing a high conversion rate from the leads he received.
“You have to work the lead as soon as you get the lead. You can’t let it go 2-3 days,” he says. “I have discovered that the first, second or third in, one of them wins, because the families are generally in a hurry to find a place. They don’t have the time or desire to go tour many different facilities, or they just get overwhelmed. We’re not the only residential care home or assisted living community calling them, and we have to compete by being fast in responding and booking them for a tour.”
His sales activity doesn’t stop there though. “You gotta follow up. Fortunes are made in the follow-up. Initially: call, text, or email them until you actually get ahold of them, and then decide if necessary, how to follow up later,” he suggests. “I will even contact them a month later, two or three months later, because some families are researching two to six months out from when they need your service, and you need to work with their timing and keep in contact with them as a great potential fit for their needs.”
As Allyn P. so eloquently sums it up: “We provide excellent service, safe, beautiful homes, and now 5-star reviews to prove it. With Caring.com, I have an edge on the competition and I definitely have selfish motives for keeping Caring.com a secret.”
***Results can vary by account and location. Please contact an account executive to learn more about the opportunities for your area: sales@caring.com or (855) 897-2433.
“Are there any questions I need to ask that I may not have thought of? I’ve never done this kind of thing before, and feel kinda lost right now.”
This is a common concern that spouses and family members have when they are thrust into the role of “family caregiver” and need support while navigating their options. We know this not only from serving 3 million family caregivers (and older adults) each month — we were in fact founded as a result of an adult son feeling these things in trying to care for his ailing mother long distance. He couldn’t find senior care information readily online to help him through each caregiving challenge he faced — and through Caring.com he aimed to fix that for other family caregivers in similar situations.
One such person that’s been helped by Caring.com is spousal caregiver, Phillippa L. in Colorado. When she realized her husband needed more care than she could provide (while also juggling a job outside the home), she reached out to Caring.com for help.
She talked to Jamie (a Caring.com family advisor) in depth about their situation, budget, and preferences: Phillippa’s husband liked to accompany her in the garden, and document daily in a journal to help him remember. He liked to walk and do puzzles, but struggles with hearing and isn’t good about wearing his hearing aid. He needed help with medication management, activities of daily living, and quality, dignified, professional care.
Family advisor Jamie actively listened to Phillippa, and then suggested some best-matched communities. From those, Phillippa chose the communities she wanted to tour, and Jamie helped set up those appointments. Closer to the tour dates, we reminded Phillippa about the locations and timing, and helped make the process of touring senior living communities as smooth as possible, providing information and guidance as needed.
After completing her tours, Phillippa ultimately chose a memory care community for her husband that had a lovely view and enclosed yard. There was also positive feedback in reviews about this community on Caring.com, and she felt she’d made the right choice with Caring’s help.
“I have been telling everyone how great Caring.com is,” she said. “Jamie was truly wonderful. She was always there for me, answered all my silly questions, and provided some much-needed encouragement and support.”
We love hearing feedback like this after helping families find senior living for loved ones. This is what we were founded for, and is truly an example of how we deliver on our social mission: equipping family caregivers to make better decisions, save time and money, and feel less alone — and less stressed — as they face the many challenges of caregiving.
And in this case, we took our family caregiver support even further by picking up the tab for one month’s rent at the memory care community Phillippa chose for her spouse. Phillippa had entered our monthly move-in drawing (held among those using our senior housing referral services), and she was randomly selected as the recipient in September 2017.
This is not the end of Phillippa’s spousal caregiver story, just the next chapter, and in Caring.com, she has a senior care support resource she can turn to as needed in caring for her husband.
Show your support: give a like for Phillippa and her husband on our Facebook page (or for Twitter users: perhaps a retweet from our feed). Thanks!
Only 32.9% of U.S. adults have a will — or put another way: 2 out of 3 adults don’t have a will in the event of their death, according to new research from Caring.com. Too many Baby Boomers are included among those who haven’t created this critical aspect of estate planning, and even some in the “Silent Generation” (age 72+) don’t have a will either. Your senior care organization can help these individuals get over their inertia and better plan the distribution of their assets at death to avoid probate and other complicated and unnecessarily stressful burdens on their survivors.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Educate your audience about the consequences of not having a will. If you know individuals wiling to share their personal stories of what happened when a loved one didn’t have a will, that could help bring the information to life and compel your readers. It makes the subject relatable and they may be more likely to take action.
Interview a local elder law attorney, financial planner or other end-of-life and estate planning expert to include their insights and tips. You may even find a local expert who is nationally renowned, like Michael and Mark Gilfix and other attorneys at Gilfix & La Poll in Palo Alto, CA.
Discuss the statistics that illustrate why living wills are necessary and beneficial. Your content this month can also include any information relevant to your state, such as the fact that California combines the living will and medical power of attorney into a single form called an advance health care directive, and requires that document to be signed in front of two witnesses or a notary.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Consider hosting a local expert for a guest presentation about estate planning at your senior living community. If you have the space for it: you might even open up the event to other older adults in your town — to both be helpful to their needs and so they can get to know your senior living community and the benefits of living there.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Consider compiling a list of elder law attorneys and financial planners in your community in a one-pager you can share with your client and their family members.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
See the Caring.com press release, consumer-facing article, and guide to estate planning on the new research about who in the United States doesn’t have a will
See also our Content Spark for Healthcare Directives
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Nolo.com: Wills, Trusts & Probate
Bankrate: The basics of estate planning
Consumer Reports: Legal DIY websites are no match for a pro
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
This Content Spark was originally created Feb 3, 2017, and updated 4/29/21.
With Valentine’s Day on February 14th, love is a top-of-mind topic this month. And there’s plenty of opportunity for your senior care organization to include older adults in the focus: whether discussing romance later in life and celebrating couples’ special anniversaries, or passing on ‘love wisdom’ from seniors to the youth and sharing stories of familial love and friendship.
As Valerie Johnston of Healthline points out: love is even better in old age and seniors can show the rest of us how it should be done!
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Personal stories, visuals, and quotes are key ingredients for your ‘love’ content this month. Making an emotional connection with your audience is particularly important with this topic — inspire an “awwww!!!” reaction and your content has a great chance of being shared. Tell a heartwarming story with a beautiful photo or video and you may even ‘go viral’; in fact, many love stories, videos, and quote/photo ‘memes’ do get a lot of social sharing engagement.Remember 96-year-old Fred Stobaugh and his video-recorded song, “Oh Sweet Lorraine” for his late wife in 2013? That video was viewed over seven million times on YouTube, and he remained popular in social media up to his recent passing. This viral hit had the life-long ‘true love’ story conveyed by an organization helping the senior; included quotes from and interview footage with Fred, as well as images of Fred and Lorraine over the years; and evoked emotions in millions of people (many of whom shed some tears too).
Consider a list or compilation approach — it could be a list of ‘seniors top 5 tips for keeping romance alive’ or ’10 of our favorite movies about love in the later years’ or a list of 5 quotes that are very relevant to seniors and love. Or maybe it’s the ‘5 best gifts for your senior Valentine’. Eskaton senior living chose “5 Benefits of Love & Chocolate” for their list.
Make it local — whether covering ‘the top 5 date spots or activities for mature couples in Cincinnati’ or by interviewing a matchmaker or relationship expert in your community to get his/her tips for dating in your later years of life (this U.S. News & World Report article even included advice from family attorneys on this topic!).
On the riskier or more complicated side of love is the sub-topic of sex and seniors: Baby Boomers don’t really want to think about or read about the possibility of their parents still having sex at this age, and some seniors may blush at the mention as well. However, STD transmission among older adults is unfortunately a common and growing problem, says eldercare expert Derrick Y. McDaniel, while citing some related statistics on Huffington Post. So, this may be an opportunity for education among those who need to know and need to take action accordingly — but you’ll need to be prepared to manage any negative or ‘raised eyebrow’ feedback you can get with such content. This is particularly true when covering the often-sad subject of love and sex for couples where one of the spouses has Alzheimer’s (or the somewhat taboo topic of ‘well spouse affairs’).
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Are there couples at your community who have been married for more than three decades, like Mira and Bob Graves at Quail Lodge Retirement Community had been in 2014 press coverage of their love story? Their story was virally shared on Facebook more than 500 times in the first 24 hours after Sunshine Retirement Living had posted the story. It was a heartwarming story with a lovely photo, and touched thousands of people online. Do you have a resident couple with a similar story (or two) to share at your senior living community?
Have any residents met and fallen in love after moving into your community? That’s another wonderful story you could feature this month, with the residents’ permissions and participation of course.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
The Valentine’s Day buzz can sometimes be sad for those struggling with loneliness. Consider covering the holiday from the angle of helping those alone feel less alone — such as this Huffington Post piece by Lisa Copeland (a dating coach for those over 50): “How to Overcome The Loneliness of Valentine’s Day.”
However you cover this topic, be sure to mention that in-home care is a great source of companionship and joy for seniors living alone — without making an obvious “buy now” pitch (be genuinely caring and helpful in your tone and content).
Resources to Support this Spark
Love What Matters — a website and social programming (Facebook & Instagram) that highlights “moments that matter” and the various forms that love takes, through the personal stories of real people
LifeHack.org — 27 Old Couples to Remind You What Love is All About
Love for the Elderly — a nonprofit (started by a high school student in 2013) focused on “bringing joy into the lives of the elderly” through handwritten letters, care packages, and other ‘social impact’ programs
GoodReads — Quotes about Love
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
February is American Heart Month, an observance to raise awareness about heart disease and how it can be prevented — both at home and in the community. According to The American Heart Association, heart disease is the leading cause of death of women and men in the United States — with 1 in 4 deaths caused by heart disease.
And 80% of people who die of coronary heart disease are age 65 or older. Given how pervasive this concern is among those senior care organizations serve, it’s an excellent topic for your content this month.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Discuss the facts associated with heart disease, including identifying different cardiovascular diseases (coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, etc.), early warning signs of heart disease, ways to prevent it, and what to do post diagnosis.
Motivate and excite your audience about heart health — give simple, practical actions they can take to prevent heart disease or to slow the progression of heart failure.
Take advantage of the social media resources the National Health Information Center has compiled to help get the word out.
Interview a local cardiologist and/or geriatrician to include their insights and tips. You may also find esteemed experts at local nonprofits or special treatment facilities in your area — such as the American College of Cardiology in Washington DC or one at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute.
Consider covering this story from a medication management angle. Family caregivers often help their aging parents with medication management and your content can provide helpful guidance to them. Interview an expert (cardiologist, geriatrician, and/or pharmacist) to get their recommendations for individuals who are taking cholesterol-modifying medications, beta blockers, nitroglycerin, and ACE inhibitors and ARBs — such as side effects and tips to avoid them, as well as reminders about mixing these drugs with others. Or maybe do a product review article on common blood pressure monitors — having your residents as the product testers giving the feedback.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Some foods and drinks are suggested for promoting heart health. Consider highlighting those in your dining menu this month, and/or share a related recipe on your blog or social profiles (particularly Facebook and Pinterest).
Regular physical activity helps prevent heart disease. While any heart patient should consult his/her physician before beginning an exercise program, you can still highlight the exercise classes or activities your community offers and encourage participation to support your residents’ heart health.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Are your caregivers trained to look for the early warning signs of heart disease, and/or providing meal preparation services that include helping the senior with heart healthy nutrition? If so, highlight that expertise this month.
For home health agencies: Include in your content how your staff help older adults with their heart disease treatment and/or heart health regimens.
Resources to Support this Spark
American College of Cardiology — Heart Disease Statistics
The American Heart Association — Older Adults & Cardiovascular Disease
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
With the new year, there’s renewed opportunity for setting goals and making this year even better than the last one. Folks commonly aim to be healthier (such as “lose weight” or “exercise more”), do more in their lives, see more of the world they live in, and otherwise have a more full-filled life. This month your senior care organization’s content can take this theme of “resolutions” and make it very relevant for older adults and family caregivers in your area — including how your senior care organization can play a role in supporting them in their keeping their resolutions.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
You can create a blog post, newsletter article, or social media update with some resolutions for older adults or for family caregivers or for both. You could compile these from various expert sources (such as using the suggestions in the resource links below), or you could source them directly from the seniors and family members you already serve (what’s on their list this year?).
Help those you serve with keeping their resolutions. Create a list of supportive resources, tools, products and services that make it much easier on them to be healthier, exercise more, sleep more, relax more, travel more, etc. You might even make this a weekly series, with a theme each week (such as “how to keep exercise resolutions” in week 1, “10 low-cost local adventures for seniors” in week 2, and “5 ways to eat healthier this year” in week 3, etc.).
Interview a geriatric care manager, social worker, and/or geriatric psychologist to compile their perspectives about older adults and resolutions, including their tips for helping older adults who want to make and keep resolutions.
Consider your senior care organization’s “resolutions” for the new year. This could be new things you’re going to try this year in your senior care business (and how you’ll go about achieving those goals), or it could be a way to discuss your organization’s existing mission and the ways you’re going to focus and deliver on those promises this year.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Consider doing this year-long activity with your residents: create a “kindness jar”, “good things jar” or “resolutions jar.” Get a large jar (or fish bowl) and start filling it with at least one positive or good thing that happens each week, or one or two accomplishments from each week or month. Then open that container on New Year’s Eve at the end of the year and read all of those notes of goodness as a way to cap off the year, and remember just how much was achieved and appreciated that year — whether among the initial resolutions or not. Or consider other New Years Resolutions activities you can do with your residents to mark the occasion and hit on the theme in a fun way.
Have any new exercise classes or healthy menu items? Share that news with the angle of helping your residents meet their new year resolutions. Or do a reminder feature on the existing exercise and healthy eating options you offer in your senior living community.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Your agency can play a big role in helping family caregivers with their resolution for more self care. In fact, January is also “Self-Love Month” so you might consider doing coverage focused on family caregiver respite and well being through more self care.
How do you help your older adult clients with their new year resolutions? Are your in-home caregivers helping to prepare healthy meals? Taking your clients on safe walks? Helping to clear away clutter and keep the house cleaner? Consider compiling a list of ways you help older adults with their resolutions and include anecdotes, stories and/or quotes from real people you’ve helped.
Caring Resource to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
HealthinAging.org — Top 10 Healthy New Year’s Resolutions for Older Adults
Find out what local resources are in your community to help seniors in your care be more active and/or exercise more. For example, does your city’s recreation office offer Zumba for seniors, like the City of Sacramento offers for its older residents? Is there walking club for seniors, like Walking Buddies in Walnut Creek, CA? Or, focus on the “healthy eating” resolution and find local organizations helping seniors with that resolution. Use search engines using your city/state and the specific resolution you’re focusing upon (such as “Denver, Colorado senior walking clubs” or “Detroit Michigan senior zumba” etc.).
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
It’s the ‘holly jolly’ winter holiday season, and with it: several opportunities for your senior care organization to share valuable information and resources with older adults and their adult children. Whether it’s a checklist of things to look for while visiting aging parents’ homes, or gift guides, or helping them find you in January after realizing an elder loved one needs more care than previously thought, there are so many topics for you to cover this month to meet the needs of your current clients and attract new ones.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Pick 1-3 holiday related topics for your blog article(s), and find a local angle. Unless you’re a major publisher who’s been covering “Home for the Holidays” for years and already ranks on search engines for this subject, it will be hard for your content to be found. But search engines are where many of your prospective clients will head first to find senior care information — so if you want to rank for holiday-related topics, use local angles for any of your “Home for the Holidays” coverage in December or January. Examples of how to take the general topic and ‘localize’ it: “Visiting Aging Parents in Chicago for the Holidays? 5 Things to Look For in Their Home” or “Our Favorite Gifts for Chicago Seniors” or “What To Do in Chicago for the Holidays — Making the Most of Season with Your Senior Relatives.”
Contact local journalists and make them aware of your expert(s) and/or tips for adult children visiting elder loved ones in the area this holiday season. If they’re already covering the “Home for the Holidays” topic, they’ll need experts to quote — and that can be a great way to raise awareness about your senior care organization with folks who may not yet know about your services. And if the media outlet wasn’t already aware of the spike in senior care searches in January (post-holiday visits with elder relatives), you can help provide them with content valuable to their readers or viewers. Consider a “Letter to the Editor” for your local newspaper, or sending the story as a tip to your local TV station.
To build deeper, stronger relationships with your existing clients: rather than focusing on identifying increased senior care needs or finding the best senior care services, you can instead cover topics that will help them optimize the holiday season. It could be helping them have great family visits (at home or in a senior living community), understanding and facing the unique challenges of celebrating the holidays with loved ones living with dementia, or supporting families facing or experiencing grief this season.
If ‘January has come early’ and you’re already feeling the rush of senior care searches around the holidays — and thus don’t have time to create original content this month: curate a ’round up’ or list of links to your favorite holiday related articles from other knowledgeable organizations, including both local organizations (such as the nearby chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association) or national senior care publishers (like the National Alliance for Caregiving, Caring.com or AARP) with trustworthy, well-vetted tips that will help those you serve and attract new customers to your senior care organization as well.
Make sure your business profiles — on both social networks and online directories — have the most accurate and compelling information about your organization. Be sure your services are described well (not so rich with industry jargon that a newbie doesn’t understand what you do). Your profiles should have excellent photos and/or videos, as well as reviews — if you don’t already have some on your profiles, get them ASAP to attract and persuade prospective clients. And include the best way to reach your organization — so that when those adult children go online to find help, they also know how to contact you.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Have a move-in special this month or in January? Make sure your referral partners — and prospects already in your pipeline — know about it! Make it easy to find on your social media profiles, website, and in your e-newsletter too.
Hosting any holiday events or activities that will be open to the public (such as a tree lighting, caroling, or movie screenings, etc.)? Be sure it gets added to the online event calendars for your area and is sent to the events section of your local newspaper.
While your community’s holiday events do present lots of “photo ops,” make sure that your staff are aware of your photography and social media policies, that your community has all waivers on file (and up to date), and that you respect the dignity and privacy of your residents — this is particularly important for memory care communities.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Does your agency have any special stories of staff going above and beyond to help seniors aging in place (and possibly alone) this holiday season? For example, Barbra “BJ” Corn of Silver Angels in Monterey, Tennessee provided a 70-year-old mentally challenged client with her first-ever Christmas celebration, including a tree with gifts, home decorations, a special breakfast and dinner, introduction to neighbors in her housing complex, and indescribable joy at a time when she may have otherwise been alone and overlooked. They shared this story on Caring.com, earning Barbra a national award (with cash bonus) and related PR in local media. If your agency has similar heartwarming stories, consider getting their (and as needed adult children’s) permission to share the story on your blog or with local reporters — it’s a great way to recognize the professional caregiver for a job well done, reinforce the value you’re adding for that senior’s life, and demonstrate the high quality in-home care your agency provides to others not yet using your services.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Contact your city’s Parks & Recreation Department and find out what senior-friendly events they have scheduled this time of year. Include that any “Holiday To Do” coverage you do on your blog or social media profiles.
Contact your local Area Agency on Aging and include their tips in your “Home for the Holidays” coverage this month. Here’s an example of a national campaign from the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging: Home for the Holidays — Addressing Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults. See if your local area agency is participating, or has other relevant activities and content.
If you focus on holidays with seniors who have a certain condition — such as Alzheimer’s or cancer — find local nonprofits or organizations focused on those conditions, and partner with them on content, either by including their tips and events in your blog posts and social posts, or vice versa, joining the conversations on their blogs, websites, and social profiles.
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
Around this time of year, it’s not uncommon to discover that elder loved ones need to reconsider their living situations — whether to reduce clutter for decreasing fall risks, overcome years of hoarding, or to move and downsize based on increased senior care needs. Your organization can help guide older adults and their loved ones through the various aspects of this process — from how to make the difficult downsizing decisions in the first place and assisting with the practicalities of these changes, to optimizing the move and adjustment.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Help family caregivers and older adults identify signs that it’s time to downsize or consider a move. Give them reasons it’s important to periodically assess the elder’s living space (such as fall risks, mold and dust, maintenance, and even clues that the elder needs more care help, such as piles of old newspapers and years-old food in the freezer). Make your content practical too: include checklists and tips for taking proactive, position action. You could even enter the conversation by creating a list of the best local places to donate used goods — to make room for all the wonderful holiday gifts from family and friends this year.
Interview a senior location specialist or senior move manager — such as those working with Caring Transitions — and include their expert insights and tips in your coverage this month.
Consider tackling a single aspect of downsizing or relocating — such as helping the senior figure out what to do with the 30+ years of family photos, or how to use sites like eBay or mobile apps like Trove or Close5, to turn old junk into cash. This approach can help the family caregiver or older adult ease into what seems an enormous project — like downsizing from a 4-bedroom house lived in for 50+ years to a 1-bedroom independent living apartment. It could even be that you start with the psychological aspects of downsizing first — such as the tips covered in the book, Stuffology 101 by Brenda Avadian of The Caregiver’s Voice and Eric Riddle.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Do any of your residents have stories they’re willing to share publicly about how they successfully downsized to move into your community? Consider interviewing residents to gather their tips and stories for your content on this topic — after all, who better an expert than someone who has successfully downsized and now loves their new digs? With their participation, you also could mask their real identities by using first names only or pseudonyms. The point is to help other seniors like them see that it’s not only possible but can bring many benefits and joys too.
