Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Dawn Fiala, Lisa Marsolais, Annette Ziegler, and Valerie VanBooven RN BSN provide insight into home care marketing strategies. They cover in-person, in-field sales and online marketing every other week. These podcast episodes are part of the Home Care Marketing Mastermind, sponsored by Approved Senior Network®. Find more information at https://ASNHomeCareMarketing.com
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Revolutionize Your Home Care Marketing with LinkedIn
Unlock the secrets of leveraging LinkedIn to skyrocket your home care business with our expert guests Valerie, Dawn, Lisa, and Annette. These seasoned professionals share their invaluable insights on mastering sales, marketing, recruiting, and retention strategies tailored specifically for the home care sector. From accessing past meeting videos to engaging in our interactive online forum, we ensure you're equipped with all the tools needed to thrive in this competitive field.
Discover why LinkedIn has made a triumphant return as the go-to platform for B2B marketing. Tagging relevant entities, harnessing the power of video content, and engaging in community activities are just a few of the strategies we explore to maximize your reach and impact. Our guests provide real-life examples, like Jim's community involvement and the Hope and Mo Show, to illustrate how personal connections can drive professional success. Whether you're optimizing your profile or crafting engaging newsletters, this episode offers a comprehensive roadmap to enhance your LinkedIn presence.
Stay ahead of the curve with our creative marketing tips and strategies to promote home care services effectively. From personalized "Cool to Care" messages with Otter Pops to innovative wellness month promotions, we cover it all. We also delve into the logistics of video posting, ensuring you have access to our content seamlessly. Don’t miss the chance to hear about exciting upcoming resources and potential guest speakers in our next meeting. Join us for an episode packed with actionable insights and practical advice to elevate your home care business.
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
Let's see. Yes, okay, all right, great. So I'm going to start today. This is Valerie. Welcome back to Continuum. Everybody, thank you for joining us Friday, july 12, 2024. I am not usually the presenter, but today we decided to do a little LinkedIn deep dive and we're going to be giving away. I'm not giving away. We're going to be showing you all of the handouts for the next three or four months. So all of that's coming to you. All of the handouts for the next three or four months. So all of that's coming to housekeeping. Please mute your lines unless you're speaking. Share stories, experiences and tips, Ask questions, make recommendations, tell us what you want to know, because we do take suggestions. If there's something, some burning thing, that you'd love for these expert ladies to talk about, we certainly will, no problem. Or if it's an online thing, I'll talk about it. Yay, reintroductions. Dawn Fiella.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome. We're so glad you're here today. I am Dawn Fiella. I've been with Approved Senior Network for over two years now and I've been in home care for a really long time. I have done sales marketing, recruiting, retention. I've been an operations manager, helped grow the last business into the 4 million mark in private pay in just under four years. I'm really happy to be here. We're happy to share all the things that we've learned through the years in the trenches of home care. I like to call it to help you out, and today we're going to get a lot of great information from Valerie. For the online piece of all of this, if you went to our webinar, you need to marry the two. This is the other piece, all right?
Speaker 3:Lisa, you're up. Hi, I'm Lisa, with Approved Senior Network. I've been here a little over a year and in home care forever and ever. I'm just happy to be here with you guys and be a part of your journey. I'm a little tired today, so I'll just pass it to you.
Speaker 4:Hi everybody. I'm Annette Ziegler and I'm newer to ASN but not newer to home care sales. I worked in a CCRC for 13 years and for almost eight years in a home care agency as a community liaison. I am one of the sales training coaches here for ASN, and thanks for coming. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1:All right, I think that's oh, and I'm Valerie. I already said that, but I'm the co-owner of Approved Senior Network and these ladies are our in-person sales experts home care sales experts and I'm the online gal, and these ladies know a lot about the online stuff too, because I beat it into their head and they beat into my head all the sales strategies. So we're all together here. All right, let's keep going. How to watch the meetings that you've missed. So if you're here, you should know that we've been doing this for almost two years all, or maybe more than two years, I don't know, I can't remember.
Speaker 1:Anyway all of the videos from 2024 are available. So everything we've done since January of this year. There's two per month. They're all in the forum area and in the learning area of the forum. So what you wanna do is you wanna go to homecaresalesforumcom, go to that website and then you're going to want to. It's going to ask you to log in. Enter your email address, enter whatever password you think you have for that. If you don't know, just use the forgot your password feature and be sure to check spam. If you use the forgot password feature, check your spam to make sure that reset email might end up in your spam box. So you want to go there and in the forum it's pretty cool. You can see lots of.
Speaker 1:We try to add things in there that come across our desk that might be interesting to you. You should participate in there whenever you can, and that forum is a nice place to get up-to-date information. If you look at the, if you're on the desktop and you look at the very top of the screen, there are three tabs discussion, learning and people. If you click on learning, it's going to take you to, and this, by the way, is the same for the mobile app, which is called Colab K-O-L-A-B. I think I'm going to get to that in a second. It's at the bottom, though, instead of at the top. The learning discussion people thing is, I think, at the bottom. So, anyway, go to learning. You're going to see 2024 ASN Continuum Sales Mastery Circle and when you click on that it's going to let you in and you're going to be able to see, starting January 19th, all the videos that we've done. I didn't screenshot everything up to date. All of them are in there up to two weeks ago when we did our last one, and most of them have a little title. That'll give you some idea of what's going on in that mastery meeting.
Speaker 1:And also, if you're a podcast listener, if you go to whatever podcast platform you like some people like Apple iTunes or whatever that is. Some people like Google now is Google Podcasts or it's through YouTube, but it's Google Podcasts or something like that. We're on there. We're on everywhere. On Spotify, if you type in a search on your favorite podcast listening thing for home care marketing, if you just type in home care marketing, you will see us show up in there. It has these colors, these dark blue color with these neon light things. That is us and we podcast. Every single one of these is also on podcast. If you're out driving around, you can listen to us blather at you while you're in the background. All right agenda.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to do a deep dive into LinkedIn and we're going to talk about your monthly leave behinds. I kept this pretty simple because we're really going to talk a lot about LinkedIn today and I want you to on your phone or on your desktop, I want you to listen to me, but I want you to pull up your LinkedIn and learn a little bit about this platform that you may not have known before. I know, if you use it regularly, you might think you know all the tips and tricks and maybe you do, but there's probably some good stuff you could learn today about doing a better job of being on LinkedIn. So one of the things that we're going to talk about is all the stuff that you're taught about being out there and doing in-person sales and marketing. All of that translates into an opportunity to communicate with and connect with people who are professionals in your area on LinkedIn. Most of them are going to be on here. Some pay more attention than others, but it's really worth your time to connect with them here, and if you can connect with them on Facebook, that's great, that would be wonderful, but LinkedIn is definitely your professional to professional networking.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about LinkedIn users by age group. You can see here I got all kinds of stuff in my way that the 25 to 34 age group is probably the biggest user of this. Now, for me, I'm way over here in the 35 to 54 range, but I still use LinkedIn quite a bit and, as we all know, when you are networking with people out in your community sometimes social workers, discharge planners, even other salespeople there's a lot of turnover. Sometimes it depends on the organization. Some people stay where they are for 20 years and sometimes there's a lot of turnover. A lot of turnover is probably going to be in this 25 to 34 year old range, and so it's always important to check back in and make sure you're reconnecting with whoever the new social worker or the new discharge planner or the new activities director is for those organizations. Try to stay up to date on it. I know you have a lot of other things going on, but this is going to be worth your while. The other thing to know is I think Microsoft bought LinkedIn a few years ago I don't know if it's been five years ago now and LinkedIn took a dive and I gave up.
Speaker 1:On LinkedIn, I'll be honest with you. I was not a good, was a really good, big user of it. If you look at my profile, you'll see that I have 15,000 connections. I don't even know, maybe it's 10,000. I don't even know how it got that big, but I was a very avid user of it a few years ago and then it dropped off my radar. We still use it, but it wasn't really something worth digging into. But in the last year or two it's gotten pretty crazy good. So I want you to re-look at it if you haven't looked at it in a while. This is big Social platforms and their client, they their client use. According to B2B marketers worldwide, may of 2023, linkedin is going to be one of the bigger ones in the B2B. So business to business marketing. You're going to want to look at LinkedIn Also. It's really interesting to me to see that YouTube is up there. And then Facebook for home care is really important. Instagram for home care Now this is for everybody, this graphic, but I think, for in the home care world, we're really looking at LinkedIn and Facebook and then any platform that uses video. Instagram is not on my list. Twitter or X is not on my list anymore, at least not right now.