Does your community have any special attributes that help seniors to not only keep but showcase some of their treasures, such as a special photo wall or unique memento display cases? Consider blogging about that feature and how it helps seniors in the downsizing process without losing their keepsakes. Or maybe host an activity where you show senior residents how to take old photos from boxes of old albums and turn those into digital files they store (in a safe, easy to access place) online instead, such as Flickr, Dropbox, or Shutterfly.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Can your in-home caregivers assist an elder client with the downsizing or relocation process? If so, include some details about those services you offer in your coverage of this topic. Gather some tips from your staff who’ve done this with clients previously. What worked best or what would they suggest others do to optimize downsizing or relocation (any tips they’d share)? Did they learn anything from helping an elder downsize that could be helpful to the family members of other seniors? Your in-house experts may be the best of all!
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
STUFFology 101: A website, book, and blog with fun & flexile approaches to get your mind out of the clutter
Caring Transitions Blog — tips and services for senior relocation, downsizing and estate sales
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan designated November as National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month. This observance continues to this day, with a Presidential Proclamation and organizational activities like those from the Alzheimer’s Association. While much of the content is focused on disease facts, consider covering this topic this month from another angle: What to do when you suspect a loved one has Alzheimer’s, or you’ve just received the diagnosis (What next?). This is not only practical and helpful, it can also help your content stand out from the rest of the coverage this month.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Give context about how many people are affected by Alzheimer’s in the United States, and provide any other relevant facts about the disease — to both educate and raise awareness. Then transition into tips for those who suspect their loved one has dementia or for those whose loved one has just received the diagnosis.
Interview experts: It could be a geriatric care manager, a dementia specialist, a geriatrician, a lawyer or estate planner. It could be that you talk to all such experts and compile their advice as a holistic plan for the family caregiver. What do they recommend that the family caregiver do first, second, third, etc.?
Include quotes or stories from the family members of those you serve who have this disease. What did they do first? Looking back on their experience, what do they wish they’d known? What tips would they share with others in this position now?
Do Be Careful! Especially for patients with dementia, issues of consent and privacy for use of their images, names, or other “personally identifiable information” get tricky. Mentioning that someone is living in a memory care community could be seen as releasing protected health information. If you’re concerned, leave out names and don’t post photos.
Make the content easy to read — at a glance, quickly. It can be overwhelming to face this situation, and looking at page of thousands of words may not be feasible or desirable for family caregivers at this time. Use bullets or numbered lists, pull quotes, images, short paragraphs and sub-headlines, for example, as techniques to help make the content more palatable.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
If you are a memory care community, you have lots of expertise on this subject and this is your opportunity to really demonstrate that fact and shine to prospective residents’ family members. However, avoid content that comes across as too focused on closing the sale though — instead focus on being as helpful as possible, to be a trustworthy guide rather than a slick, self-interested salesman.
Consider a “do’s and don’ts” or “when to know it’s time” for family caregivers considering or planning a move to a memory care community for their loved one. While the suspicion or diagnosis may be new, it’s never too early to start thinking ahead to the option of a professional memory care community and plan or prepare for it.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
What have you learned from helping families whose loved one was suspected as having dementia or who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? By reflecting on these insights, and including your tips and how your agency helped, you can provide the guidance that other families in this position really need.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Dayna Steele on Huffington Post: “The First 5 Things to Do After an Alzheimer’s Diagnosis”
Alzheimer’s Association — Honor a Caregiver site (with info on supporting them too); they also have the latest stats on Alzheimer’s disease
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
As adult children visit their aging parent(s) over the holidays and consider needs and options for senior care, most will turn to the Internet for information and guidance. An important tool in their online research is the feedback they’ll read in online reviews from folks just like them. In fact, across industries, 92% of consumers in the U.S. and Canada now read online reviews when considering a purchase. Senior care is not exempt — and if anything, reviews are even more valuable given the nature of the need and that only 41% of adult children researching senior living for an aging parent have knowledge of senior living communities in their area. Online reviews help them find senior care providers for their particular needs and preferences — and lists like Caring Stars help the best senior living and senior care providers stand out (helping to narrow the search to the best providers more quickly).
If you’re among the Caring Stars, this is a great opportunity to write content to spread that awareness. And if you’re not: take the time to educate your happy clients and their family members about online reviews and how their feedback can be very beneficial to others in need.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Share facts about senior care reviews (or online reviews in general) — such as the role they’re playing in helping family caregivers and older adults find the best providers or the most valuable feedback that reviews provide in researching senior living and senior care. Include data from relevant, credible surveys about which review sites are most trustworthy, why people care if a business responds to reviews, how many reviews matter, etc.
Highlight reviews of your senior living or senior care organization in your content this month, or how online reviews and customer feedback have helped your organization to know which programs and services are most popular or well received, and (if applicable) make improvements to better serve seniors.
Ask questions and tell stories: How did online reviews help your current customers find your organization? Are they willing to share their feedback in an online review to help other families and seniors? Is there a review you’ve received with a broader story the family is willing to share in a blog post?
Include quick links to your online profile(s) where you want to get reviews — to help make that process as easy as possible for them and generate reviews for your senior care organization.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Have you earned the Caring Stars award? It’s never too late to publicize that fact. It’s not an easy honor to achieve — and if you’ve earned enough praise to be recognized as the best, be sure you spread the word.
Consider hosting an event in which you train cognitively healthy residents on how to post online reviews. This was also something we suggested in a prior Content Spark for September 2016, and one of our referral partners in Arizona gave it a try at three of their senior living communities. As a result: 2 of the 3 achieved enough positive reviews that they qualified for the Caring Stars 2017 award: the The Villas at Houghton and The Villas at Green Valley. (Note: If you decide to try an event like this, please email reviews@caring.com in advance to give us a heads up about the related activity on your listing that day — otherwise, those reviews may get flagged for follow up to make sure they weren’t staff posted.)
Seize the positive feedback moments as they arise too: For instance, a marketer at Eskaton recently shared with me, “Our most successful community to gather online reviews for Caring.com is The Parkview because of the dedication and enthusiasm of the executive director. Each time a family member compliments the building or staff, she grabs a postcard we made called “Shout it out” and circles Caring.com asking for the review. These postcards are displayed at the reception of every location.” That’s just one such example. The feedback could be shared with you in-person, via email, or via mail, and when it is: follow up with that individual, express gratitude, and ask if they’d be willing to share their positive comments publicly on a senior care review site where others like them will see it and benefit from it.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Have you earned the Caring Stars award? 2017 was the very first year in the program’s 6-year history that home care agencies could qualify. So if you’re among those to be honored then or since then, you’ve really stood out as among the best agencies in the nation and should be sure to publicize that fact widely.
If you’re a Home Care Pulse client: Are you following up on the customer feedback you receive to publicize the positive comments you’re receiving about your services? While you can’t post that feedback yourself on your Caring.com listing, there will soon be a way for some of that feedback to appear as reviews on Caring.com via a new partnership between our two organizations. In the meantime, use your blog or social media profiles to highlight the positive consumer feedback your agency is receiving and ask for public-facing online reviews (that search engines will see too).
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Caring Stars — Reviews Reveal the Best Senior Living Communities & Home Care Agencies
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Bright Local — Local Consumer Review Survey
Home Care Pulse — Customer Satisfaction Data
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
Periodically, Caring.com surveys family caregivers and older adults about the impacts of senior care on their lives, as well as the challenges they’re facing, reasons for the living situation choices they’ve made, and tools they’ve used in caregiving. We collect this input from individuals who search for senior care information online, and we share the results of this industry research.
The 2016 survey “Caregiver Journey” highlights include: the high financial cost of caregiving (and where those dollars are being spent); how much work family caregivers are missing; the intensity of Alzheimer’s caregiving in particular; the common use of professional in-home care agencies as a coping support (including for those living in senior living communities), and more. We’ve also included personal “real life” stories of caregiving to bring the data to life, and encourage you to do the same.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Demonstrate that you understand the experience of family caregivers and older adults by sharing some of the statistics from the Caregiver Journey research, and how your organization helps to address those concerns — or how you’ve seen similar experiences in your senior care work.
Uplift family caregivers and older adults by focusing on the solutions to some of the challenges and concerns highlighted in the research, while also celebrating what’s working in senior care in America. For example: how can family caregivers and older adults prepare for senior care costs in advance? What resources are available to help them once they’re in the midst of caregiving, such as helping them connect to experts or others going through similar challenges? Is there legislation in your area that provides senior care tax breaks to ease the financial burden of caregiving? These are just some examples of ways you can focus on the solutions in your coverage.
Use the data to adjust the messaging of your marketing materials (as needed). For example, if you’re not already reaching out and speaking to family caregivers in your content, this research (and other studies) show how you can’t ignore the important role of these folks in the senior care search and selection for older adults.
Content Tip for Senior Living Communities
Fully 71% of people who move, either into a family member’s home or into a senior community, wait until a medical condition makes it unsafe or impossible to live alone (see also: related McKnights Senior Living article). This is even higher than the 62% who waited that long last year. But then they choose senior living communities based on location more than care needs, and end up unhappy, as our friends at Senior Housing News emphasized in their coverage of the survey. These insights can serve as a cautionary and informative tale, and your senior living community’s blog post on this research could include “the right fit” resident for your service offering, as well as messaging related to the biggest reasons older adults are moving into senior living communities and what to most consider in making the selection. Include feedback from residents and their family members to underscore the points you’ve made, such as excerpts from reviews you’ve received online (be sure to link to those pages to help the reader believe those reviews to be authentic and credible).
Content Tip for Home Care Agencies
The Caregiver Journey 2016 research shows that 50% of older adults living independently in their homes employ paid caregivers, 33% of older people living with a family member pay for in-home care, and 27% of family caregivers whose older loved one lives in a senior living community also pay an outside agency to provide care inside that community (above and beyond the care services provided there). Why are so many using this type of care? The Home Care Association of America in collaboration with the Global Coalition on Aging have compiled “The Value of Home Care” and the many benefits of using this type of care. You know these insights firsthand as well. In your senior care content this month, highlight the high use of in-home care in any living situation, and why so many families and older adults are choosing it for themselves and their loved ones.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Elderlife Financial Services – Financial Solutions for Senior Living
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
In our webinar, “Home Care Blogging: From Start to Success,” we discussed many resources that your organization can use to regularly and effectively blog about senior care topics. As promised, we’re listing them here for quick reference and follow up by your team…
Resources to Support Senior Care Bloggers
Content Made Simple — This program includes free content marketing services from Caring.com, including three (3) timely themes per month (“content sparks”) with associated content kits to help you produce original blog posts.
MOST program — This is corecubed’s affordable marketing system for home care agencies, with an online membership portal where you can order marketing services and professional-designed marketing materials each month, branded for your home care agency.
Google.com/Trends — This was mentioned by corecubed’s Marissa Snook as a tool you can use to see popular searches by region, keywords, and time periods.
HubSpot Formula for Blog Posts & 5 Post Templates — “After you read this post, there will be absolutely no reason you can’t blog every single day — and do it quickly,” says Rachel Sprung of Hubspot, a leading inbound marketing and sales platform. She also includes five (5) free blog post templates you can use to create posts.
Creative Commons.org — If you don’t have original photos from your senior care organization, and don’t have a subscription to a photo service like Thinkstock, you can turn to Creative Commons to find images for use on your blog. Be sure, though, to follow the attribution requirements and link to the source. PhotoPin.com and FreeDigitalPhotos.net are additional photo sources for blogs.
Copyblogger.com — Consider reading or subscribing to this blog to continue your learning of blogging best practices
Content Marketing Institute — Their site is full of practical, how-to guidance, and you’ll also find insight and advice from content marketing experts, as well as an active community for discussing the latest news and information.
The Content Strategist from Contently — Contently is a technology company that helps brands create great content at scale, and I regularly enjoy and learn from the information they share on their blog. You may want to read it too.
BloggingBasics101.com and Problogger.net — These are additional sites you can visit to learn more about how to blog, why to blog, and what’s new in the world of blogging.
These were the resources we mentioned during our webinar, and of course we welcome your suggestions as well. Add a comment to help others in their blogging. Thanks!
Also, if you’d like to watch and listen to the webinar session again, you’ll find the recording on Caring.com’s YouTube channel.
“Work/life balance” is something many Americans associate with mothers (or fathers) in the workplace caring for children. What’s less widely known, understood and supported is the “employee caregiver” — or people who are juggling career and caregiving for older relatives (such as aging parents), and some while also juggling care for their kids (“sandwich generation caregivers).
Caring.com’s Caregiver Journey 2016 research found some significant negative impacts for family caregivers faced with this challenge: 79% have missed work due to caregiving responsibilities, some leave the workplace altogether, and others are highly distracted while on the job. Your senior care organization is part of the solution to this problem — by easing the direct care burden on family members of older adults, so they can re-focus on maintaining employment and/or career success.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Demonstrate that you understand the experience of Baby Boomers juggling their careers and caregiving by sharing some of the statistics from the Caregiver Journey research. Include real stories from those you’ve helped (either anonymously or with their permission), and discuss how your organization helps to address those concerns.
Consider interviewing a local career coach, HR manager, or a representative from the national ReACT coalition for working caregivers, about how big this problem is and what local employers and caregiving organizations are doing to address it. You can also find examples from a Google News search, such as this recent eldercare benefit story about Deloitte LLP.
Does your senior care company offer an eldercare benefits to your employees? If so, that’s an interesting angle for your content on this topic, and one that supports your retention and recruiting efforts as well.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Do you offer respite or adult day services? These services can be a great way to support family caregivers who are also juggling a career while caring for their loved one at home. Additionally, it’s a way for them to “test drive” your community as a potential better fit for their loved one’s living situation.
Are there family members of residents who were struggling with balancing career and caregiving before their loved one moved into your community? How has your community been beneficial to them? Include these real life stories in your coverage this month.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Hiring in-home care agencies is one of the top ways that ’employee caregivers’ are able to cope with the challenges of balancing their career while also caring for an aging parent or relative. The Caregiver Journey 2016 research has specific stats on this — be sure to include them in your content this month. The Home Care Association of America also has data and in-home care value propositions you can use.
Are there family members of your clients who fit this description and would be willing to share their story to encourage others to use in-home care too? Reach out to them for a quote or two, or if they’ve already posted a review online (either anonymously or with their real name) cite an excerpt from that review and mention their story in your content about family caregivers in the workplace.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
ReACT (Respect a Caregivers Time), a national coalition focused on this challenge
Contact your local Chamber of Commerce and see if they have members who are offering their employees benefits focused on supporting their eldercare needs
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
August 30th is National Grief Awareness Day, a day established by Grief Magazine founder, Angie Cartwright to “recognize and honor the oldest journey known to mankind” and to educate society about “the clichés and myths of grieving.” Whether helping families prepare for and cope with their loved ones’ end of life, or supporting your staff when a beloved resident or client dies, grief and loss are very much a part of the work we do in senior care. Take this observance in August as an opportunity to bring these themes to the forefront and provide valuable information to help everyone involved.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
The founder of National Grief Awareness Day says that she has found that “healing can only take place when grief is not shamed, rushed, or tabooed…When we lose someone, we are told to move on and to get over our sadness, because grief is commonly perceived as something that needs to be fixed. As a result, the bereaved feel misunderstood, and they end up grieving in silence.” You can use this quote — from a Change.org petition she’s started — as a starting point for blog posts, for social media memes, or as a thematic starting point for any other content you create for this observance.
The founder of National Grief Awareness Day also states that the first step in supporting those grieving “is for people to become more aware of what grief stricken people are going through.” Look at the expert resources (some below) on what the stages of grief are, and pass on that knowledge to those you serve and their family members. If you have real stories you can share, that’s a way to draw others in — they can learn from the experiences of others while also realizing they are not alone in the feelings they’re having.
Consider a Q&A article with a grief expert. What do they think are the biggest misconceptions about grieving, and what do they recommend for those you serve — as well as for your staff?
The founder of National Grief Awareness Day says, “It’s an opportunity for all of us to raise awareness about the painful impact that the death of a loved one has in the life of a human being.” You can discuss that theme, provide real stories (where individuals are willing to share their stories), and include grief support resources that readers can turn to for further help with any feelings of grief or loss that they’re feeling.
For organizations that offer hospice or end-of-life services: Demonstrate your expertise in this area, by explaining your philosophies and approaches to supporting those dying and their loved ones. Tip: Avoid being too ‘salesy’ or focused on lead generation and getting new clients. Instead, focus on being understanding, knowledgeable, and helpful.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Does your community host any grief support groups? What are your protocols or practices for addressing grief among residents and staff when a beloved resident dies? For instance, do you host memorial events for deceased residents, or have tributes, such as the memory garden that Azura Memory Care of Eau Claire, WI created for remembering residents who’ve died? Are those you serve aware of your offering in this regard? Take this opportunity to talk about your services and support for those who pass away at your community, and for those left grieving by the loss.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Does your home care agency partner or collaborate with a hospice provider? Talk about that collaboration and how it benefits those dying and those grieving.
Is there anything else that your organization does to support those who are grieving? For instance, is there a client for whom you were hired as an elder companion after the loss of a spouse, friend, or loved one? That story could be a starting point for discussing the impact of grief and how your agency can provide support.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia School of Social Work
GriefNet.org — a volunteer-based nonprofit that connects individuals to support groups and hosts an online community for those grieving
Grief Recovery Institute — this is another expert organization, founded in the mid 1980s, and offering training, workshops, and more
Being Mortal – a highly acclaimed book by surgeon Atul Gawande that shows that “the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life — all the way to the very end”
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
June is National Safety Month, which focuses on reducing the leading causes of injury and death at work, on the roads, and in our homes and communities. Each week of the month has a different theme: From “Stand Ready to Respond” (highlighting first aid and emergency prep) in week one, to “Share the Roads Safely” in week four. The national campaign also includes information about preventing falls for older adults and avoiding prescription medication dangers or mistakes. It brings up the opportunity for senior care organizations to discuss ways that older adults are safe in senior care, or to address one or more of the month’s specific safety themes.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Visit the National Safety Council’s Safe for Life site to get each week’s info kit, which includes a flyer, poster, and more. It’s helpful content you can use free of charge.
Find out about safety resources and programs in your area, such as the Free Housing Safety Program in Alameda, CA, or Florida’s Senior Safety Resource Center. Write about how older adults in your community can benefit from these services — as well as yours — in staying safe.
Take a look at the month’s weekly themes: which one(s) resonate most with your senior care organization and would be easiest for you to create content around? You may be able to create better content if you hone in on one or two of the specific safety hazards with tips for avoiding them — including how your senior care organization is keeping seniors safe in relevant ways.
Use interesting, powerful statistics in your content this month. For instance, one of the campaign’s flyers reports that, “Since 2000, more than 11,000 people have been seriously injured because of distracted walking.” Use of mobile phones may be contributing to that statistic and the use of mobile phones by older generations is on the rise — so this could be a unique safety angle you hadn’t yet covered previously, or reason to revisit how seniors are using mobile phones and how to avoid related dangers (including online elder scams via smart phone browsers or text messaging).
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
What are specific things that your senior living community does to ensure the safety of its residents and visitors? Consider a blog post in which you take the reader on a tour of those aspects of your community’s offering. If you have creative staff with design skills or want to try free online tools for infographics, you could also create a visual (such as this one we did for online reputation management) to convey the information in a way that’s more share-worthy in social media.
One of the themes of National Safety Month is being alert to and prepared for dangers. Does your community have plans for emergencies like fire or natural disasters? Do your residents and their family members know and understand the plans? National Safety Month can be an opening for your community to revisit this conversation with those you serve, either in the form of a town hall-style meeting, blog post, series of social posts, or all of the above. Convey how well prepared your community is and help your residents and family members set aside fear and anxiety, resting assured in your community’s safe care.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
How are older adults receiving your agency’s services more safe than they were previously without professional help? Use the theme of safety as a way to discuss your agency’s services and how they help seniors be safe.
How does your agency help older adults in the event of an emergency such as a house fire or natural disaster? Does your agency have a protocol it uses with your caregivers in clients’ homes, and how familiar are the clients and their family members with those emergency plans? Take this opportunity to convey how well prepared your agency is in supporting its clients and their family members in the event of an emergency.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Falls Prevention — Top 5 Tips to Prevent Falls in the Home
Medication Management Resource Center to avoid medication mistakes
Millions of Senior Citizens Ill-Prepared to Live Alone – 8 in 10 Americans Concerned about Safety of Older Loved Ones
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
National Safety Council – National Safety Month campaign
Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.gov site for Senior Safety
Google “senior safety in” plus your city/state (e.g., “senior safety in Toledo, Ohio). This will turn up related resources you can turn to for your coverage this month.
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the June 2016 Content Sparks.
LiveWell at Birchwood Lake Estates (LiveWell Assisted Living) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina received its first review on Caring.com in October 2012. It was 5 stars (the highest possible rating) from a daughter-in-law who was helping select the community for her spouse's mother. By the end of 2012, the community had received 5 more positive consumer reviews, and people were calling and visiting the community with mention of the reviews they'd read online.
"I realized that Caring.com was quickly going to become the Yelp of senior care," said Zack Fraley, Vice President of LiveWell Care, Inc., a family owned and operated business representing over 20 years of healthcare management. "I made the decision early on to focus on reviews, and on Caring's reviews site specifically, and it hasn't failed us."
When Zack first began working on LiveWell's search engine optimization (SEO) in 2012, he noticed the quality of Caring.com's content and found the site to be well indexed and search optimized — ranking high on page 1 results for many of the keyword searches he did. Zack wanted to concentrate his organization's marketing efforts, recognizing the SEO "barnacle strategy" of attaching to a reputable and relevant partner site, and found Caring.com to be a perfect match for growing awareness and affinity with his brand online.
"No one is a stranger to Google," Zack says, "and when they go to Google, they'll find our Caring.com listing and read what everybody else is saying about us. Even when prospective residents and their family members call our number directly, they’ll say, 'Hey, we saw your reviews on Caring.com. We see that other families have had a great experience with you all.' At LiveWell, we've taken note of that, and have increased our efforts on Caring.com because it's working for us."
LiveWell is the only operator of both in-home care and care home or “micro-communites” for older adults in North Carolina. LiveWell now operates 6 properties in North Carolina's "research triangle" of Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill, and has 23 reviews total on their Caring.com listings. The original location at Birchwood Lake Estates earned so many positive reviews that they became a Caring Stars award-winning community three years in a row — earning the title of "Caring Super Star" and the only one who earned that coveted distinction in North Carolina in 2015.
"These awards that we've received have distinguished us among the top assisted living communities in the country" Zack said. "The reviews on Caring.com have been a phenomenal marketing asset for us, helping us to widely get exposure that would have been difficult to get otherwise."
To sustain its outstanding online reputation, LiveWell incorporated its reviews focus in staff orientation and training, and circulates new reviews among the entire team — to help reinforce the positive impact these caregivers are having for those they serve. The initial success of the Birchwood Lake Estates location has helped set a high-bar standard for their other locations, creating a culture that reflects their commitment to service excellence.
"The reviews we've received show how much focus we have on the details of the services we provide, and in turn, lead to employee satisfaction as well," Zack said. "Our caregivers are able to see how great they're doing, and say to themselves, 'Yes, I'm actually going to be able to have an impact here based on how LiveWell operates'."
LiveWell is also using the consumer reviews in their community sales process.
"If the prospective resident or family member hasn't already mentioned that they've read our reviews online, it's one of the first things we direct them to," Zack says. "We've been doing this since the beginning when we only had the one Caring Stars listing, and now we do it for all of our locations."
LiveWell definitely shines in search results on Caring.com — few other assisted living communities in its area have exceeded or matched the quantity and quality of reviews Zack's team has earned from families and older adults on Caring.com (the closest assisted living community with 20+ positive reviews on Caring.com is about 25 miles away, and there are less than a dozen total in the entire state that currently have that review volume). For Chapel Hill and Durham, LiveWell listings rank at or near the top of assisted living and care home search results — the review volume attracting clicks and listing visits from senior care searchers.
"Our partnership with Caring.com is a very important aspect of our marketing for all of our communities," Zack says. "The positive reviews we've received for the flagship location reflect a level of service that families can expect at any of our locations, and Caring.com helps us share those feedback stories widely and strengthen our reputation of having happy customers and great employees."
Well done, LiveWell! You successfully seized this digital marketing opportunity — years before many of your competitors, and have since clearly demonstrated the multiple benefits of building your online reputation through reviews on Caring.com!
***Have a Digital Marketing Kudos story to share? We’d love to hear from you. Submit kudos now.
To be honored as a Caring Star, your senior living community has to have a high volume of positive and recent reviews, a great overall average rating, and a response to every negative review. It's a distinction that's worth the effort: historically, it led to (on average) twice as many inquiries and move-ins for referral partners with the award vs. those without — further demonstrating how this annual list is truly helping to identify the most-popular providers.
Caring Super Stars takes the recognition to the next level: identifying those senior living communities who have been Caring Stars in 3 or more years since 2012. These are the super stellar senior living communities that family caregivers and older adults love and rave about — year after year.
Arizona — 2 communities
Atria Park of Sierra Pointe in Scottsdale, AZ
The Montecito in Peoria, AZ
California — 18 communities
Merrill Gardens at Campbell in Campbell, CA
Pacific Gardens Assisted Living & Memory Support in Santa Clara, CA
Somerford Place of Stockton in Stockton, CA
Wesley Palms in San Diego, CA
Atria Del Rey in Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Atria Palm Desert in Palm Desert, CA
Atria Park of Vintage Hills in Temecula, CA
Brookdale Hemet in Hemet, CA
Oakmont of Roseville in Roseville, CA
Brookdale Anaheim Hills in Anaheim Hills, CA
Kirkwood Orange in Orange, CA
Belmont Village Burbank in Burbank, CA
Hollenbeck Palms in Los Angeles, CA
Sunrise of Playa Vista in Playa Vista, CA
Atria Rancho Park in San Dimas, CA
Brookdale Monrovia in Monrovia, CA
Brookdale Riverwalk in Bakersfield, CA
Eskaton Village Placerville in Placerville, CA
Florida — 11 communities
Countryside Lakes in Port Orange, FL
Village on the Isle in Venice, FL
Arbor Oaks at Lakeland Hills in Lakeland, FL
Cabot Cove of Largo in Largo, FL
Freedom Square in Seminole, FL
Atria Park of Baypoint Village in Hudson, FL
Sterling Aventura in Aventura, FL
Sun Towers Retirement in Sun City Center, FL
Brookdale North Naples in Naples, FL
Aston Gardens at Parkland Commons in Parkland, FL
Georgia — 3 communities
Remington House in Conyers, GA
Brookdale Historic Roswellin Roswell, GA
The Fite Living Centre in Cartersville, GA
Illinois — 2 communities
Willow Falls in Crest Hill, IL
Three Oaks Assisted Living and Memory Care in Cary, IL
Iowa — 1 community
Woodlands Creek in Clive IA
Maryland — 2 communities
Arbor Terrace of Lanham in Lanham, MD
Sunrise of Frederick in Frederick, MD
Massachusetts — 1 community
Dodge Park Rest Home in Worcester, MA
Michigan — 2 communities
New Hope Valley in Saginaw, MI
Chester Street Residence in Royal Oak, MI
Nevada — 2 communities
Sunrise of Henderson in Henderson, NV
Atria Seville in Las Vegas, NV
New York — 3 communities
The Bristal Assisted Living at East Northport in Northport, NY
The Bristal at Sayville in Sayville, NY
Sunrise at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, NY
Ohio — 1 community
Atria Northgate Park in Cincinnati, OH
Oklahoma — 2 communities
Copper Lake Estates in Edmond, OK
Tamarack Assisted Living Center in Altus, OK
Pennsylvania — 4 communities
The Birches at Arbour Square in Harleysville, PA
Broadmore Senior Living at York in York, PA
Brookdale Mt. Lebanon in Pittsburgh, PA
Juniper Village at Forest Hills in Pittsburgh, PA
Rhode Island — 1 community
The Village at Waterman Lake in Greenville, RI
South Carolina — 1 community
Summit Place of Daniel Island in Charleston, SC
Texas — 7 communities
Isle at Kingwood in Kingwood, TX
Sunrise of Cinco Ranch in Katy, TX
Brookdale Club Hill in Garland, TX
Appletree Court Assisted Living in Richardson, TX
DaySpring Assisted Living in Plano, TX
Seasons Alzheimer's & Assisted Care (Nacogdoches Road) in San Antonio, TX
The Laurels & The Haven in Stone Oak in San Antonio, TX
Utah — 1 community
Golden Living Taylorsville in Taylorsville, UT
Virginia — 2 communities
Chancellor's Village in Fredericksburg, VA
Spring Hills Mount Vernon in Alexandria, VA
Wisconsin — 2 communities
St. Monica's Senior Living in Racine, WI
Congratulations to these 68 senior living communities across the United States!
****See Also:
The Caring Super Stars of 2018 are assisted living and memory care communities who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award in three (3) or more years since this first-of-its-kind program launched in 2012. These are the repeatedly stellar senior living communities that family caregivers and older adults praise — year after year.
Arizona — 2 communities
California — 15 communities
Colorado — 2 communities
Florida — 8 communities
Idaho — 1 community
Illinois — 2 communities
Indiana — 1 community
Iowa — 2 communities
Kentucky — 1 community
Louisiana — 3 communities
Massachusetts — 4 communities
Michigan — 3 communities
Mississippi — 1 community
Nevada — 3 communities
New Jersey — 2 communities
New Mexico — 1 community
New York — 2 communities
Ohio — 2 communities
Oklahoma — 2 communities
Oregon — 1 community
Pennsylvania — 5 communities
Rhode Island — 1 community
South Carolina — 1 community
Texas — 7 communities
Utah — 3 communities
Virginia — 2 communities
Wisconsin — 1 community
Congratulations to these 78 senior living communities across the United States!
The Caring Super Stars of 2019 are senior living communities who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award in three (3) or more years since this first-of-its-kind program launched in 2012. These are the repeatedly stellar senior living communities that family caregivers and older adults praise — year after year.
ARIZONA - 3 communities
CALIFORNIA - 12 communities
FLORIDA - 6 communities
IDAHO - 2 communities
ILLINOIS - 1 community
INDIANA - 2 communities
KANSAS - 1 community
MASSACHUSETTS - 1 community
MICHIGAN - 2 communities
MISSISSIPPI - 1 community
MONTANA - 1 community
NEVADA - 1 community
NEW JERSEY - 1 community
NEW MEXICO - 1 community
OHIO - 2 communities
OKLAHOMA - 1 community
PENNSYLVANIA - 3 communities
TENNESSEE - 1 community
TEXAS - 8 communities
UTAH - 1 community
VIRGINIA - 1 community
WASHINGTON - 2 communities
WISCONSIN - 1 community
Congratulations to these 55 senior living communities across the United States!
***See the full list of Caring Stars of 2019 here.
Caring Stars is a service excellence award and annual list of the best senior living communities and home care agencies based on consumer reviews on Caring.com. These top-rated senior care providers have a lot of great reviews, top ratings, recent reviews, and responses to all negative reviews too. Each year, Caring.com uses a specific set of reviews-based criteria that the providers must meet in order to qualify - and the bar is purposefully set high to ensure that the program continues to truly represent those providers best meeting the needs of the family caregivers and older adults they serve.
For 2019, we've announced the senior living winners and the home care agency winners too.
To qualify for the 2019 Caring Stars award, senior living communities and home care agencies had to meet the following criteria:
● Have 10 or more consumer reviews on their Caring.com listing, with an overall average rating of 4.5 stars or higher (on a scale of 1 to 5) by October 15, 2018;
● Have 3 or more reviews on their listing dated between October 15, 2017 - October 15, 2018, including at least one that was posted during 2018 and at least one that had a 5-star rating; and
● Respond to any/all negative (1-star or 2-star) reviews on their listing.
Have questions about the Caring Stars criteria or the program in general? Please contact community@caring.com or (650) 762-8190.
The Caring Super Stars of 2019 are in-home care agencies who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award in the past three (3) years. These are the repeatedly stellar in-home care agencies that family caregivers and older adults praise — year after year.
ARIZONA - 3 agencies
CALIFORNIA - 4 agencies
FLORIDA - 6 agencies
ILLINOIS - 4 agencies
KANSAS - 1 agency
KENTUCKY - 2 agencies
MARYLAND - 5 agencies
MASSACHUSETTS - 2 agencies
MICHIGAN - 1 agency
MISSOURI - 1 agency
NEVADA - 1 agency
NEW JERSEY - 1 agency
NEW YORK - 4 agencies
NORTH CAROLINA - 1 agency
OHIO - 3 agencies
OREGON - 2 agencies
PENNSYLVANIA - 5 agencies
SOUTH CAROLINA - 1 agency
TENNESSEE - 1 agency
TEXAS - 2 agencies
Congratulations to these 50 in-home care agencies across the United States!
***See the full list of in-home care Caring Stars of 2019.
Caring.com today announced that we have acquired PayingForSeniorCare.com, a website that provides financial information and resources for consumers to understand, plan for, and cover the costs of senior care.
“Caring.com is in growth mode, both organically and through acquisitions," said CEO Jim Rosenthal. "We love this industry and are deeply committed to providing services to caregivers and their loved ones.”
He also noted: “This transaction broadens our footprint, enabling us to increase the volume of informed, qualified consumers that we help along with our partners.”
On the PayingForSeniorCare website, family caregivers and older adults can learn detailed information about the costs of eldercare, search for senior living communities and in-home care agencies, research financial assistance programs and eligibility requirements, compare benefits, and more!
“PayingForSeniorCare.com is a well-established, credible source of senior care content, and we’re excited to add this resource to our portfolio," Rosenthal said.
Read the full press release here.
The Caring Super Stars of 2020 are senior living communities who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award for 2020 plus two or more additional years since this first-of-its-kind program launched in 2012. These are the repeatedly stellar senior living communities that family caregivers and older adults praise — year after year.
CALIFORNIA — 7 communities
FLORIDA — 5 communities
GEORGIA — 1 community
INDIANA — 2 communities
IOWA — 3 communities
KENTUCKY — 1 community
LOUISIANA — 1 community
MARYLAND — 1 community
MASSACHUSETTS — 3 communities
MICHIGAN — 3 communities
MINNESOTA — 1 community
MISSOURI — 1 community
NEW JERSEY — 3 communities
NEW MEXICO — 2 communities
NEW YORK — 1 community
NORTH CAROLINA — 1 community
OHIO — 1 community
OKLAHOMA — 1 community
PENNSYLVANIA — 5 communities
SOUTH CAROLINA — 1 community
TENNESSEE — 2 communities
TEXAS — 6 communities
UTAH — 1 community
VIRGINIA — 4 communities
WASHINGTON — 1 community
WISCONSIN — 1 community
Congratulations to these 59 senior living communities across the United States!
***See the full list of Caring Stars of 2020.
Caring Stars is a service excellence award and annual list of the best senior living communities and in-home care agencies based on consumer ratings and reviews on Caring.com. These top-rated senior care providers have a lot of great reviews, top ratings, recent reviews, and responses to all negative reviews too. Each year, Caring.com uses a specific set of reviews-based criteria that the providers must meet in order to qualify — and the bar is purposefully set high to ensure that the program continues to truly represent those providers best meeting the needs of the family caregivers and older adults they serve.
For 2020, we announced the senior living winners and the home care agency winners in Q4-2019.
To qualify for the 2020 Caring Stars award, senior living communities and in-home care agencies met the following criteria:
● Had 10 or more consumer reviews on their Caring.com listing, with an overall average rating of 4.5 stars or higher (on a scale of 1 to 5) by October 15, 2019;
● Had 3 or more reviews on their listing dated between October 15, 2018 – October 15, 2019, including at least one that was posted during 2019 and at least one that had a 5-star rating; and
● Responded to any/all negative (1-star or 2-star) reviews on their listing.
Have questions about the Caring Stars criteria or the program in general? Please contact reviews@caring.com or (650) 762-8190.
The Caring Super Stars of 2020 are in-home care agencies who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award in 2020 and two other prior years since 2017 (having earned Caring Stars in 3 or more years total). These are the repeatedly stellar in-home care agencies that family caregivers and older adults praise — year after year.
ALABAMA - 3 agencies
ARIZONA - 5 agencies
CALIFORNIA - 13 agencies
COLORADO - 3 agencies
CONNECTICUT - 1 agency
FLORIDA - 17 agencies
GEORGIA - 2 agencies
ILLINOIS - 11 agencies
INDIANA - 2 agencies
KANSAS - 1 agency
KENTUCKY - 1 agency
LOUISIANA - 1 agency
MAINE - 1 agency
MARYLAND - 6 agencies
MASSACHUSETTS - 4 agencies
MICHIGAN - 7 agencies
MISSOURI - 3 agencies
NEBRASKA - 1 agency
NEVADA - 2 agencies
NEW HAMPSHIRE - 1 agency
NEW JERSEY - 3 agencies
NEW YORK - 5 agencies
NORTH CAROLINA - 4 agencies
OHIO - 6 agencies
OKLAHOMA - 1 agency
OREGON - 4 agencies
PENNSYLVANIA - 6 agencies
SOUTH CAROLINA - 1 agency
SOUTH DAKOTA - 1 agency
TENNESSEE - 4 agencies
TEXAS - 10 agencies
UTAH - 2 agencies
VIRGINIA - 3 agencies
WASHINGTON - 1 agency
WISCONSIN - 3 agencies
Congratulations to these 139 in-home care agencies across the United States!
***See the full list of in-home care Caring Stars of 2020.
Caring.com today announced that we have acquired SeniorAdvice.com, a website that includes a comprehensive directory of senior living communities and senior care options (with consumer reviews) and the SeniorScore index – a proprietary tool using local data to grade the senior-friendliness of U.S. cities and areas.
“The SeniorAdvice offering expands our ability to reach and help even more seniors and their family members in their search for the senior living or in-home care option that best meets their needs,” said Caring's CEO, Jim Rosenthal.
He also noted: "We are committed to providing high quality and highly relevant senior care services that make a significant and positive impact — using the latest data and technology, having a highly-skilled team of senior care experts, and strategically acquiring businesses that fit well with our mission."
The acquisition expands Caring's portfolio of reputable senior care referral services and trustworthy resources for seniors and their loved ones, and supports our ability to deliver informed, qualified referrals and screened leads to our partners.
As the founder of SeniorAdvice stated in the press release, “Caring.com is an industry leader that has dedicated itself to providing the highest quality customer service and has built one of the largest networks of senior care providers anywhere. Caring’s passion, expertise, and resources will help elevate the experience and increase the options for consumers who use SeniorAdvice."
Read the full press release here.
The Caring Super Stars of 2021 are senior living communities who have earned the Caring Stars reviews award for 2021 plus two or more additional years since this first-of-its-kind program launched in 2012. These are the repeatedly stellar senior living communities that seniors and their family members praise — year after year.
ALABAMA — 1 community
ARIZONA — 1 community
CALIFORNIA — 11 communities
DELAWARE — 1 community
FLORIDA — 6 communities
GEORGIA — 1 community
IDAHO — 1 community
KENTUCKY — 1 community
MAINE — 1 community
MASSACHUSETTS — 1 community
MISSOURI — 1 community
NEW JERSEY — 1 community
NEW MEXICO — 1 community
NEW YORK — 2 communities
NORTH CAROLINA — 1 community
OHIO — 1 community
OKLAHOMA — 1 community
PENNSYLVANIA — 4 communities
TENNESSEE — 2 communities
TEXAS — 6 communities
UTAH — 2 communities
VIRGINIA — 2 communities
WASHINGTON — 1 community
Congratulations to these 50 senior living communities across the United States!
***See the full list of Caring Stars of 2021.
Caring Stars is a service excellence award and annual list of the best senior living communities and in-home care agencies based on consumer ratings and reviews on Caring.com. These top-rated senior care providers have a lot of great reviews, top ratings, recent reviews, and responses to all negative reviews too. Each year, Caring.com uses a specific set of reviews-based criteria that the providers must meet in order to qualify — and the bar is purposefully set high to ensure that the program continues to truly represent those providers best meeting the needs of seniors and their families.
For 2021, we announced the senior living winners in November 2020, and the home care agency winners in December.
To qualify for the 2021 Caring Stars award, senior living communities and home care agencies met the following criteria:
● Had 10 or more consumer reviews published on their Caring.com listing, with an overall average rating of 4.5 stars or higher (on a scale of 1 to 5) by October 15, 2020;
● Had 3 or more reviews published on their listing dated between October 15, 2019 - October 15, 2020, including at least one that was posted during 2020 and at least one that had a 5-star rating; and
● Responded to any/all negative (1-star or 2-star) reviews on their listing.
In determining the Caring Stars 2021 winners, Caring.com also conducted a reviews-integrity audit and took other quality-assurance measures, including screening finalist communities using licensing and inspection reports on state agency websites (where applicable and data publicly available).
Have questions about the Caring Stars criteria or the program in general? Please contact reviews@caring.com or (650) 762-8190.
to learn more and speak with a directory specialist for your area.
There is a significant shift that's been going on in the way that families and seniors are finding and selecting senior living communities. Online marketing is on the rise, while offline and referral marketing is on the decline. Caring is a leader in digital marketing for senior living communities — a preferred referral and advertising partner for thousands of communities nationwide.
Caring does 4 key things to help senior living communities maximize the digital marketing opportunity:
We help communities build an enhanced listing on our websites which rank very highly, support millions of monthly visitors, and have domain authority in the senior living space.
We help communities increase the number and quality of online consumer reviews and better manage their online reputation.
We send pre-screened leads of people who are looking for senior living community options and have opted into having their information shared with Caring partners - these folks include both the senior prospective residents, and their adult children and family members.
We provide follow up, support, reporting, and ongoing sales and marketing education to help communities convert online leads into new residents.
To become a senior living partner, contact sales@caring.com to learn more, or call (855) 897-2433 to speak with a directory specialist for your area.
Already a senior living partner? Please contact partnersuccess@caring.com or (855) 932-3880.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an observance to raise understanding of the disease and save lives nationwide. According to the CDC: each year in the United States, more than 200,000 women get breast cancer and more than 40,000 women die from the disease — and most breast cancers are found in woman age 50+, a key demographic for senior care organizations.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Discuss the facts associated with breast cancer: who gets it, early warning signs, ways to prevent it, and what’s involved after a diagnosis.
Take advantage of the free informational materials from experts that are available, such as those listed in the resources section below, or from the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Interview a specialist in your area. To find these experts, go to a search engine and type in “breast cancer specialist” plus the name of your city or state (such as “breast cancer specialist Long Beach, CA” for example). That will produce a list to cull for the best options of who to contact for an interview. Since those sites are already ranking well, it could help your blog’s SEO to include them in your content and link to them (see “bow-tie SEO strategy” info). It will also add to the credibility and authority of your content by having another local expert voice to complement the expertise of your senior care organization.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Some foods or “super foods” are known for their properties that can help your body to prevent or fight cancer. Consider adding some super foods to your meal plan this month, and highlight their benefits and why they’re featured in the food at your community this month.
The color for Breast Cancer Awareness Month is pink. Consider decorating the community lobby in pink with information about breast cancer and breast cancer prevention. You might also pass out pink ribbon lapels for your staff to wear this month, and give them a tip or two to share with residents or community visitors who ask about the ribbons.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Consider including breast cancer awareness information in the content your in-home caregivers discuss with clients and their family members this month. You could help to encourage them around early detection, and you may even help to save lives. Your in-home caregivers could also wear pink ribbons on their uniform to call attention to this focus this month as well.
For home health agencies: include in your content the ways that your staff aid an individual while they’re undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
National Breast Cancer Foundation’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month resources
Breast Cancer.org, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the most reliable, complete, and up-to-date information about breast cancer
Cleveland Clinic list of the types of doctors who treat breast cancer
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the October 2016 Content Sparks.
Did you know that the American “Mothers’ Day” holiday was started by a family caregiver? A well-educated businesswoman, Ann Jarvis shifted her focus in 1904 to care for her mother (her namesake) after her father died and her mother’s health declined. On May 10, 1908 (three years after her mother’s death), Ann held a memorial ceremony to honor her mother and all mothers — and thus began her campaign to establish this national tradition, finally proclaimed as an official holiday in the USA in 1914.
With such a direct correlation to our industry, and the significant numbers of older mothers being cared for by their adult daughters (many of them mothers themselves or “sandwich generation caregivers”), we think this is an excellent topic for your content programming in May, and offer these tips and resources to help.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Talk about the challenges that adult children face in caring for elder or frail parents, and how professional senior care services can help ease the burden — so that the family can shift to focusing more on quality time together in their loved ones’ golden years.
To care for her mother, Ann Jarvis moved her into the home Ann shared with her brother — but it did take some time to persuade the elder to leave her own home to live with her children. This is a decision (and challenge) many adult children face: help mom find a senior living community, hire an in-home care agency, and/or move mom into their home — if and when they can convince the senior to accept help in this way. Provide tips and guidance for adult children in having this conversation with their mother and how to proceed with considering the senior care options, such as cost factors or what the different levels of senior living provide.
Consider any tribute crafts or legacy activities that you can share with the elder mothers you serve — as a gift for their family members or as an activity with their loved ones. Write about these projects and their importance.
Photos and quote memes — such as this poem about each letter in the word Mother — can be particularly effective for increasing social media engagement with your Mothers’ Day programming. Sometimes visuals and meaningful quips can be more emotionally moving than long-form prose, and there’s substantial data from platforms like Facebook and Pinterest that images and shorter posts are more popular among social networking users.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
What special activities or dining services do you have planned to help celebrate Mothers Day at your senior living community? Write an overview of how your community is marking the occasion and on your social profiles include great photos (especially the day of or after the event) with photo opt-in by those featured, of course.
Interview a senior resident who is a mother and whose daughter (or son) helped her make the decision to move and found your community. What was the process like for them? How has life improved for the elder mother in her golden years as a result of moving into your community? This personal storytelling can resonate particularly well with prospective residents and their family members too.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Help family caregivers understand that they don’t have to go it alone — whether their aging mother lives alone, in a senior living community, or moves in with them, an in-home care agency can help with caring for her in several ways. Avoid the sales pitch though — you want to be seen as a helpful, knowledgeable resource they can rely upon, not as an opportunist seizing on their difficult situation.
Interview a senior client who is a mother and whose daughter (or son) helped her accept an in-home caregiver or elder companion and found your agency. What was that experience like for them? How has life improved for the elder mother since then? Real life stories from “people like me” can be particularly helpful to those considering home care for themselves or their elder parents as well.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Caregiving, Mothering Mother, and More — a blog by caregiving expert, Carol O’Dell
About Ann Jarvis — details and sources on the origins of the Mothers Day holiday in the USA
Western Oregon University study, “It’ll Work Out: Older Mothers’ and Adult Daughters’ Perspectives on Future Plans” (2014)
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
Between the Fourth of July holiday and recent Brexit vote, the theme of “independence” is top of mind for many people this month. Like the United States and Britain, seniors too have a strong desire for being independent and controlling their own destiny — and you can use this opportunity to discuss how senior care helps meet their needs while also honoring their desire for adult autonomy.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Document the challenges of maintaining independence later in life and how your senior care organization helps older adults and their family members address these challenges.
Consider an aspect of daily life and how that impacts an older adult’s independence — such as with hearing loss or transportation challenges. While the broader theme is still independence, this content approach zooms in on a tangible relevant example of how older adults can remain independent in important areas of their lives through senior care.
How can family caregivers better support their elder loved ones’ independence? How can they balance their desire to take care of everything for their loved one, with respecting the older adults’ dignity and ability to still care for himself or herself in some ways? These are some of the themes you can include in your content this month.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
For independent living and retirement communities: Discuss how living in a community like yours is better for an older adult maintaining their independence than living alone. Do you have a resident or two who’d be willing to share the reasons they chose to move into the community and how that’s helped them to be more independent than they were living alone? If so, be sure to include their story and photo (with permission of course). Another angle for your content this month: Give tips for researching, selecting and moving into an independent living.
For assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing facilities: Discuss some of the ways that your services help residents or patients be independent and/or autonomous despite the increased challenges they may be facing as a result of dementia or other illnesses. Consider sharing individual stories without revealing the real full names of those individuals and (as needed) with permission of their family member(s).
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Aging in place is another way that independence for older adults is described and you can share how having an elder companion or in-home caregiver can support the older adult in this way.
Home modifications and aging in place technologies are also discussed in the context of supporting older adults’ desire for independence. While “aging tech” hasn’t yet been widely adopted, you might nonetheless discuss these options and provide an example of a client your agency is helping who is also using technology or home modifications to remain in their home independently.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Independent Living Checklist — What to Look For, What to Ask
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Home Care Pulse – Helping Seniors Remain Independent
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the July 2016 Content Sparks.
As we covered in a prior content spark and in our social media webinars, it’s a common misperception or stereotype that seniors are technophobes or ‘out of the loop’ when it comes to technology use. While it’s definitely true that there are some seniors who aren’t using technology, there are also many who are — and for those who aren’t, we as senior care organizations can play a role in educating them about the benefits of technology and help them learn.
The theme of this year’s National Assisted Living Week (September 11-17) provides one such opportunity. It’s “Keep Connected” and is focused on recognizing the expanding and exciting ways that assisted living residents are using technology to enhance their lives — as well as the ways that staff are using technology to enhance care. And it’s not just senior living communities that are using technologies to support and engage older adults: home care agencies and other senior care organizations are doing so as well.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Cite the statistics about the growing number of older adults who are using the Internet and social media — such as the figures that the Pew Internet and American Life project puts out. Then bring those stats to life with stories of real users you know who fit in this demographic. Discuss the ways they use it, and include any benefits they’ve experienced — such as a senior who is now more connected to their grandchildren’s daily lives via Facebook, or a senior living resident who used online reviews to find the community they’re in.
Consider a technology product round up, such as “10 Technologies That Make A Senior’s Life Easier” with a short description of each one and how it helps. Or, “Our Favorite Apps for Seniors’ Smartphones”, or “5 Websites Worth A Senior’s Time”, or something similar that helps raise awareness about technologies that can improve or enhance the well being of older adults.
Alternatively, you could narrow your focus to one technology, such as video chats, or one social media platform and how it helps older adults — whether by connecting them to friends and loved ones, or by stimulating their minds and memory, or by helping them find deals, etc.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Blog about the ways that technology is being used in your community to enhance the lives of residents or support your staff in delivering excellence in care. And if you’re using technology to help connect residents to their family members, be sure to include those examples as well.
Consider hosting a screening of the Cyber-Seniors documentary during National Assisted Living Week. After the show, open up a discussion with your residents to hear their thoughts about the film, or consider connecting local youth with elders in your community for technology learning.
Host an activity where you educate cognitively healthy residents about online reviews and how to post their own — whether about your community’s services on a site like Caring.com, or of their favorite beauty salon on Yelp, or a recently read book on Amazon.com.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Is your home care agency using technology in any innovative ways to support your clients and their family members? Create a blog post to discuss those attributes and benefits of hiring your agency.
At the Home Care Association of America annual conference, there was a session with Laurie Orlov, founder of
Aging in Place Technology Watch
, featuring the latest and greatest technologies for use in the home by older adults, caregiving professionals and families to enable safety, engagement, and communication. If you’re attending the conference, go to that session, and include a write up about the information presented on your agency’s blog.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
National Center for Assisted Living — National Assisted Living Week materials
The New York Times – Retirement: Staying in Touch with Technology
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) is April 16, 2016. This observance exists to inspire, educate, and empower people to understand the importance of advance care planning and document patient wishes regarding healthcare and end-of-life medical decisions. The theme this year is, “It Always Seems Too Early, Until It’s Too Late.” Senior living communities, home care agencies, and other senior care organizations can take this opportunity to reach, inform, and motivate family caregivers and older adults regarding advance healthcare directives.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Interview a local hospice provider, hospital administrator, social worker, doctor, geriatric care manager, or elder law attorney about why it’s so important to have advance health care directives and any tips they’d offer to those you serve.
Find out or revisit the relevant laws (and forms) for advance health care directives in your state. Share that information in your related content. Your local Area Agency on Aging may be able to point you in the right direction if you encounter any difficulty finding the information online.
Discuss statistics that illuminate the necessity and benefits of having advance healthcare directives, such as Caring.com’s research on living wills. Additionally, first-person stories can be very effective in conveying the value of having these documents in place.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Some senior living communities require advance healthcare directives when moving a new resident into their community. If that applies to your community, reference your policies and why you require such documents.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
What are your agency’s policies and procedures related to advance healthcare directives? Discuss those in your content this month.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Website for National Healthcare Decisions Day
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
Law enforcement and government officials warn that scams targeting seniors increase around the holidays — such as this holiday scam advisory from the Attorney General of Ohio. People are more in the ‘giving mood’ or more distracted (less guarded) this time of year as well. Help ensure that older adults in your area don’t get taken advantage of — help them avoid financial elder abuse this holiday season and throughout the year.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Contact local law enforcement or government officials (such as the city manager or city council members) in your area to see if they’re warning local residents of any specific scams they’re seeing this time of year, particularly those that could easily reach and harm seniors (e.g., is package theft a problem this year in your area? What do they recommend for residents?). Let them know that you’d like to make sure that the seniors you serve are made aware, and will share their information or quotes on your blog. Some may already have this information on their social media profiles or websites — if so, excerpt and link to that information from your newsletter, blog or social profiles to help your clients and their family members.
Interview a certified financial advisor, certified financial planner, or licensed highly-rated accountant in your area and compile his/her tips to help seniors avoid financial abuse. Or contact a national organization like Elderlife or EverSafe that focuses on seniors’ financial safety and share their top tips.
Compile information and resources from senior care experts — such as geriatric care managers, social workers, senior care authors, and others — to help those you serve be aware of the scams and forms of financial abuse, how to avoid them, and what to do if they suspect they’ve fallen victim to identity theft, elder abuse or financial scams.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Consider hosting an event for your residents (and their family members) that includes a guest speaker from a local financial planning or elder abuse prevention organization. You could compliment this event with a co-branded handout for participants with the key tips in an at-a-glance format and “more info” list of resources they can use to avoid scams and financial elder abuse.
Be extra vigilant or beware of any external visitors to your community around this time who aren’t there to visit a resident loved one. One senior living community had a visitor who claimed they needed someone to help change their $100 bill into smaller bills — an elder resident overheard the visitor ask at the front desk, took pity on the guest, traded the $100 bill for five $20 bills, and it turned out the $100 bill was a fake (law enforcement had to get involved and the resident’s adult child was very angry with the senior living community for allowing the visitor into the community). As much as you can: prepare your staff to help protect your senior residents from falling victim to such scams.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Some families don’t realize that hiring a private in-home caregiver off the Internet (like via Craigslist) or via word-of-mouth — rather than hiring a licensed, bonded agency — can increase the risk of their senior loved one falling prey to financial abuse, theft, or scams in the home. This could be an opportunity to remind your existing clients about the precautions you’ve taken — such as extensive background checks and periodic drug testing of your caregivers — to deliver top-notch service they don’t have to worry about. Or you could do a guest post in a local newspaper or on a site like Patch.com to educate adult children about the dangers of hiring unlicensed contractors rather than a highly-rated agency.
Consider special training for your caregivers this month — to help them spot the warning signs of financial abuse or scams the senior client may be falling victim to, and remind them of your agency’s protocols for taking action. Then write up a blog post about why you offer this training periodically to your caregivers, why elder financial abuse is a concern this time of year, and how family members can join with you to protect their elder loved ones from holiday scams, identity theft and other financial abuse.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Senior & Caregiving Money Matters — Legal and Financial Tips for Older Adults and their Family Caregivers
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — Beware of Scams Targeting Older People During the Holidays
Center of Excellence on Elder Abuse & Neglect
at UC Irvine
Safety Detective — The Ultimate Internet Safety Guide for Seniors
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
For over 65 years, May has been designated as Mental Health Awareness Month to help raise awareness and dispel stigma about mental illnesses. This year’s theme is “Life with a Mental Illness,” encouraging individuals to share their personal stories and help others by doing so.
No one is immune from mental illness — it can affect anyone at any point in their life, including older adults and family caregivers. In fact, in one study, Caring.com found that family caregivers were experiencing depression at rates twice the national average. According to the American Psychological Association, older adults have the highest suicide rate of any age group in the U.S., and an estimated 20.4% of adults aged 65 or older meet the criteria for having a mental disorder.
Senior care providers are in a position to spot the signs of mental illness in an older adult, encourage older adults and family caregivers to seek medical help, provide companionship and support, and deliver important information to both prevent and address mental illness. Your blog, website, and/or social media profiles can be starting point for this important endeavor.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Help raise awareness by writing about mental illnesses affecting older adults — you could pick one, or do a general overview listing several. Be sure to share diagnosis, treatment and recovery resources, such as referral to geriatric psychologists, helplines, support groups, non-profits, and/or government agencies, which can help those afflicted and their family members.
Interview a local psychiatrist or psychologist with specialty in serving older adults and/or family caregivers. Include their concerns and tips in your coverage this month.
Chronic pain, insomnia, incontinence and other ailments of older bodies can put a senior at increased risk for mood/personality disorders or depression. How is your senior care organization helping to address these concerns and help prevent escalation into mental illness?
As part of this year’s campaign, Mental Health America is inviting people to share their mental illness stories in social media using the hashtag, #MentalIllnessFeelsLike. Consider extending this invitation to your clients and their family members.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
How has your senior living community been affected by mental illness in the older population? Do you have a psychologist or mental health professional on staff (or as a regular visitor) that assists residents and their family members? If symptoms of mental illness arise in a resident, what actions does your team take to get that individual help? Consider taking this opportunity to raise awareness about how your community is responding to mental illness in older adults.
How are your community’s programs, services, or activities helping reduce stress and isolation in older adults, and helping them be mentally well? This observance is an opportunity to share more information, stories, and photos highlighting those ways you’re helping older adults.
If mental health screening isn’t already part of the services you offer: consider hosting a mental health-screening day at your community, inviting an external expert organization to conduct that activity. MentalHealthScreening.org is a site with information to help you get started with that event.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
How is your home care agency helping to identify mental health concerns in older adults, and what actions do you take when symptoms arise in a client you’re serving? This is an opportunity to both raise awareness about mental illnesses that older adults experience, and gently remind your clients’ families about the role your agency plays vs. the actions they need to also take to get their loved one into medical care for mental illness.
Has hiring your home care agency helped an older adult reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation or significantly improved the mental health and well being of their family caregiver(s)? Consider asking if they’d be willing to share their story this month to help other older adults and families struggling with similar challenges.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Mental Health America — Mental Health Month information and promotional materials
National Alliance on Mental Illness — the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization, with hundreds of local affiliates, state orgs, and volunteers who raise awareness and provide support for those affected by mental illness
Institute on Aging’s Friendship Line — a free service designed to help older adults considering suicide or experiencing depression
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
Whether older adults and family caregivers are celebrating their tax refund or lamenting the amount of taxes they had to pay, the tax filing deadline is a timely opportunity to discuss tax tips, financial planning, and how to pay for senior care. Most Americans are likely to need long-term care at some point in their lives, yet too few are planning and saving for it. Help your existing clients and attract new ones by sharing financial tips for seniors and their family members — particularly those acutely aware of wallet strain at tax time.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Interview a local certified public accountant, financial planner, elder law attorney, or geriatric care manager about financial considerations for older adults (e.g., estate planning) and/or tax deductions for long-term care costs, such as tax deductions for assisted living costs or tax deductions for family caregivers.
Convey the importance of planning ahead: Share national or state data about the costs of care and impact on family caregivers, such as the Genworth study of Long-Term Care Costs by State.
Get familiar with any tax credits for seniors in your state. Find out if your state has any relevant tax breaks or tips for older adults and family caregivers, and share that information in your content this month.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
If your community has any programs, services, or organizational partnerships related to paying for senior living, include information about those options in your financial planning coverage.
If you held any tax filing events at your community to help residents with their returns, include a photo or write-up about that event in your monthly e-newsletter or blog post.
Content Tip for Home Care Agencies:
Some families don’t realize the tax implications of hiring a professional caregiver ‘under the table’ rather than through an agency. Consider interviewing a Stakeholder Liaison about the policies, practices and procedures the IRS uses to ensure compliance with professional caregiver taxes — and the requirements for both the independent contractors and the families who hire them. Remind family caregivers and older adults about this being one less thing they have to worry about when working with an agency like yours.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Suze Orman’s Lessons Learned on Long Term Care via Caregiving Club
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
People love their pets and seniors in particular can benefit from the companionship of a furry friend. But there are also ongoing responsibilities with pet ownership and some safety risks for older adults with animals. And if the older adult needs to move to senior living, can the beloved pet go too? Your senior care organization can help older adults and their family members understand their options and make the best decisions when it comes to pets in senior care.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Contact your local SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) or county animal shelter and speak to an expert about pet ownership by older adults. You could turn the conversation into a Q&A article, or you could include quotes from the expert in an overview or tip article you produce. They may even have a special program you could highlight, such as a “Seniors for Seniors” (older adults adopting older cats and dogs) program, like this Seniors for Seniors in Richmond, VA or one that has discounts and other services for seniors seeking pet ownership, like this SPCA in Sacramento, CA.
Compile a list of tips to help seniors (and their family caregivers) be responsible and safe pet owners. Make sure they understand the fall risks of having dogs and cats running around under and near their feet, and include resources they can turn to for support with pet care (including products and services that add conveniences and added safety, such as gates for keeping the pet in a certain area, or electronic cat boxes that clean themselves frequently, etc.).
While cats and dogs are the most common and most popular types of pets, consider an “alternative pets for seniors” list that might include: birds, fish, geckos, even robotic pets. These can provide the stimulation and companionship of pet ownership, with less maintenance and fall risk.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Does your senior living community allow pets? Be sure that you highlight that fact on your online profiles in senior living directories, on your website, and on your social media profiles as well. It can be a real draw for a senior who currently owns a pet and is hesitant to consider senior living for that reason.
If your community does have residents with pets, or there’s a shared pet or two for the entire community: you could do a profile on one or two of them, or a photo collection of all of them (perhaps even a photo contest where your Facebook fans pick their favorite resident pet photos). Images of cats and dogs are quite engaging in social media, and who doesn’t love to see their beloved fur baby in the spotlight? You could even get really creative and come up with a funny Q&A with the various pets — imagining (and crafting quotes for) what they’re thinking about the various aspects of your senior living community. You might even attach a GoPro camera to a resident dog for a day or two — to see the community as the dog does and possibly create a funny short video about this ‘tour taker’.
If your community doesn’t allow pets as residents: Consider collaborating with a local animal organization that can bring pets to the community as visitors from time to time for “pet therapy,” such as Wags for Hope does in Frederick, Maryland. Then do a write-up about the visit with lots of lovely photos (showing only those seniors who have given permission for use of their likeness and/or showing only the pets in laps or with hands petting them).
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Does your agency include help with pet care in its services? If so, consider highlighting that fact on your online profiles in senior living directories, on your website, and on your social media profiles as well. If possible: include a story from a current or past client who benefited greatly from this type of in-home care support.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Pets in Assisted Living — Reasons to Take Your Pet With You
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
National Center for Biotechnology Information — Elderly People in Many Respects Benefit from Interactions with Dogs
American Humane Society — Cats & Seniors
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
The first day of fall is September 22nd this year, and the National Council on Aging and other organizations across the country use this day (and month) to help prevent fall-related injuries among older adults. The theme this year is “Ready, Steady, Balance: Prevent Falls in 2016.” This topic is highly relevant for so many older adults, family caregivers, and professional caregivers nationwide — we hope you’ll join the effort to raise awareness and help families and elders address this concern.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Summarize the top dangers that lead to older adults falling and harming themselves, and what can be done to prevent these falls from happening in the first place. Include tips and technologies that will help older adults prevent falls, or to get help should they fall while home along (such as an ADP wearable response pendant or wristband).
Share real-life stories about the damage falls can cause and about people making a difference to prevent falls. This could include older adults who have taken action to protect themselves, such as overcoming initial resistance to using a walker or cane, or getting rid of throw rugs and adding hand rails to their home.
Interview a geriatric physician or occupational therapist who specializes in orthopedic injuries — such as Celeste Carlucci and Julie Kardachi, M.A. of the Fall Stop…MOVE STRONG program. Learn about and include their recommendations for helping older adults avoid falls — publish that Q&A on your blog and/or social media profiles.
Join the social conversation on Twitter around the hashtag #FPAD2016
. See what others are sharing, retweet your favorites, follow new people and organizations relevant to your senior care organization, and use the hashtag to help your content get found by more people. There will also be a Twitter chat on September 13th and a Facebook Live event on September 22nd that you can join — both organized around hashtag #FPAD2016 (type the hashtag into the social platform’s search bar to find related posts).
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
What safety features does your senior living community offer that help to prevent falls? Use this opportunity to highlight those and/or remind your residents and their family members how you’ve considered their well being in this way.
In the unfortunate instance that a fall should occur in your community, what are your protocols for responding? Are there associated state regulations involved in those protocols? Periodically in senior care reviews on Caring.com we find that families don’t understand these protocols that communities have, and you can use this opportunity to educate them in advance of any related incidents. If helpful, consider including how few falls are actually occurring in your community, and why that number is so low (such as the high quality care, staffing ratios, or other community features that keep that number low).
Consider a cane or walker decorating activity and provide materials to help residents bedazzle these walking supports. Be sure, though, that the embellishments don’t create any new hazards (such as ribbons touching the floor that can be tripped over), and instead just help the older adult want to prance proudly with their newly made-over walking support.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Does your home care agency help ensure that older adults avoid falls? How so? Take this opportunity to discuss those services and supports in a blog post or social media share.
Do your caregivers take a look around clients’ homes to identify any falls risks? How do you communicate those concerns to the older adult and their family members? Consider covering home safety as the angle in your coverage this month and include specific things that your agency is looking for and addressing with clients’ homes.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Older Adult Falls info center
Google “fall prevention” followed by your state or city. Find out what’s in your area and include those resources in your content this month.
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
August is “Boomers Making a Difference” Month, celebrating Baby Boomers who have made a significant contribution to their communities by helping others improve their lives. August 21st is National Senior Citizen Day (officially proclaimed as such by Ronald Reagan in 1988) to celebrate and honor the lives and contributions of older adults. Either observance gives your senior care organization the opportunity to spotlight specific Boomers or seniors in your area who are making a positive difference and are worthy of some public recognition.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Pick one or both events, and identify associated individuals to highlight. Outreach to them ASAP to get their agreement on participation. Interview them, and feature their responses as a Q&A article, or woven into a blog post, or shared in social media with photos.
Have a Baby Boomer on your staff who deserves to be recognized for improving the lives of others? Write a profile article or blog post, or share their story on your Facebook page.
How does your organization recognize, celebrate or thank seniors? Take this opportunity to highlight those ways, whether through your blog, newsletter, or social media profiles.
Consider creating a list of the best senior citizen discounts in your area as a way to celebrate National Senior Citizens Day.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Are there residents in your community who have unique and/or compelling stories related to their contributions to society? For example: Brice Harris, a resident at Villa Gardens in Pasadena, CA who is a retired history professor and chairperson of a special summer camp for youth held at the community this year. Or the resident artists and woodworkers at The Holmstad in Batavia, IL who created a fairy garden scavenger hunt for a local Girl Scout troop. Or Aliya Kuykendall, who recently celebrated her 105th birthday with a mayoral proclamation and a few songs the grand piano at Atria Senior Living in Carrollton, TX (Aliya taught piano lessons until her mid-90s). Find the socially active seniors and stories at your community, and highlight those throughout the month, or on August 21st.
Consider hosting a National Senior Citizens Day event, activity, or party at your community with your residents as the guests of honor.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Is your agency caring for a senior who has a unique and/or compelling story related to their contributions to society? How about seniors in your community who are inspiring and worthy of note? Consider a blog post featuring these individuals, such as Griswold Home Care did in this post on their blog.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Love to Know — Ideas for Celebrating National Senior Citizens Day
Growing Bolder — profiles of people whose stories rebrand aging
Senior Corps — interview them about their organization and why observances like National Senior Citizens Day are important to celebrate
September is Prostate Health Awareness Month and Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, observances to raise awareness and save lives nationwide. Given that early detection is critical to successful treatment, and there are about 30,000 men who die of prostate cancer in the United States each year — with men age 65 and older among those most commonly diagnosed with this disease: this is a health matter of concern to those you serve.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Discuss the facts associated with prostate cancer: who gets it, early warning signs, ways to prevent it, and what’s involved after a diagnosis.
Take advantage of the free informational materials from experts that are available, such as those listed in the resources section below, or those on the Urology Care Foundation site, for example.
Contact a local urologist or urology clinic — such as the Urology Clinic of SW Washington/The Vancouver Clinic for example — to interview a specialist in your area. To find these experts, go to a search engine and type in “prostate cancer” or “prostate health” or “urology” plus the name of your city or state. That will produce a list to cull for the best options of who to contact for an interview. Since those sites are already ranking well, it could help your blog’s SEO to include them in your content and link to them (see “bow-tie SEO strategy” info). It will also add to the credibility and authority of your content by having another local expert voice to complement the expertise of your senior care organization.
Consider participating in one of the Zero Prostate Cancer Run/Walk events happening around the country. Wear t-shirts or carry a banner to highlight your organization and the work it does.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Some foods and drinks are better than others to support prostate health. Consider highlighting those in your dining menu this month, and/or share a related recipe or two on your community’s blog or social profiles (particularly Facebook and Pinterest that are great for such content). See “Caring Resources” list below for some suggestions, or use the dietary recommendations of a urologist or geriatrician.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Are your caregivers trained to look for the early warning signs of prostate problems? If so, highlight that expertise this month.
For home health agencies: include in your content the ways that your staff aid an individual with prostate problems or while they’re undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Prostate Health Month — from the Prostate Health Guide/Men’s Health Network
Urology Care Foundation — the founder of Prostate Health Awareness Month
Harvard Medical School – Healthbeat: 10 Diet & Exercise Tips for Prostate Health
National Institute on Aging – AgePage: Prostate Problems
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the September 2016 Content Sparks.
In a new report examining a variety of financial, healthcare and quality of life factors, Caring.com has released a ranking of the best states to grow old in — with some results that may surprise you (and those you serve). For instance, states widely recognized as popular retirement destinations — such as Florida and Arizona — didn’t rank in the top 10. Whereas South Dakota did, taking the top spot due to the state’s seniors having access to high-quality healthcare and senior care, along with associated costs hovering around the national average — helping it outrank all of other states for growing old in.
Given the sizeable graying population in the U.S., and the option for folks to choose where in the country they retire, this report was covered by news media outlets across the country, including The Today Show, local newspapers and TV/radio stations, and some trade pubs (like Home Health Care News and McKnights Senior Living). It’s not too late for you to likewise discuss the findings and what they mean for your state specifically — particularly if your state ranked well and the reviews on your Caring.com listing helped contribute to that ranking.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
If your state is in the top 10: Blog about your ranking and the reasons your state is a great place to grow old in. The coverage on Caring.com includes some of the reasons, and our team can provide detailed data for your state if you’re planning to blog about it.
If your state isn’t in the top 10: Contact our team to find out where you landed on the list and what factors led to your ranking. This is still a good starting point for a blog post about growing old in your state — whether to highlight the positives, or to discuss how you’re helping seniors overcome some of the downsides of aging in your state (e.g., helping to overcome isolation in rugged rural areas).
Compile a Q&A article: Interview a representative of your state’s Health and Human Services Department or the Long-Term Care Ombudsman, or a local Area Agencies on Aging representative about why your state is a great place to grow old in (or what it needs to do to be a better place to grow old in).
The cost of care was a contributing factor in which states ranked well in the Caring.com study. And in a separate study by International Data Corporation (IDC) and YellowPages.com about local search in 2016, 76% of consumers reported that they search online for local prices. Take this opportunity to blog about senior care costs and ways to pay in your state — that could be content that senior care searchers value very much and pass along to others.
Consumer reviews on Caring.com were also among the factors considered in the Best States to Grow Old study. What are older adults and family caregivers saying about your services in reviews on Caring.com? Share that feedback — and you may generate more like it (particularly if you include a link to your listing’s review submission form).
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Bring the topic home: How is your senior living community contributing to your state being among the best in the nation for Baby Boomers and older adults to grow old in? Write about that and include compelling photos that illustrate or support your points — real photos done well can drive significantly more engagement with your content than stock photography (particularly if you’re using the same stock images many other senior living communities are using on their websites).
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Go hyper-local: Has your home care agency positively contributed to your state’s ranking in the study? Is there any special significance between your agency and your state — such as the owners being third- or fourth-generation residents of the state? Communicate and celebrate any local connections in a blog post about the state study.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Caring Stars — Senior Living Communities and Home Care Agencies with the Best Consumer Reviews
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
National Association of Area Agencies on Aging
While senior driving content typically focuses on the threat older drivers pose to other drivers on the road, one should also consider the threat to older adults behind the wheel. This is another way to help family caregivers have the important conversation with their elder loved ones about giving up the keys and finding safer ways to get around — and it’s an opportunity for senior care organizations to highlight the ways they can help too.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Provide specific conversation starters or tips to help families have this conversation with relatives still driving past age 65, such as this Safe Driving Planner created by Home Instead Senior Care for their CaregiverStress.com site.
Compile a Q&A article: interview a representative at your state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) agency about older drivers and their safety in your state (and/or what needs to be done to make the state more safe for older drivers)
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
How does your senior living community help take older drivers off the road? This is a great opportunity to remind families you serve about the transportation services you offer for residents.
Do you have a story of any resident whose family was concerned about driving, and for whom that concern was alleviated by their loved one moving into your community? Would they be willing to be quoted or mentioned? If so: real stories of ‘folks like me’ can be very compelling for prospective residents and their family members and you should include such stories in your content as often as you can (with opt-in if you use real names, or anonymously if it’s preferred that real identity not be used).
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Does your home care agency help take older drivers off the road by having your professional caregivers do the driving for them? This is a great opportunity to remind families you serve about the transportation services you offer for clients. Include any real-life stories from existing or former clients, with their permission, or anonymously if they’d prefer to not use their real identity in such articles.
Does your agency talk to older adult clients about driving concerns? If so, what have you found to be most effective for convincing them to reduce driving or give up the keys entirely? Share that expertise in your content this month.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Governors Highway Safety Association — this is the states’ voice on highway safety
AAA’s Senior Driving topic center
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
“The Longest Day” is an all-day event in June organized by the Alzheimer’s Association. It’s held annually on the summer solstice, lasts from sunrise to sunset, and symbolizes the challenging journey of those living with the disease and their caregivers. This year, The Longest Day is held on June 20 to “honor the strength, heart, and endurance of those facing this devastating disease.” To raise awareness about Alzheimer’s caregiving, fundraise for research toward a cure, and connect with others doing the same, your organization can participate in offline event(s) and join the conversations online.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Contact the local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and find out what opportunities exist for your senior care organization to participate in The Longest Day. The event website also has ideas for participation. Include your involvement in your content this month, whether in your e-newsletter to residents and families, or on your social media profiles, or via your blog.
Use photos as much as possible to create engaging content — whether photos of your senior care organization participating in the event, or of real families affected by the disease (who are willing to be featured and have opted in to having their photo shared in this way). For inspiration, the campaign website has some great examples of images associated with the event.
Tell stories and/or showcase those individuals who are living examples of the campaign themes. If doing original, new interviews: consider doing the Q&A via email with the family caregiver(s) — making it as convenient as possible for him/her to participate on their own time. Or compile and share anonymous quotes from online caregiver or patient forums to highlight the challenging journey of this disease. Alternatively: Do any of your leaders or staff have personal experience caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease? See if they’re willing to share stories from their personal experiences to help raise awareness and make a connection with those you’re trying to reach.
For those on Twitter: Consider participating in the online conversation via a series of tweets throughout the day to highlight specific facts and resources around Alzheimer’s care. The campaign hashtag is #TheLongestDay.
If creating original content seems too daunting: compile and summarize Alzheimer’s care expertise from any of the resources linked below (see “resources to support this spark” sections), or tap into the Content Made Simple program to reprint from Caring.com’s extensive archives on this subject.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
As applicable: Create content that demonstrates your community’s expertise in memory care. Include specifics of how your community supports those living with the disease (and their family members) and if possible, incorporate specific examples of any positive outcomes for those individuals. For instance, in Caring.com’s online support groups, family caregivers often discuss the initial guilt they felt with moving mom or dad to a memory care community, and how that changed over time when they saw how much better their loved one was doing, and how much relief it brought to the family to have their loved one in safe, engaging, professional care. If you have similar stories with residents in your community and their loved ones, see if they’d be willing to share about that openly, and/or be an anonymous example in your blog post.
Incorporate activities from The Longest Day campaign into your community’s activities programming that day. Then share photos and summaries on your social profiles, in your e-newsletter, and/or on your blog.
You might also participate by incorporating The MIND Diet into your community’s menu that day, or by including foods that promote brain health. Perhaps post a recipe on your blog, or talk about how your community’s meals are keeping residents’ brain health in mind.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
As applicable: Create content that demonstrates your agency’s expertise in care for those with Alzheimer’s or memory loss. Include specifics of how your caregivers support those living with the disease (and their family members) and if possible, incorporate specific examples of any positive outcomes for those individuals. For instance, is your agency providing much-needed respite for a family caregiver whose loved one has Alzheimer’s? Making it possible for the family caregiver to work outside the home while your agency engages their loved one in activities and takes care of their basic needs such as meals, meds, dressing, etc.? See if they’d be willing to share their story or be included as an example in your blog post for The Longest Day.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Online Support Groups for Caregivers in the U.S. — including a group focused on Alzheimer’s Care and one for those Caring for a Spouse with Dementia
The Best Memory Care Communities Nationwide — the Caring Stars of 2016
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
The Alzheimer’s Association information page for The Longest Day
Memory People on Facebook — includes posts and comments by individuals living with this disease, their family members, and experts or professionals in Alzheimer’s care
Second Wind Dreams’ Virtual Memory Tour — an interactive program to improve communication and care by building a greater understanding of dementia through the use of sensory tools
For many Americans, it was a brutal winter this year — with more snow, sleet, and rain than preferred, and more time cooped up inside. With the fresh air and sunshine of spring, it’s a great opportunity to enjoy some “vitamin O” or the benefits of the outdoors.
Even if simply peered at through a window, it can help boost mood, lower stress, and help with immunity.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Promote any activities you have that take your residents outdoors, such as tending a community garden or daytrips to nearby parks, or that bring the outdoors in, such as creating and hanging bird feeders for residents’ apartments.
Discuss the greenery and grounds of your senior living community — what trees, plants, flowers, and birds can be found if a resident and their loved ones venture out. Include anything about the ‘outdoors’ of your community that make is particularly special — and excerpt reviews that praise such features.
Consider including a quote or two from your grounds crew — especially if they’re team members beloved by residents and their families. Even a Q&A with your facilities manager can help put a human face to this story.
Content Tips for Home Care
Talk about how your agency can help your clients to enjoy the outdoors — whether taking them to a local park or botanical gardens, or bringing fresh cut flowers and houseplants inside.
Have a client with a lovely garden each year? Consider an article profiling this senior and his/her ‘green thumb,’ as a way to put a human face to nature’s benefits for older adults.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Consider creating a list of simple activities that involve nature and the ‘great outdoors’ — such as making bird feeders or going bird watching, or creating floral centerpieces, or taking guided nature walks.
Include facts about the health and well being benefits of getting outside or connecting with nature.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Contact your local Area Agency on Aging to see if they have any special programs and resources focused on getting older adults outdoors.
Contact your city’s Parks and Recreation department to learn about their nature-oriented programs for seniors, such as this one in Portland, Oregon.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to your senior living community’s marketing department, you’ve probably heard about “content marketing.” This ‘new way of doing things’ is getting attention as the latest and greatest way to reach and convert target audiences — in some cases replacing traditional advertising and as a complement to social media marketing.
Content marketing is particularly important when you consider that 60% of the sales decision is now done before a buyer ever contacts a vendor. Today’s savvy consumers are increasingly blind to ads, and the senior living decision cycle can take months.
“Content is necessary to educate, build trust and credibility, and answer questions consumers have,” said Brandi Towns, director of content strategy at GlynnDevins, in Caring.com’s recent content marketing webinar attended by over a hundred senior care professionals. Her tip:
“Today’s consumers have access to much more information online, and marketers must determine the best way to create and distribute relevant content that attracts, acquires, and engages our target audience.”
Have you tried content marketing yet? Here are some best practices to help you get started or to refine the results you’re already seeing from this new marketing focus.
Understand your audience — to identify the best opportunities for content and to add real value for those you’re trying to reach. Holiday Retirement, for example, understood that when an elder needs senior living, it’s very common for their family members to help in the search, often doing the research on the Internet. So Holiday conducted an online survey of family caregivers to identify any senior living misconceptions or concerns. Holiday then turned the survey results into a helpful e-book to quell anxieties about senior living, offer actionable tips, demonstrate topic authority, and ultimately engage families in considering Holiday’s communities for their elder loved ones.This was an excellent example of content marketing in senior living. First, they identified an important target audience and where they search for senior living communities. Then they gathered information to better understand the prospects’ needs, and lastly used that information to deliver relevant, useful content matched to those needs.
Not every senior living community, though, has the budget or resources to do extensive research. The good news is there is already a lot of data readily available about who family caregivers are and what informational needs they have. Organizations like Pew Research Center, National Alliance for Caregiving, Administration on Aging, and others regularly release research reports about older Americans and Baby Boomers — such as this one about family support in graying societies — that offer insights about your target audience(s) and can help guide you to the right ways for reaching them.
You can also peruse online discussion forums or conversations on Facebook pages to get a sense of the top-of-mind questions and concerns that family caregivers and older adults are having — whether it’s not knowing the right time to consider assisted living or trying to understand the difference between the senior living options. Caring.com’s monthly “content sparks” for the senior care industry also offer ideas for what to write about to reach family caregivers and older adults.
Craft quality content that’s optimized for search engines and social sharing. Once you’ve figured out the right messages at the right time in the right places, you’re ready to create some quality content that gets found via search engines, can be read and enjoyed on smartphones, and is spread to as many people as possible in the target audience(s).
Hopefully you have staff who can write compelling articles for your blog or website, or a content budget to work with an agency. Take a look at other senior living blogs to see what’s working: for instance, Atria Senior Living’s blog is one such example of stellar senior care content that’s presented well. Google also offers your team content creation tips, and some sites like Caring.com have reprint and original content programs you can take advantage of as well.
Remember though:
“Content alone isn’t going to work. If you publish content, they will not come to it magically,” says search engine optimization (SEO) expert, AJ Kohn of Blind Five Year Old.
To help your articles rank on search engines: don’t forget page titles, keyword-rich meta-descriptions, and other SEO basics. You’ll also need to make sure your content pages are easily accessible and load fast on smartphones.
Reader comments is another way to get the attention of search engines for pages on your site. Rather than try to build and manage a commenting platform yourself, though, consider using a third-party service. Or include excerpts of consumer reviews you get on Caring.com or SeniorHomes, as another form of user-generated content that’s attractive to search engines.
Also, make it easy for readers to pass the content to friends and family via email and social networks, by using social sharing plugins (see “for developers” sections of the major social networks) or via a third-party service like ShareThis or AddThis.
And make sure you have great photos on the page — that can make a significant difference with social sharing and engagement. The inbound marketers at HubSpot report that “content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.”
Collaborate with other authoritative experts. Ever heard of the “barnacle” strategy in SEO?
Like a barnacle attaching itself to a ship, you can hitch onto sites that have invested significant time and money into successfully ranking on search engines.
One way you can do this is by guest blogging on their site, and including at least one link to your website. Not only does this help get your brand and senior care content in front of that website’s audience, it was also recommended by AJ Kohn in an SEO best practices webcast because it connects your website to other authoritative sites matched with your senior living expertise. Conversely, you can achieve this by having senior living experts from other organizations, such as local social workers or geriatric care managers, guest blog on your site.
Content marketing is an exciting opportunity to connect and convert prospective residents (and their families) to your community, and I hope these best practices and tips will help you get started or ramp up your efforts.
As part of Caring.com’s free content marketing services through the Content Made Simple program, we offer fresh ideas for original articles on your senior care blog, website, or social media profiles called “content sparks”.
Each idea or “content spark” comes with a theme, tips for quality storytelling and writing, and authoritative resource links. We just ask that you give us some credit when you use any of the information we suggest.
Editor’s Note: These monthly ideas were originally published in 2016, but still relevant today.
Content Sparks for January
Content Sparks for February
Content Sparks for March
Seniors More Social Than Public Thinks — How Senior Care Organizations Help
A Breath of Fresh Air – Welcoming Spring with “Vitamin O”
Content Sparks for April
Parkinson’s Awareness Month – Local Information & Support
Paying for Senior Care — Financial Planning Tips at Tax Time
Healthcare Directives – Advance Care Planning
Content Sparks for May
Trailblazing Seniors — Honoring Them During Older Americans Month
Life with a Mental Illness – Support for Older Adults and Family Caregivers
Content Sparks for June
Content Sparks for July
Content Sparks for August
Content Sparks for September
Content Sparks for October
The Caregiver Journey — New Data Reveals Greatest Senior Care Challenges
The “Employee Caregiver” — How Professional Senior Care Providers Ease The Burden
Content Sparks for November
The Best Senior Care Providers Stand Out Through Online Reviews
Alzheimer’s Awareness — What to Do First After Dementia Discovered or Diagnosed
Content Sparks for December
Home for the Holidays — January Spike for Senior Care Search
Helping Seniors Avoid Scams, Identity Theft & Other Financial Elder Abuse
The lonely widow. The tech neophyte. The TV-addicted bore. These are common stereotypes about older adults in America that don’t necessarily hold true for the majority of seniors nowadays.
Whether having a grand time in senior living communities, staying connecting with family through social media, or volunteering with local non-profits, today’s seniors are aging actively and less lonely than people think.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Include stories and photos of social activities in your senior living community — how they bring residents together for companionship, fun, and quality of life.
Include quotes from residents about how meaningful your community’s activities are to them. You can also include excerpts of reviews you’ve received that reference your social activities among reasons your community is great.
Consider having your activities director write this particular blog post — this can add elements of passion and expertise to the tone of the post, making it even more compelling to your blog or newsletter readers.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Profile stories of clients who volunteer in their community, and include quotes from those non-profits or organizations about how wonderful it is to have the older adult’s help.
Include stories about how your agency staff help clients stay connected to their families and communities, such as helping them learn social media platforms like Facebook or driving them to social functions they wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Include recent statistics about the high quantity of seniors now online and using social media.
Include true stories about active older adults who defy the stereotypes of loneliness and boredom in the final years of life.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
That famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow this year — an early spring is in the forecast. And with cleanliness next to Godliness, it’s time to for some spring-cleaning!
Whip out those dust and dander busters, obliterate the stuffiness of winter and “old person smell,” disinfect your way to germ-free environments, cast away the clutter, and help older adults begin spring fresh and anew.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Talk about your cleaning/maintenance programs for residents and any that are specific to spring time.
Include tips for downsizing when moving to assisted living — or for those who overestimated how much space they had in their apartment within your community (or somehow accumulated too much stuff post move-in).
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Talk about how your agency helps with ongoing/weekly cleaning of your clients’ homes, and about any special programs you have for helping with spring-cleaning.
Includes tips for downsizing — whether in preparation for a move or just to de-clutter the living space.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Consider including cleaning tips or shortcuts — to help make cleaning easier on older adults and/or their family caregivers.
Consider including cleaning tips relevant to pets — ways to clean up after pets that isn’t too onerous to do.
Consider mention of eco-friendly cleaning options — for those who are sensitive to chemicals or environmentally concerned.
Interview or include quotes about downsizing tips from a senior move manager.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Stuffology 101 — a resource from Brenda Avadian of the Caregivers Voice
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Tips for a More Eco-Friendly Spring Cleaning
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
In our Digital Marketing Academy each month since its launch in 2014, we have focused on providing the latest data, best practices, and expert guidance to help senior living communities, home care agencies and other senior care providers reach today’s online consumer. Now we’re excited to add another feature to the mix: Digital Marketing Kudos, a blog post series recognizing those in our industry who are doing digital marketing in ways worth noticing and emulating. This isn’t a formal award program like Caring Stars or The Webby Awards, and the praise isn’t limited to big budget campaigns or comprehensive programs. Instead it’s just one simple way to showcase great examples of digital marketing to inspire more great examples of digital marketing in senior care — and good digital deeds of all sizes can be recognized.
The collection of Digital Marketing Kudos will be included on this page (with links added below as new posts launch). Have one to suggest we cover? Submit a Digital Marketing Kudos story now.
***
Digital Marketing Kudos:
The Northbridge Companies Reaping Rewards from Social Marketing
Atria Senior Living Blogs to Engage Residents & Their Families
Aegis Senior Living’s Online Reviews Attract Residents and Top Talent
Holiday Retirement Helps Families Overcome Misconceptions
Nowadays, individuals searching for senior living are online. According to Pew Research Center data about older adults Internet usage: among Americans age 65+ with an annual income greater than $75K — the folks who are more likely to be able to afford in-home care and/or senior living — 87% are online, with the majority using the Internet daily. Additionally: 81% of them own smartphones, 65% use tablets, and more than half are on social networks. Senior care businesses not paying attention to digital marketing are missing a significant and growing sales opportunity.
Within digital marketing: Online reviews are playing a big role in product/service research and purchase selections in numerous industries — senior care is no exception. On Caring.com, senior care searchers click to the listings with reviews and skip those without them. Our Family Advisors are also reading online reviews to get a general sense of how well the community is serving its customers, bolstering confidence in referring prospective residents and their family members.
We also measure how much influence online reviews are having in senior care, and in multiple studies found that reviews significantly increased leads, tours, and move-ins for our senior living partners. We hear from senior care providers too, that consumers given a senior care business’ name from a doctor or hospital discharge planner are still going online to find information, reading the reviews, and using those insights to follow up on the professional recommendation (or not).
So a senior living operator or community’s online presence and online reputation is now very important to their overall sales and marketing success — and Pacifica Senior Living is demonstrating excellence through their online reputation management and partnership with Caring.com.
Creating and optimizing listings for its communities on the leading senior care referral and review sites, such as ensuring a high volume of resident and resident family member reviews (with business responses); having quality photos on their business listings; showcasing information that is helpful to prospective residents and their family members, such as
rates and answers to commonly-asked questions
Asking their residents and residents’ family members to share service feedback through online reviews programs, using submission means matched to the individual reviewer’s needs (such as online forms for those who are tech savvy, and phone or postcard reviews for those who aren’t as comfortable online); and taking advantage of review generation support services offered by Caring.com and others
Proactively monitoring for all new reviews, using New Review Alerts from Caring.com, among other tools
Carefully crafting thoughtful and meaningful responses to nearly all new reviews within 2 days of being alerted, and also responding to older reviews that were missed before they incorporated online reputation management into their marketing mix; creating public-facing responses from their digital marketing leadership that are conversational, empathetic, caring, and truly demonstrate customer service excellence
Actively seeking reviews-related awards for service excellence (to use the recognition in their sales and marketing) — including reaching out to the award program managers months in advance of deadlines to learn detailed info about qualification and taking steps to help ensure their communities qualify ahead of time if possible
Promoting reviews and reviews awards on their websites and social profiles, as well as using that praise in their offline PR and marketing — including using award promotional kits from Caring.com
Caring.com processes thousands of senior care reviews every month, and has thousands of senior living partners nationwide. We have extensive insights about senior care reviews online and how senior living operators are receiving and responding to reviews. Looking at how various senior living organizations are utilizing reviews as a key sales and marketing strategy: Pacifica Senior Living stands out for excellence.
Their digital marketing leadership Lucie Barry-Punches, director of social media marketing & digital communications) uses the latest best practices and technology to skillfully monitor and respond to the reviews their communities receive. Their executive leadership has encouraged their entire organization to proactively and regularly seek out new reviews from their residents and residents’ family members, and they even host an incentive program among their employees (community vs. community) to engage them in this initiative (such as ‘community with most customer reviews by X date wins a pizza or ice cream party’ or other similar friendly competitions). They also do companywide (positive reinforcement) “shout-outs” or kudos to encourage their staff to seek authentic reviews from residents and residents’ family members.
Additionally, Pacifica Senior Living was among the first senior living operators to seize the opportunity of answering prospects’ common questions on community listings when this new feature became available in Caring.com’s Partner Portal — answering an impressive volume of questions within the first two weeks of the feature’s launch, more than any other operator nationwide.
Pacifica Senior Living is far ahead of any senior living operators who are still trying to figure out their digital marketing strategies, ignoring online reviews, not actively asking for reviews, and/or under the mistaken belief that “online reputation” isn’t necessary or relevant to their communities’ sales and marketing. Some other less savvy senior living organizations might even think they can effectively respond to a negative consumer review by taking the whole listing/page down — with so many review sites on the web today, that’s an ill-advised approach for responding to critical feedback online and a tactic that Pacifica Senior Living would not take. A leader in our industry, like Pacifica Senior Living, would instead take (has consistently taken) the opportunity to contest the review if it has fact-based errors, or publishes a response encouraging the reviewer to dialogue with them directly about the concerns raised. Pacifica Senior Living’s ultimate goal is to have satisfied families and residents, and that’s reflected in their approach to digital marketing as well.
“I don’t wait for reviews to come in. I make an effort to solicit them and share the positive and negative ones, so we are continually becoming a better solution for our families and residents,” says Barry-Punches. “Reviews provide insight into what motivates, impresses or disappoints our families and/or residents. This feeddback allows us to fine-tune their experience for the better.”
Pacifica Senior Living is tracking and measuring the impact of its reputation management program on:
The volume of inquiries, tours, and move-ins for its senior living communities, as well as the influence that consumer reviews are having on attracting and converting those prospects for its communities — Word of mouth and pride of doing one’s job well are paramount to Pacifica Senior Living, and they are extremely proud of their teams and communities, while consistently trying to find new innovative ways to improve
Visits to its online profiles and/or website(s), as well as the influence that consumer reviews are having on attracting visitors to their online profiles and/or websites
“Organic traffic can always be improved, and this is an extremely effective way,” says Barry-Punches
Quantity and quality of feedback it receives from its customers
How often and how many of its communities achieve service excellence awards based on reviews
How the program helps Pacifica Senior Living be a high quality senior living service provider, by listening well to its customers and their family members via insights they share in online reviews
Through its reputation management program and listings on Caring.com, Pacifica Senior Living has achieved an increase in the volume of page visits, prospective resident inquiries, community tours, and new resident move-ins:
They have 1200+ customer reviews on Caring.com, as well as review postings on SeniorHomes.com, Pacifica Senior Living’s own website(s), and other reviews sites.
100% review response rate for published reviews within the last two years
“If the review is negative, I do something to alleviate the issue — thus demonstrating our commitment to customer service and hopefully preventing dissatisfied individuals from seeking alternative avenues to be heard,” says Barry-Punches.
In 2017, Pacifica Senior Living listings in Caring.com’s network with 15+ reviews averaged 33.75% more leads, more than twice as many tours, and 15x more move-ins than their listings with less than 3 reviews.
Pacifica Senior Living listings on Caring.com with 6+ reviews average about 3x more visits annually than their listings with less than 6 reviews — further demonstrating how effective those reviews are in driving greater brand visibility and prospective resident interest in their communities.
22 Pacifica Senior Living community listings have earned the Caring Stars service excellence award (based on reviews) since the program’s launch in 2012
Among all Caring Stars of 2018 in senior living: Pacifica Senior Living was among the top 5 operators for “most winning listings” (with 9 listings in this year’s recognition — and 4 of those 9 having earned the award in multiple years)
In a weekly call for its sales and marketing staff, Pacifica Senior Living’s Caring Stars communities are rarely if ever on the list of communities in their portfolio that need increased focus on occupancy — instead, these award-winning communities are consistently meeting or exceeding the organization’s occupancy goals
From November 2017-January 2018, Pacifica Senior Living’s digital marketing leadership published more than 350 answers to prospects’ Frequently-Asked Questions (across 31 of its Caring.com listings), to help senior care searchers narrow their options by better understanding the Pacific Senior Living community or communities they’re considering for themselves or an elder loved one; 100 of those answers were published within the first two weeks of the two being available — an example of how fast they recognize and seize the latest digital marketing opportunities to support their sales team
“My goal is to help make the public aware that Pacifica Senior Living is best in digital marketing class, and I use every tool possible,” says Barry-Punches.
Well done Pacifica Senior Living! You’re a true leader in digital marketing and online reputation management — and reaping the rewards you’ve earned by seizing this opportunity!
Older adults and their family members struggle with senior care conversations — whether talking about driving, senior living, medical matters, or end-of-life concerns. There can be a gap between what the adult daughter thinks Mom needs and what Mom thinks Mom needs, and these are emotionally charged, highly personal topics as well.
Recognizing this challenge for families and their elder loved ones, Home Instead Senior Care offers a free resource on CaregiverStress.com that helps get these important senior care conversations started. It’s a great example of digital marketing that uses content for generating leads and developing client relationships.
Here’s how: The medication management conversation starter is published in their Let’s Talk about Rx content, and includes script samples for common medication concerns and facts about why the discussion is necessary. To get this free Conversation Starters one-pager, you enter your email address via a simple, straightforward landing page — no clicking through multiple screens, no long form to fill out, and there’s an image of the resource provided as well. Home Instead also wisely offers two versions of the Conversation Starter — for the caregiver or for the senior, and asks if you’re in the U.S. or Canada.
This digital marketing campaign helps Home Instead get connected via email to new prospective clients and see which of their existing clients may be struggling with medication management and need added support. Home Instead’s landing page for the Starter Kit also helps it ‘stay connected’ to its prospects and clients via opt in to free e-newsletters — extending the content marketing from a one-off conversation starter handout, to ongoing lead nurturing via e-newsletter content.
After a family caregiver or senior requests the Conversation Starter resource, Home Instead sends an email that is brief, friendly, and follows email best practices. The email includes a PDF link of the Conversation Starter one-pager and a quick link to more online content about medication management that may be helpful to the family caregiver or older adult — driving visits back to the CaregiverStress.com site.
Well done, Home Instead Senior Care! Your free Conversation Starters resource is excellently demonstrating how digital content marketing can effectively fulfill the needs of family caregivers and older adults, and build business revenue and relationships.
Among the fundamentals of good sales and marketing is to get to know your audience well and then use that information to overcome their most common objections. This month we give Digital Marketing Kudos to Holiday Retirement for exemplifying both of these principles.
Recognizing the role of “Baby Boomers” in researching senior living communities for their aging parents, and understanding that they’re doing a lot of the information gathering online, Holiday Retirement commissioned an online survey (results announced in January 2016) to better understand Baby Boomers concerns about senior living and uncover related misconceptions. Holiday Retirement then turned the survey findings into a helpful e-book for families, “Overcoming Misconceptions: 7 Concerns about Senior Living to Erase from Your Mind.”
The e-book weaves the data from the online survey into a practical guide that’s visually easy to scan (not too text-heavy or overwhelming) and has very actionable tips. It can also be printed as a handout in tours of their communities, or shared among prospective residents’ family members via email. Reaching beyond their own communities’ walls, Holiday Retirement also shared what they learned with others in the industry via some great coverage on Senior Housing News. And they’re in process of getting the e-book and key findings out to as many Baby Boomers as possible, including those who read the Huff/Post 50 blog. It’s also worthy to note that they released the market data and e-book during the busiest month of the senior living search season — great timing for this excellent information.
Well done, Holiday Retirement!
Having a blog for your senior living community can be a great way to develop deeper relationships with your residents and their family members, while also attracting new prospective residents and families. But if the blog isn’t well organized and visually appealing, and doesn’t have relevant, helpful content, it won’t be as successful in reaching and engaging the target audience(s).
In this latest installment of our Digital Marketing Kudos series, we congratulate Atria Senior Living on a blog well done!
Great Content: Atria’s blog has 11 categories of content — linked right from the top of the blog homepage — that are easy to understand, interesting in what they cover, and not too self-promotional or sales-y in nature. From residents’ personal stories in the “Wit and Wisdom” section (dubbed “a new view on growing older”), to tax tips and driving warning signs in the “Caregiver Support” section, Atria Senior Living’s blog is rich with valuable information and heartwarming stories. They also cover popular topics like food and pets (
“854 Adorable Dogs Call Atria Home!”), and include the occasional aging news items and company announcements as well.
Simple Yet Beautiful Design: Atria has done an excellent job using a clean visual format with many lovely good-sized photos to attract readers. Similar to the style of Pinterest (one of the more popular social networking platforms for Boomer women), the blog’s design enables the visitor/reader to scan story images and brief teasers for the published articles, then click to read the ones that most interest her/him.
Social Connections: Each post on the Atria blog offers the reader the ability to share the content to the top social networks, add a comment to join the conversation, or connect with Atria Senior Living’s social profiles. Many readers have taken the opportunity to comment on Atria’s blog, particularly to share encouragement and support for the featured residents.
Mobile Friendly: Smartphone usage is on the rise (including among older adults and their adult children), and Google’s search results now preference sites that are mobile friendly, so senior care blogs must be viewable and enjoyable on a mobile phone. Atria’s blog is just as easy to use on an iPhone as it is a desktop or laptop computer.
Well done, Atria Senior Living! Your blog is a stellar example of how to use this type of social media to build offline relationships via the online world. For those inspired by Atria’s blog and want to try blogging on your own site, our Content Made Simple program can help you get started.
Many senior living communities (and home care agencies) already know how valuable online reviews can be to the senior care searcher, and are leveraging them to successfully attract prospective residents and their family members. Some, though, are also now realizing the power of online reviews for recruiting the best senior care employees to care for those residents.
Aegis Senior Living is one such senior care company manifesting a great online reputation through customer reviews on sites like Caring.com, as well as through employee reviews on Glassdoor, a fast-growing recruiting site.
Aegis — headquartered in Washington State with 30 communities in California, Nevada, and Washington — has 111 customer reviews across assisted living listings on Caring.com. The majority of those reviews have 4- or 5-star positive ratings, and many include compliments from residents’ family members about the staff…
At Aegis of Corte Madera: “The staff is over the top helpful and the environment is absolutely beautiful for an assisted living facility. They were always conducting different activities so my grandfather was kept busy and it was always very fun visiting…”
At Aegis of Dana Point: “The staff are very caring and I always appreciate that they always had everyone out of their rooms. They are just wonderful.”
Such praise in consumer reviews has earned some of their communities the prestigious Caring Stars award of assisted living excellence (such as Aegis of Shadowridge), with others on their way to earning the award as well.
On Glassdoor, the employees themselves rave about Aegis:
In my 13 years with Aegis, I feel valued and love to come to work every day!”
“CEO has developed a culture over 18 years that is the envy of senior housing executives and the actual families of the community residents they serve. Where can you love the work you do and be loved for the work you do. Respect, validation, and even hugs from superiors is the norm not the exception.”
“Thank you, Aegis, for allowing me the opportunity to grow in my career with you, to feel valued each day, and in turn, to celebrate each resident, their families, and my coworkers.”
These are but a few of the positive employee reviews of Aegis Senior Living on Glassdoor. In total to date, they’ve received close to 300 employee reviews with an overall average rating of 4.5 stars and 92% of reviewers saying they’d recommend the company to others. The company’s founder and CEO, Dwayne Clark, has an approval rating of 98%, and correlates the company culture to the high ratings they’re getting from customers as well.
“The staff are the ones that drive the customer experience,” he says in their company overview. “Unless they are absolutely happy, motivated and have a genuinely good feeling about working for the company, you’re never going to get to the customer experience you need to be a success.”
As Steve Moran of Senior Living Foresight noted, Aegis is “a better employer than Google, Facebook, and Apple” and should be on Glassdoor’s list of the 50 greatest companies to work for. In fact, Steve challenges the whole industry to dominate this list.
“When the culture is healthy, people loving to come to work each day, there is less turnover and better interactions between residents and team members. As a result, costs are lower and occupancies are higher,” Steve wrote.
Well done, Aegis Senior Living! You’ve established a stellar online reputation that sends a clear message about the quality of your services to potential customers, and helps you attract the top talent to maintain excellence in senior living.
Residents and their families expect senior living providers to deliver high-quality services at communities that provide excellent care for individuals going through some of the most difficult transitions life has to offer. Even if you do everything right, the families you serve aren’t always happy, and they’re increasingly sharing their viewpoints on social networks and online review sites.
Whether positive, negative, or in between, this online word-of-mouth is changing the way families search for senior living communities. Savvy senior living providers are taking an active role in monitoring and managing their online reputations. Why? Providers with reviews are getting more leads than those without reviews, as consumers actively seek out the firsthand opinions of other families before making a decision about moving their own loved one into the community.
With this in mind, last month Caring.com presented an exclusive Online Reputation Management webcast for senior living providers in collaboration with Reputation.com. Thanks to everyone who attended!
Because this topic is so important to the success of your business, we worked with Reputation.com to create a special kit you can distribute to your executive leadership and marketing teams. It includes best practices that were shared in the webcast, including a one-pager focused entirely on reviews:
Kit Item #1: Tour Path to Online Reputation Success
Kit Item #2: The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Conversations
Kit Item #3: Important Facts about Senior Living Reviews on Caring.com
We’d love to hear your feedback about the Online Reputation Management webcast and/or the kit. Please add a comment or contact Caring.com’s team.
More than 400 assisted living and memory care communities in 38 states — the top 1% nationwide — have been honored for service excellence in the annual Caring Stars award program. This special distinction was the first of its kind in the senior living industry, using ratings and reviews from residents, families, and senior care experts on Caring.com to identify the best communities. The program is now in its third year and was recently recognized in the 2013 National Mature Media Awards for serving the informational needs of older adults.
More than four years ago, Caring.com was among the first websites to offer senior care reviews. We saw the opportunity to use real reviews from real people to help families find the best senior living communities for their loved ones. We now know that assisted living and memory care listings with reviews get more leads: 14 TIMES more leads than listings without reviews. We also know that listings with the Caring Stars badge get more move-ins: 13.7% more move-ins than listings without the award!
See who won this year: Caring Stars of 2014
To qualify, communities had to have met the following criteria:
Three or more reviews from December 1, 2012 – December 1, 2013; at least one of those reviews having with the highest rating of five stars
An average overall rating (across all reviews on their listing) equaling greater than 4 stars
No unresolved negative reviews
Caring.com reread and reexamined the validity of every review on each finalist’s listing, reconfirmed other data on each listing, and did our best to determine that the communities truly deserved this prestigious and rewarding distinction.
Some of the Ways Caring Stars Are Celebrated Each year, Caring Stars communities are:
Profiled in local and business press
Promoted on the Caring.com website and social media
Discussed in senior housing referral calls with our Family Advisors
Given certificates for their lobbies and award badges for their websites and marketing materials
And more!
Among the winners featured in their local newspapers so far this year:
Atria Willow Glen: San Jose Mercury News’ San Jose Neighborhoods
Sun Towers Retirement Community: Tampa Tribune’s The Sun
Shadowmoss Plantation Memory Care Community: Savannah Morning News
Fox Hollow Senior Living: The Pilot
Spring Hills Middletown Assisted Living and Memory Care: Journal-News
Blue Bell Place: Ambler Gazette
Crimson Pointe Senior Living: The Rock River Times
Dodge Park Rest Home: Worcester Telegram
Some trade press also highlighted winners, including Senior Housing News and the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA).
Winners have been showcasing the Caring Stars honor on their social media profiles and websites, too:
Golden Orchard badge on website with link to Caring Stars reviews
Mustang Creek Estates badge on website with link to Caring Stars reviews
The Fountains at Rivervue badge on website with link to Caring Stars reviews
Blue Bell Place badge on website with link to Caring Stars reviews
Warren Care Services website with link to Caring Stars reviews
The Willows at Meadow Branch badge on website with link to Caring Stars reviews
Broadmore Senior Living at York badge on website linked to Caring Stars reviews
The Birches at Arbour Square website article and Facebook page share
And others too!
With so many listings and so many reviews on Caring.com, we launched the Caring Stars program as a great way to help families narrow their choices to the best of the best and quickly find the right assisted living or memory care community for their senior loved ones. Each year since we started, the winner list has organically grown, and the excitement and positive outcomes from the award have grown as well.
Why Online Reviews Are So Valuable
Over the last few years, there have been many studies across different industries that have highlighted the importance of online reviews and the impact they’re having on consumers’ search and purchase process. Online reviews are considered “earned media” or organic publicity, and for 92% of consumers globally, this word-of-mouth information is significantly more valuable and more trusted than the marketing and advertising information presented about products and services. Online reviews are also directly impacting purchases: 80% of consumers report that they’re more likely to buy a product when they can find and read reviews about it.
In recent research Caring.com conducted, 60% of family caregivers indicated that they used the Internet in researching senior care service providers, and two-thirds took to the Web after noticing signs of memory loss in a loved one. A combined 94% of family caregivers reported that they found online reviews to be trustworthy and helpful to their search for senior care providers, and only a small minority of 6% tended not to believe this online word-of-mouth.
Online reviews provide firsthand experiential insights that are not only helpful to the family caregivers and seniors visiting Caring.com but are also being used by Caring’s family advisors during calls with adult children and seniors seeking assisted living. Family advisors read reviews from Senior Care Directory listings during calls and also mention the Caring Stars award and what it means about the quality of the winning community’s services, when they are making senior living referrals and scheduling tours matched to the caller’s needs and preferences.
Congratulations to all of the Caring Stars winners for earning high praise in reviews on Caring.com!
More information about the program, and winners from years past, can be found in the Caring Stars info center on Caring.com.
Winners: If you have questions about the marketing materials and special promotions for your award, please do get in touch with the Caring.com team. We also invite you and your staff to take a photo with your framed lobby certificate and send it to us for sharing on our social profiles.
November is National Family Caregivers Month. This is an excellent opportunity to highlight the challenges that family caregivers face and share how you help them get respite and reassurance that their senior loved ones are receiving great care.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Interview, feature or profile some of the family caregivers you support (with their permission and opt-in of course). Include ways your organization has partnered with them in the care of their senior loved ones, and mention ways you’ve been supportive to them as well. Provide a platform for them to share their stories, and include compelling images — photos of real people are so much more appreciated than stock photography models.
Do a blog post with a list of reasons you’re thankful for family caregivers: how they work with your staff in ensuring the well being of their senior loved ones, how they go with their senior loved one to the doctor and help with medication management, how they cared enough to contact your organization for help in the first place, how they keep you informed about concerns or changes regarding their loved one, how often they visit their loved one, as just some possible examples. This is also timely with Thanksgiving this month, and offers a positive, relationship-building content opportunity.
Many family caregivers already know they need respite, and some can get irritated when told to take care of themselves, particularly if they’re struggling financially, emotionally, physically, and/or aren’t juggling well their career, family, and other responsibilities due to the constraints of caregiving. They may realize that they’re exhausted and need a break, but can’t figure out how to actually take one. Consider that perspective in your respite content this month — and give practical, empowering guidance that they can actually use immediately. It could be cost-saving tips that free up funds for in-home care a few hours a week. It could be suggestions for 5-minute mini mental breaks, or ‘staycations’. It could be “ways to ask other family members or friends to help”. Or you could ask the family caregivers you know to give tips for others on how to get the respite they know they need and compile that into a blog post.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Does your community offer temporary, respite or vacation stays? If so, this could be a good month to highlight that option for family caregivers, given the theme of this month’s observance.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Have any of your professional caregivers also been a family caregiver? Perhaps they were inspired to become a professional caregiver after such experience? For instance, Selena Brown at Rest Assured Nursing (the top bonus-earning Caring Champion of 2013) began as a family caregiver to her grandmother, then served in the U.S. military, and then become a professional caregiver. Hers is a wonderful story, and if you have professional caregivers with the family caregiving background as a source of the inspiration for their career path, consider highlighting them this month, while honoring all family caregivers.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Caregiver Identity Series: Which Family Caregiver Are You?
Caregiver Journey 2016 — Data from Family Caregivers on Caring.com
Online Support Groups for Family Caregivers
How to Say Thank You to a Family Caregiver this Thanksgiving
Example of a National Family Caregiver Month profile series on Facebook
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Presidential Proclamation for National Family Caregivers Month 2016
Caregiver Action Network — Theme for National Family Caregivers Month
Summertime is also vacation season in America, and it’s a good time to reach family caregivers who need care for a senior while they’re taking a break from caregiving. It’s also an opportunity to provide information and support to those who need tips for traveling with seniors, or who need ideas for making the most of a “staycation” when they just can’t get out of town for a traditional vacation.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Help family caregivers get through the emotional and practical challenges of taking a vacation. Create content that hones in a related topic — such as the guilt of leaving mom/dad with others while they take a vacation — and offer specific tips, either via your organization’s experts or those you interview from other organizations.
Demonstrate your senior care expertise by sharing tips for family caregivers who are taking an older adult along on the vacation. Traveling can be very stressful — whether taking the journey by car, plane, or boat — and you can help ease that experience by providing expert guidance on how to care for seniors while traveling and how to plan ahead to make the trip that much more successful. Consider interviewing a local travel agent or geriatric care manager if you don’t already have an expert on staff who can help you with this.
Use stories and photos: Interview seniors and/or family caregivers about their best (or worst) vacation and travel experiences. What tips would they offer others considering their vacation (or staycation) options? What did they find was the biggest challenge of ‘traveling while older’ and how did they overcome that to have a fantastic time?
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
Does your community offer respite stays and/or adult day care services, like Five Star Senior Living does? Use summertime as an opportunity to remind families in your area about these services, whether through content on your website and social media profiles, or via a guest post on others’ sites, such as your local newspaper or nonprofits serving families.
Are there places near your community that residents’ family members can take their loved one to enjoy a day out and about, such as museums, botanical gardens or special events? For example, in San Francisco every summer there is the Stern Grove Festival that offers free concerts every Sunday, and that’s wheelchair/walker accessible with seating and a shuttle for seniors as well. How about in your area? Create a blog post with a list of those local opportunities for family fun time, with tips for the resident and family (e.g., admission deals, whether or not the location offers food and drink, bathroom locations, etc.).
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
Can your home care agency play a positive role in either helping a family caregiver get a vacation or supporting the family or older adult in enjoying a staycation? Talk about the ways you do that in your content this summer, and include real stories and photos if you can.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark
Save Money and Strengthen Family Ties with a Multi-Generational Vacation
Do Good Daughters Park Their Parents with Dementia in Respite Care Overnight?
8 Tips for Safe and Comfortable Airplane Travel with Seniors
5 Ways to Make Travel Less Stressful for Someone with Memory Loss
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
Research if your city’s Parks & Recreation department has a senior “trips and excursions” program, such as the City of El Cerrito in California does.
May is Older Americans Month, an observance to acknowledge the perennial contributions of older adults in our nation. This year’s theme is “Blaze a Trail” to highlight those elder Americans advocating for themselves, their peers, and their communities. It’s a great opportunity to shine a spotlight on some of the wonderful seniors you’re serving, and show how active and engaged they remain as valued members of our society paving the way for younger generations.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Interview or profile an older adult who is an awesome example of a good citizen, whether as a volunteer, aging advocate, member of our military, youth mentor, or in another role making a positive contribution to our society.
Showcase older adults who are redefining aging, either by their lifestyle, new careers, hobbies, or other ways they’re inspirational “trailblazers”.
Older Americans Month is an excellent time to highlight how you’re helping older adults overcome ageism and how your organization honors and cherishes them. Talk about the ways that the mission or focus of your senior care business is aligned with the key messages of the campaign: how you’re advocating for older adults, how you’re helping them remain active and engaged in their communities, how your helping them overcome stereotypes about what it means to be old.
Consider involving the seniors you serve in a “Blaze a Trail” story competition. This can generate articles with awe-inspiring personal stories, and you could honor winners with special recognition and prizes (such as gift cards).
This is also an opportunity to raise awareness about government legislation and services supporting seniors’ health and well being, or encouraging their involvement in civic programs, such as Senior Corps or the Older Americans Act.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
Are there trail blazing seniors living in your community? This is great opportunity to showcase their lives and contributions to society. You could even do social shares one a day or once a week that showcase these super seniors.
Do you have unique activities at your senior living community that ‘blaze a trail’ or redefine aging, such as Juniper Communities’ planned trip taking a group of older adults to Burning Man 2016 or senior living communities hosting knitting groups for social good? Place extra emphasis on those programs this month.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Does your home care agency support a trail-blazing senior? Ask if he or she be willing to share about their story for an article on your blog or a photo/text blurb share on your social profiles.
Does your home care agency serve seniors living at a senior living community that helps them redefine aging, or participate in community volunteer opportunities, or otherwise keep them active and engaged? Consider blogging about those programs and how they’re making a difference for the seniors you serve.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Older Americans Act Renewed — this law funds key services for our nation’s seniors
Rosalynn Carter: First Lady of Caregiving – how the Rosalynn Carter Institute is helping caregivers
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
Growing Bolder — profiles of people whose stories rebrand aging
Senior Corps — programs that connect seniors to organizations needing volunteers; volunteers receive guidance and training to make a contribution suited to their talents, interests and availability)
Humans of New York — while not limited to older adults, this blog does often include their stories in its daily glimpse into the lives of strangers in NYC, such as an elder activist still protesting about social concerns
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
Rain, sleet, snow, and brrrr…it’s cold! Welcome to winter. How are you helping older adults not only survive but thrive in this season?
With the winter weather and seasonal conditions come a host of health risks and concerns for seniors: from hypothermia, dehydration, influenza, and frostbite, to falls, vehicle accidents, and storm-related disaster. It’s also a time of year that increases the blues or depression for some folks. Whether you dive deep on one or more of these specific concerns, or do a general overview with tips, there’s plenty of opportunity for content this month related to the topic of winter weather and senior care.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company
Consider contacting your local newspaper and broadcast stations to make sure they’re aware of this story and your expertise on the topic. This can be a great way to get your senior care organization in front of individuals who didn’t yet know about your services — and it helps establish you as an expert in senior care topics with the media outlet (so they continue to outreach to you in future stories they do). Here’s an example from Boston Magazine that includes a local nonprofit, the City of Boston’s geriatric division, the state office of elder affairs, the national Red Cross, and others with senior care expertise.
With increased health and safety risks in winter, this can be a great time of year to discuss personal emergency response systems with older adults — particularly if they are living alone and/or are isolated. In a similar vein, you might cover in your content this month: first aid kits, carbon monoxide poisoning and in-home fire risks from space heaters, and how to prepare for and protect older adults from natural disasters and serious storms.
Senior driving is a concern at any time of year, but particularly during the winter months when the roads are slick and visibility is decreased. The poor weather and increased risks could be a great way for family caregivers and your organization to bring up this difficult conversation with older drivers and help them make adjustments as needed.
Consider making a “winter safety shopping list for seniors” with helpful items to keep them safe and well-cared for this season, such as this one created by the TODAY show.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities
You can demonstrate your senior living community’s knowledge of senior care needs by writing a general or list-type article about winter safety risks for seniors, and/or you can highlight some specific stories of how your community has helped residents this time of year with the challenges of the winter weather and storm conditions. While telling true stories of real events, be sure to keep the seniors anonymous, unless you’ve acquired written permission from them (and/or their POA) to include their real name and photo.
Has your community’s menu changed with the winter season? How so? You could highlight one or two great winter dishes you’re making for residents on your social media profiles (include a quote or two from your top chefs), and/or include a soup or stew recipe in your community’s newsletter. On a related note: Dehydration is a common problem for older adults and a hot cup of tea could both help with that issue and warm them up in the cold months — perhaps have a tea tasting party at the community or share the health benefits of drinking organic teas.
How has your senior living community prepared for the winter weather? How prepared is your senior living community for a weather-related emergency or evacuation? Consider an article or two on this subject to demonstrate how well you’re caring for your residents in their home.
If you’re in a snowy region: Is there a safe way to help the residents of your community to enjoy the snow? For instance, could you collaborate with a local youth organization to build snowmen outside the windows of the community? Is there a large window in your community with a lovely view of the snow where you could host resident meetings and live music, or otherwise encourage residents to visit and enjoy the wintery scene from the warm indoors? Such gatherings could make for great photos for your social media profiles as well.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies
You can demonstrate your agency’s knowledge of senior care needs by writing an overview about winter health risks for seniors, like Comfort Keepers did on their blog in November 2015, or about how to help seniors winterize their home, like Neighborly Home Care did on their site. Or you can highlight some specific stories of how your agency and its caregivers have helped clients this time of year with the challenges of the winter weather and storm conditions. While telling true stories of real events, be sure to keep the seniors anonymous, unless you’ve acquired written permission from them (and/or their POA) to include their real name and photo.
Consider collaborating with a local volunteer organization or youth group to help the seniors in your community clear their driveways of snow, stock up on water and nutritious food, and/or otherwise winterize their homes and be prepared for staying safe and well cared for indoors. This can include free additional support for your existing clients but could also be a great way to meet new seniors in the community who need help and to generate some positive PR while boosting staff morale as well.
Additional Resources to Support this Spark
HealthinAging.org — Winter Safety Tips for Older Adults
National Institute on Aging — Stay Safe in Cold Weather!
Your local area agency on aging could be a great source of tips on this subject — consider reaching out to them and interviewing one of their experts.
Content Sparks are part of Caring.com’s Content Made Simple program. See all of the Content Sparks.
July is Social Wellness Month, a time to consider and discuss one’s social relationships and the impact they’re having on health and wellness. Social wellness involves having and nurturing meaningful relationships, creating and maintaining a social support system, using good communication skills to build positive relationships, and more. In our industry, it’s particularly an opportunity to discuss how the quality of life for older adults and family caregivers can be fostered or improved through social supports and senior care.
Content Tips for Any Senior Care Company:
Talk about the benefits of social engagement to older adults — like this Lourdes-Noreen McKeen retirement community article does. Or conversely, talk about the dangers of loneliness and how your senior care organization helps build social interactions and social well being.
How does your senior care organization help older adults remain socially engaged? Do you have quotes from those who have benefitting from these programs and services and experienced improved social wellness as a result? Include both of these items in your Social Wellness Month content.
For a variety of reasons, maintaining healthy friendships can be very difficult for family caregivers, and they can experience isolation, depression, and feelings of loneliness at increased rates. Talk about these challenges this month, and how getting help from professional senior care can ease their burden.
Content Tips for Senior Living Communities:
By design, senior living brings older adults together in a social environment — but how specifically do your activities programming and other community features enhance their social well-being and quality of life? Include both compelling information and visuals to convey this story this month — and consider two versions of the content: one for your resident newsletter that focuses on enticing their participation, and one for your social media profiles and outreach to families that reinforces their loved ones are in great hands.
Have any special friendships or bonds developed among residents in your community? Try using resident interviews/quotes or photo stories to convey how well senior living supports social wellness of older adults via the friendships and bonds they develop in such communities — and how much more difficult it can be to connect with friends when they don’t live down the hall.
Content Tips for Home Care Agencies:
Discuss the ways that your home care agency is helping older adults stay socially engaged, whether in the home or by taking the senior on social outings.
How does your home care agency support family caregivers’ well being? That’s another angle to consider with your content this month.
Caring Resources to Support this Spark:
Caregiving and Health: How Caring for Others Makes You Stronger, Wiser, Healthier
How to Spare Your Relationships the Risks of Caregiver Stress Syndrome
How to Hang Onto Friends (and Which to Lose) When Caregiving
Additional Resources to Support this Spark:
University of Minnesota – Helpful Social Wellness Resources
University of California – Mind Body Wellness Challenge
Stitch — A Social Network for Those 50+
SeniorCorps — a way for seniors to volunteer and remain socially engaged
Immediately after our family advisors get off the phone with a senior living searcher matched to one or more of our referral partner’s communities, Caring.com sends a lead or tour alert via email to the community’s staff on file to receive those referrals. Speed-to-lead is obviously important for reaching and converting prospects into new residents — but did you know that your speedy response to that lead can also save your community money if that prospect is already in your community’s pipeline from another referral source?
When a family caregiver or older adult needs to find a senior living community, it’s not uncommon for that senior care searcher to research their options through multiple sources, including submitting inquiries for information on more than one website. That’s why it’s an industry-standard practice that communities report duplicates to their referral sources, and why we at Caring make it super easy for our partners to do so.
As part of the referral contract, Caring.com’s senior living referral partners agree to report lead duplicates within five (5) business days of the lead send date,, or within deadline set forth in the partner’s contract with Caring. See the timestamp on the lead or tour alert email, or note the duplicate reporting deadline included in those lead/tour alerts as well.
If our partners don’t report to us before the deadline that the lead is a duplicate, we proceed with our standard billing once that prospect moves in, and our partners are responsible for paying Caring.com the associated referral fee for that move-in. Thus, when a referral that Caring.com has sent you is already a pre-existing lead in your community’s database, it’s very important that you report the lead as a duplicate ASAP (within 5 business days) to avoid a scenario in which your community pays more than one referral source for the move-in.
How to Report Lead Duplicates to Caring.com In every lead or tour alert email, we include a link to “Report Duplicate” by the deadline for that lead. You’ll need to click that link (or button) to report the duplicate — Please do not hit “reply” via text-based email as this will not register the lead as a duplicate in our system. Instead, we need to you to click the link and enter the Partner Portal to report the duplicate lead data we require.
If you’re not already using the Partner Portal, please get in touch with our Partner Success staff for help accessing this valuable tool to track your leads and move-ins, and manage your referral account with us.
After you click the “Report Duplicate” link/button in the lead or tour alert email, you’ll land on a Partner Portal page that asks you to complete three (3) fields:
Your email address
— so we formally document who on your team is reporting the duplicate
Date you received the lead from a different referral source
— using the calendar pop-up in the reporting tool to specify the exact date you originally received that lead from a different source than Caring.com
Original lead source
— selecting from the drop-down menu which source gave you the lead originally (before Caring.com did), or by choosing “Other” if you don’t see the name of the original source in the menu options
Here’s a 5-minute video that takes you step by step through the process of reporting lead duplicates to Caring.com.
Once you’ve filled out the reporting fields completely, you’ll receive a confirmation message via email.
Remember: if you don’t take these steps within 5 days of the lead being sent to you, your community will be responsible for the referral fees to Caring.com if/when that prospect moves in — even if you paid another referral source as well.
Have questions, suggestions or feedback for us? We’d love to hear from you! Contact Partner Success now.
SEO, ROI, SEM, WOM — are you drowning in the sea of digital marketing acronyms? Know the difference between “unscreened leads,” “Internet referrals,” and “screened leads”? How much do you know about the pros and cons of “pay per lead” versus “cost per acquisition”?
Within the rapidly evolving and fast-growing realm of digital marketing and Internet referral, it’s easy for senior care industry professionals to feel confused and overwhelmed, and, as a result, stick with their comfortable status quo, especially if they have 90% occupancy rates and think that’s just fine. Unfortunately, though, that’s not the wisest strategy in meeting the demands of today’s consumers of senior living and eldercare services.
The “new adult daughter” is online in greater numbers than ever before (and so increasingly are her parents). She’s using the Internet to research, select, and stay connected to the senior living communities, in-home care agencies, and other senior care providers assisting in the care of her mom and dad (and, in some cases, her spouse, aunts, uncles, or grandparents). And she’s using social media to spread the word about her own and her loved ones’ experiences with those service providers — feedback or word of mouth that reaches her friends and family members locally and across the country, as well as strangers reading her online review(s) too.
To help our industry’s sales and marketing executives understand these societal shifts and then grasp and harness digital marketing for optimal business results, Caring.com formally launched and expanded our Digital Marketing Academy in 2014. Now a go-to source for valuable information and educational resources, the award-winning Digital Marketing Academy includes:
Public webcasts
covering pressing industry topics and featuring leading experts, compelling data, and actionable takeaways — free of charge.
Sales & Marketing blog
with periodic posts supporting executives at senior living communities and home care agencies listed on and/or partnered with Caring.com
Original research
culling insights from millions of family caregivers and older adults nationwide, whether through Caring.com’s long-standing methodologies or in partnership with other research specialists, like Princeton Survey Research Associates International.
Any professional in the senior living and eldercare industry can access and benefit from the Digital Marketing Academy resources — this learning is not limited to those who partner with us. To get started: sign up for our e-newsletter or register for the latest webcast.
Some of the feedback we’ve received about the Digital Marketing Academy:
“Thank you for the wonderful webinar presentation. I believe that was the best-presented and most informative webinar I have been a part of. It was short, concise, and to the point. Kept my attention and I found the content to be useful!”
“Thank you for your presentation. It was spot-on.”
“This is extremely helpful. Thanks so much!!!”
“The training is very valuable but it also is something that many of us can use toward our training hours. I appreciate it and everything you do.”
“Thanks so much for the great session yesterday — very informative. Nice work.”
“I thought it was great. The fact that you had other providers sharing their insights was productive for me for sure. I’ll attend others as well when you have them.”
It’s not too late for your team to start benefiting from the Digital Marketing Academy as well. Peruse this blog for recaps of past webcasts and featured digital marketing articles. Come to the next event — whether an online webcast or one of our in-person sessions. Or suggest a topic we should cover. Thanks!
James Bender of Vista Montana Senior Living (independent living and assisted living in Hemet, CA) was initially hesitant to partner with Caring.com because he incorrectly thought he’d be paying for duplicate leads.
“I was pretty skeptical, because I assumed Caring.com and its competitor would have the same families looking online, and there would be a lot of duplicate leads,” he said.
Partnered with Caring.com for less than a month, he’d already achieved three move-in deposits with more expected.
“I’ve been blown away with the amount and quality of the leads from Caring.com. I can’t believe I hadn’t signed up sooner.”
As we mentioned in recent Digital Marketing Academy webinars and formally announced today via PR Newswire: We’ve partnered with Home Care Pulse — the leading satisfaction management firm for home care — to help agency partners get more reviews and support senior care searchers online.
Starting in January: agencies can have new reviews posted to their Caring.com listings based on consumers’ answers to the “Would you recommend this agency?” summary questions in their Home Care Pulse satisfaction surveys — without any extra effort on their part. Consumers just agree to have the feedback shared as a review, and then Home Care Pulse and Caring.com take care of the rest.
Also, for those home care agencies who’ve earned one of the prestigious “Best of Home Care” awards from Home Care Pulse, consumers will be able to see that badge on the agency’s Caring.com listing — as well as the Caring Stars service excellence award that Caring.com offers for those agencies who have earned it.
As we’ve shared with you before: Reviews increase the volume of inquiries for home care agencies, help agencies stand out from their competitors, and rank their listings better in our directory. And as Eric Madsen (Chief Operations Officer) of Home Care Pulse has noted: Clients who are happy with their home care agencies stay longer as customers and have a dramatic impact on revenue — highlighting the importance for home care agencies to have a solid grasp of their clients’ needs and satisfaction levels.
“With more consumers conducting online research to know who is the best provider in the area, Home Care Pulse is thrilled to be teaming up with Caring.com to provide our customers with an additional venue to market their award-winning businesses,” Eric said in today’s announcement. “With the ability to automatically push client feedback and ratings to Caring.com, the process of managing your online reviews has become significantly easier.”
If you’re already partnered with Caring.com and Home Care Pulse:
Opt into the program via your Home Care Pulse account manager. Note: This program does not include filtering and selection of which reviews get generated and pushed to Caring.com from your agency’s survey feedback — the opt-in is for participation and acceptance of both positive and negative reviews.
Once you’re opted in: Home Care Pulse will automatically feed the new reviews, ratings and badges to Caring.com seamlessly.
You’ll still have the ability to respond to reviews on Caring.com — you can contest them for factual errors or review guidelines concerns, or can post a professional response to reviews you receive on Caring.com. Note: As a Caring.com client, you should be receiving New Review Alerts the instant new reviews are posted, so if you’re not getting those, please contact clientservices@Caring.com ASAP.
If you’re already getting screened leads from Caring.com and not yet partnered with Home Care Pulse:
Contact Home Care Pulse about signing up for their satisfaction survey services: http://www.homecarepulse.com/free-consultation/ Be sure to tell them that Caring.com sent you and that you’re interested in our partnership with Home Care Pulse to get more reviews on your Caring.com listing.
Once you’ve signed up with Home Care Pulse: See section above for home care agencies already partnered with Home Care Pulse and Caring.com to take the next steps.
We’re really excited about this program and the benefits we know it will bring to both senior care searchers online and our mutual home care agency partners. We also welcome your feedback and questions — you can comment below or contact me via community@caring.com. Thanks!
How much really does a home care agency review influence your prospective clients and impact your agency’s bottom line?
Like we did with our senior living case study measuring reviews influence, in this study for an in-home care company we looked at the reviews and inquiry data for a referral partner who had more than 100 in-home care listings on our site and a mix of both positive and negative ratings. We looked at how many reviews they had per listing and how many inquiries they were getting on those listings on average. What we found was that their listings with 15 or more reviews averaged one and a half times more leads than listings that only had 1 or 2 reviews.
We covered this calculation in our August 2016 webinar about senior care reviews, and here’s the chart to help you further understand the reviews impact:
We then calculated the average lifetime value of a home care client as $11,000. We used a conversion rate (from inquiry to customer) of 10% and with an average of 49 more leads from having 15+ reviews, we assumed they averaged 5 new clients on those listings with more reviews. Multiply those new clients by the average lifetime value and you get $55,000 in incremental revenue. Divide it by the number of reviews it took to achieve that increase, or 13, and then subtract the cost it took the home care agency to generate those reviews. The net value or incremental revenue is $4,231 per home care review. Here’s a visual on that math:
This calculation and its results will obviously vary according to your home care agency’s average lifetime customer value, typical conversion rate, the influence reviews are having for your listing(s), and any costs you’re incurring to generate reviews. However, this equation does give you a framework to use to measure the value reviews are adding for your home care business, and hopefully help you to prioritize your agency’s online reputation — if you’re not already compelled by the fact that our directory is now sorted by home care agency review volume (pushing down listings without reviews given the importance of reviews in a consumer’s search for a home care agency).
Not sure how to get more home care agency reviews? We offer some tips to help you, and starting in 2017, have a new program through Home Care Pulse that will also help agencies get reviews on our site — to help increase inquiries and client sign-ups for participating agencies. We’re also available to answer your questions as well (comment below, or contact community@caring.com).
How much really does a senior living review influence your prospective residents and their family members, and do these reviews have any impact on your company’s bottom line?
To help one of our senior living referral partners get answers to these questions, we did a case study that involved more than 100 senior living community listings on our site, with thousands of reviews (about 80% of which had positive 4- or 5- star ratings and 20% that had a neutral or negative rating). The analysis was done in November 2015, covering all-time data for quantity of reviews, inquiries, tours, and move-ins for this partner’s listings on Caring.com.
We found that (on average) their listings with 15 or more reviews had 5 times as many leads per listing, 7 times more tours, and 8 times more move-ins than listings that had only 1 or 2 reviews. Here’s the influence chart for that study:
We’ve since done this analysis for other partners as well and found similar high-influence results: in each of the case studies we’ve found that listings with reviews get significantly more inquiries, tours, and move-ins than listings without reviews or with very few reviews. So we decided to take the analysis one step further by estimating the potential monetary value of the reviews our partners are getting.
In the case study above: the senior living community listings averaged 6 more move-ins with the addition of 13 more reviews, or put another way: with 1-2 reviews, they got 1 or no move-ins, and with listings that had 15+ reviews, they averaged 7 move-ins. The difference is about 13 reviews and 6 move-ins.
Using length of stay data from the CDC and cost of care data from Genworth, the average lifetime value of a senior living resident in this study was estimated to be $117,550. If you multiple the 6 move-ins by that lifetime value estimate, you get $705,300 in incremental revenue from those additional move-ins influenced by reviews. Divide that revenue among the 13 extra reviews it took to drive those extra move-ins, and then subtract the cost of generating those reviews, and you can estimate that these reviews were worth $54,254 each.
We covered this calculation in our August 2016 webinar about senior care reviews, and here’s the visual to help you further understand how we did the math:
There’s no guarantee that every senior living review is going to drive these kind of results, nor that every senior living community is going to see the same level of impact from having 15+ reviews on their listings. The average lifetime value of a senior living resident will also vary by community as well. However, this equation does give you a framework to measure the value that consumer reviews are adding for your senior living business.
First: measure or document the average lifetime value of one of your community’s residents. Second: Measure the influence that senior living reviews are having in increasing inquiries, tours, and move-ins for your community (either through your own analysis, using your online reputation management software, or via collaboration with your referral partners that host senior care reviews as part of their referral program). If you can’t get that data readily, you can use the case study above as a starting point, as we’ve now seen very similar results for more than 5 different senior living companies. Third, take the influence amounts (e.g., 13 more reviews led to 6 more move-ins), and do the math on how much incremental revenue each of those new reviews led to — subtracting your costs of generating those reviews (which may be zero if those reviews were generated by the review website and didn’t involve your team doing the outreach to consumers to get their feedback posted online).
Even if you achieve only half the monetary return that our referral partner did in the case study above: it’s still worth your time and effort to make sure your senior living community is getting reviews online — and taking the time to respond to consumer feedback as well. We offer tips for getting reviews, and are available to answer your questions as well (comment below, or contact community@caring.com).
Caring Stars is a service excellence award and annual list of the best senior living communities and home care agencies based on consumer reviews on Caring.com. These top-rated senior care providers have a lot of great reviews, top ratings, recent reviews, and responses to all negative reviews too. Each year, Caring.com uses a specific set of reviews-based criteria that the providers must meet in order to qualify — and the bar is purposefully set high to ensure that the program continues to truly represent those providers best meeting the needs of the family caregivers and older adults they serve.
To qualify for the 2018 Caring Stars award, senior living communities and home care agencies had to meet the following criteria:
● Have 10 or more consumer reviews on their Caring.com listing, with an overall average rating of 4.5 stars or higher (on a scale of 1 to 5) by October 15, 2017;
● Have 3 or more reviews on their listing dated between October 1, 2016 – October 15, 2017, including at least one that was posted during 2017 and at least one that had a 5-star rating; and
● Respond to any/all negative (1-star or 2-star) reviews on their listing.
Have questions about the Caring Stars criteria or the program in general? Please contact community@caring.com or (650) 762-8190.
Caring.com has one of the most-visited in-home care directories on the web, helping thousands of family caregivers and older adults every month research home care agencies in cities, states and zip codes across the United States.
To make their search easier and better showcase our home care agency partners, we’ve recently redesigned community listings in our senior care directory — with a more modern design, new features, and more centralized information about each agency.
The biggest improvement was the consolidation of service/care categories into a single listing for each agency office. Previously, a home care agency at one address could have more than one listing on Caring.com: one for each care/service type, such as 1 for non-medical in home care, 1 for home health care, and 1 for hospice, for example. Reviews about their non-medical services would be on the non-medical home care listing, reviews about home health care would be on the home health listing, and so on.
Now, we showcase a home care agency’s services and customer feedback on a single listing — with information and reviews about all of the care types offered at that location. This means that there will be only one listing (‘business page’) for a home care agency to claim and manage — and for prospective customers to visit to read about that agency and their offering.
The home care agency still appears in directory search results for each care type they offer, and the home care agency rankings haven’t changed. Caring’s partners are still listed highest, ranked by volume of reviews.
For instance, when a home care agency offers non-medical in-home care and includes that service on their Caring.com listing: they will still appear in search results when a prospective resident or their family member searches Caring.com for local home care agencies. The home care agency will appear in all relevant search results for all care types/services noted on their account and listing. And those partnered with us are listed first.
A few additional improvements we made to agency listings:
Since each listing now has a lot more information in one place: We’ve added quick links at the top of the agency’s listing to take the senior care searcher to each section of the listing — from photos to reviews to agency description and more.
Each listing’s reviews collection is now organized into sections for each care type. This only applies to agencies offering multiple types of care, and is designed to help the prospective client and their family members go straight to the service feedback that matters most to their immediate need.
We’ve also incorporated visual icons to guide the senior care searcher online to learn about costs, talk to a family advisor, or explore payment options.
Search the directory now to see how your listing looks: https://www.caring.com/senior-care/in-home-care
Have questions about the information on your community’s listing and/or your referral account with Caring.com? Please contact your Caring.com account executive or listing-support@caring.com.
Want to get listed on Caring.com? Visit our Listing Set Up page to get started.
Not yet partnered with us and need new clients? Call our directory account executives for assistance: (833) 415-0214
We also welcome your feedback about the improvements we’ve made, and ideas you have for how we can be an even better partner to senior living communities. Please get in touch with me!
Caring.com has one of the most-visited senior living directories on the web, helping hundreds of thousands of family caregivers and older adults every month research senior living communities in cities, states and zip codes across the United States.
To make their search easier and better showcase our senior living community partners, we’ve recently redesigned community listings in our senior living directory — with a more modern design, new features, and more centralized information about each community.
The biggest improvement was the consolidation of service/care categories into a single listing for each community location. Previously, a senior living community at one address could have more than one listing on Caring.com: one for each care/service type, such as 1 for independent living, 1 for assisted living, 1 for memory care, 1 for skilled nursing, etc. Reviews about their assisted living services would be on the assisted living listing, reviews about independent living would be on the independent living listing, and so on.
Now, we showcase a senior living community’s services and customer feedback on a single listing — with information and reviews about all of the care types offered at that location. This means that there will be only one listing on Caring.com for a senior living community to claim and manage — and for prospective customers to visit to read about that senior living community and their offering.
The senior living community still appears in directory search results for each care type they offer, and the rankings haven’t changed. Caring’s partners are still listed highest, and there are still consumer-driven filters for sorting the results.
For instance, when a senior living community offers assisted living and includes that service on their Caring.com listing: They still appear in search results when a prospective resident or their family member searches Caring.com for local assisted living communities, as well as any other care type categories that apply. The senior living community appears in all relevant search results for all care types/services noted on their account and listing. And those communities partnered with us are listed first.
A few additional improvements we made to community listings:
Since each listing now has a lot more information in one place: We’ve added quick links at the top of the community’s listing to take the senior living searcher to each section of the listing — from photos to reviews to amenities and more.
The move-in “special offer” call-out has been moved to the top of the listing (above the photo, and below the community name) — to better promote those deals and entice families considering that community. If your community currently has a move-in special offer, be sure to add that in Partner Portal to have it appear on your listing.
Each listing’s reviews collection is now organized into sections for each care type. This only applies to communities offering multiple types of care at a single location, and is designed to help the prospective resident and their family members go straight to the service feedback that matters most to their immediate need.
We’ve also incorporated visual icons to guide the senior care searcher online to learn about costs, schedule a tour, or explore payment options.
Search the directory now to see how your listing looks:https://www.caring.com/senior-living
Have questions about the information on your community’s listing and/or your referral account with Caring.com? Please email clientservices@caring.com.
Want to get listed on Caring.com? Visit this Listing Set Up page to get started.
Not yet partnered with us and need referrals of prospective residents? Call our directory account executives for assistance: (833) 415-0214
We also welcome your feedback about the improvements we’ve made, and ideas you have for how we can be an even better partner to senior living communities. Please get in touch with me!
Are you aware of the new legislation in the State of Oregon regarding senior living referrals?
To help Oregon senior living communities in our referral network understand the new regulations, avoid paying duplicate referral fees, and prevent any misunderstandings about consumer protections and/or referral compensation, we’ve put together this primer we hope you find useful.
HB 2661 is effective July 1, 2018, and includes the following provisions:
REGISTRY — Professionals or organizations making senior living referrals to consumers in Oregon must be licensed and register with the State of Oregon as a long-term care referral agent. According to the Oregon Department of Human Services, this is the nation’s first referral agent registry, and Caring.com is among those who will register once the state has established the registration process.
DISCLOSURES — Referral agents must provide an oral and written disclosure statement to seniors and/or their family members (“consumers”) that communicates the agent is paid referral fees by senior living communities, among other required disclosures. Here’s an example referral compensation disclosure that we’ve had on our website for years, and we’ll be using additional disclosures in our phone and email communications with those consumers who seek our assistance.
MANDATED REPORTERS FOR ELDER ABUSE — Referral agents (including Caring.com) are now required by law to report referral client mentions of alleged elder abuse at senior living communities in Oregon to the Department of Human Services.
CHANGE OF REFERRAL REPRESENTATION — Consumers may opt out of additional help from a referral agent (including Caring.com) after a referral. This ‘opt out’ must be provided via written notification by the consumer directly to the referral agent.
REFERRAL COMPENSATION — The new law does not exempt Caring.com’s senior living community partners from paying referral fees on move-ins that result from the referrals we’ve made of a consumer, unless certain rare conditions are met. Specifically, in order for move-in compensation to be voided: The consumer must have previously notified Caring.com in writing directly that they no longer wish to work with us in the future, must have already previously moved in to one of the senior living communities in the Caring referral (with Caring.com having received referral compensation for that move-in), and the consumer must now be involved in a “subsequent” (2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.) move to a senior living community originally provided to the consumer in a Caring referral. If those conditions are met, then the law exempts the senior living community from having to pay the original referral agent their referral fees.
From the bill: “If a client is referred to a facility and the referral agent has received compensation from the facility for the referral, the client may notify the referral agent in writing that the client wishes to use the services of another referral agent in the future for referral to another facility in a subsequent move. After receiving notice under this subsection, the first referral agent may not receive compensation from another facility in a subsequent move for any referral made before receiving the notice.”
Also from the bill: “A facility is a subsequent facility if: (A) The subject of placement enters a facility to which the subject of placement is referred by a first referral agent, but subsequently leaves that facility; and (B) A new referral agent refers the subject of placement to the subsequent facility.”
Referral agents or agencies operating in the State of Oregon were made aware of the provisions of the law, including via a presentation from Mike McCormick, Deputy Director of Aging and People with Disabilities, Department of Human Services at the Oregon Senior Referral Agency Association in May 2018. It’s thus expected that referral agents operating in Oregon and registered with the state will understand and abide the regulation.
Should a senior living community in our referral network receive notice from another referral agent (whether an online referral source or offline/local agent) who states that their (consumer) client no longer wishes to work with Caring.com and has formally notified Caring.com in writing of the retraction of assistance: Please immediately inform us of any instances like this in writing via message to verify@caring.com.
In your message, please include the contact name and organization of the person who notified you, the resident’s name, and the notifier’s contact email and phone. You can do the same if you receive such notification from the consumer. We’ll then verify for you whether or not the conditions have been met to exempt your community from paying Caring any move-in referral fees that may be due on the referral. Failure to do so may result in an obligation to pay multiple referral agencies for the same move-in.
In every state: Caring’s senior living referral partners are encouraged to use Partner Portal every month to report move-ins and avoid duplicate referral fees.
Have questions or need assistance with your referral account? Please contact clientservices@caring.com or (866) 824-9209 ext. 2.
The Carr Fire in the Shasta and Trinity counties of Northern California has burned about 230,000 acres, destroyed over 1000 homes, and led to 3 firefighter fatalities. It’s a disaster that started nearly a month ago, and is now 88% contained.
Mary is a 90-year-old woman whose entire mobile home park in Redding was burned to the ground by this fire. Her friend Jim temporarily took her into his home 250 miles away, and reached out to Caring.com for help finding her a new home back in Redding.
“It was a small mobile home park and she was pretty active with all the neighbors. She’s a lifetime family friend, and the best 90-year-old I’ve ever seen,” Jim said. “Once she gets into a place, and gets acclimated, it’ll be smooth sailing again.”
Eileen, Caring Family AdvisorEileen, one of Caring’s Family Advisors, sprang into action immediately to help Jim and Mary.
After quickly gathering details about Mary’s daily life, needs, preferences, and budget, Eileen identified Holiday Retirement’s Hilltop Estates as a great match, and scheduled a tour for that weekend. Given the urgency of the situation, and not wanting to waste Jim & Mary’s time during the crisis, Eileen reached out to the community right after she got off the phone with Jim, and spoke to Heather, their sales director, about availability for Mary.
Heather shared that the community had an excellent emergency response plan that was supporting their usual residents as well as taking in evacuees from other senior living communities and local-area seniors (with insurance agents on site to help those who lost their homes and possessions). Heather said they’d be ready for Jim and Mary’s visit to Hilltop Estates, and had a nice apartment available for Mary to consider. Heather also provided her mobile phone number for Eileen to share with Jim should he need to reschedule the tour.
On Monday morning, Eileen reached back out to Jim to check on Mary and see how their tour went. With its highly-praised staff, dining, amenities, and activities, the community was well-matched to Mary, and the move-in paperwork and deposit had already been completed.
Mary moved in within six days of Jim’s initial call to Caring. “Everything will be fine now,” he said.
“It’s a wonderful feeling I received for having a very small hand in helping a senior in crisis,” Eileen noted. “It is truly those rewards which I am very grateful for, since they remind me why I do this job each and every day.”
Caring’s referral leadership agrees. A Caring senior manager, Susann Crawford said, “Eileen and this story epitomize the beautiful capability our Family Advisors have to meld our business directly to our purpose and mission. This is exactly why we do what we do!”
Holiday Retirement’s flyer about its emergency response services advises: “Don’t fight fires alone.” We agree — and whether it’s a fire from a disaster, medical and safety concerns, or the realization that senior living is a better care option, we at Caring.com (in collaboration with partners like Holiday Retirement) are here for families and seniors across America, so they get their needs met and don’t have to face the challenge alone.
Join us as a Caring Partner for access to our insider tools.