Speaker 1:All right, I've used this picture before this slide. I used it in our webinar the other day and the reason I like this is because it shows you how to take that in-person sales and marketing and marry it up with your online efforts. So the things to notice are, for instance, jim over here on the very left-hand side. He does community stuff all the time. So everybody in these pictures is out in their community. They're doing something, participating in something, telling you, saying a message or doing something, or they're doing something cute and fun, like the little dog on the right, and that's just super cute. Who's going to not want to see that? And that's just cute.
Speaker 1:Jim is one of our clients. He's on the left-hand side and he is very involved in his local community. That was his goal, that was his. That's his passion. Project is to be involved in his community. He supports Little League and they have their t-shirts on with his home care agency's name. The whole thing is cute and he's very supportive and very involved with his local senior center VFW, you name it, he's there.
Speaker 1:So, having said that, he posts all of his pictures on LinkedIn and he tags. Look at the tags. He tagged the Act Now Foundation, so he's tagging the business, but he's also tagging people that he might have been there with or that might be interested in knowing this. That's an important thing to know. You can post pictures all day long. I'm not even worried about the hashtags. Everybody talks about hashtags. That's great if you are willing to come up with your hashtags, but actually tagging the people and the businesses involved in this in the pictures is really what makes a difference, because those people will see that they're tagged. They'll like your post. So engagement is what we're talking about, and when you tag others, they understand that you're talking about them. Hillary.
Speaker 3:Yes, sorry, we have a question.
Speaker 1:Sorry, yes, sorry go ahead question hey guys.
Speaker 6:Hey, valerie, how are you? I wanted to agree with you. I noticed in the last two years linkedin especially with recruiters or really any professionals everyone always defers to linkedin now and ask for your profile. So if you're sending someone a resume or if you're looking for a position, it's everything's going in that direction.
Speaker 1:So I would agree, I'll make a comment on that.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I see a lot of on websites that we build and websites that I come across. I noticed that, instead of putting every, they have a list of their staff, their office staff, let's say. Instead of putting their email address and their direct line phone number there, they put their LinkedIn profile. So, yeah, it's becoming something that people use as an alternate way to connect and if you put the LinkedIn app on your phone, you don't have to be in front of your desktop every day to engage. In fact, I don't engage typically during the day on LinkedIn, unless it's a slow day, which is very rare around here. But at night I will make it a point to go to my LinkedIn profile before I go to bed and make sure I've caught up with everything that's going on there. It's just easier for me to take a few minutes at night to catch up with people, like a few posts congratulate people on their new jobs. It doesn't take that long to do it and it's worth the engagement. I check my email. I get a lot of spam emails in LinkedIn. I don't really, but people do reach out to me who are real and true, and even some clients reach out to me there. So I do check that in mail or that email or whatever.
Speaker 1:I really love this and not everybody's gonna have time or wanna do something like this, but video is really where it's at as well and that is hard for some people to really grasp and really feel comfortable doing.
Speaker 1:But these two ladies, for example, the Hope and Mo show that's hysterical and they're two community liaisons and they I can't tell you their whole history because I don't know it all. I just watched this video and maybe one other. But they sit down in front. They put two lawn chairs in front of whatever place they're networking at that day or visiting that day and they talk about. So this one was having a ribbon cutting and they're just talking about how excited they are to be there and that they're having the ribbon cutting and it's a hope and mo show. It's cute as it could be and it's two of them together, which makes them riff off of each other and they're a really good team. So I think that's cute and a great way to promote others in your community and have some fun with it and also still be pretty professional in the whole thing. And then we have Dale.
Speaker 3:Oh, are we still asking? Sorry, we had another question, sorry. Okay. Priscilla.
Speaker 5:Yes, hi, can you hear me? Yes, okay, yes, I have three questions. So my first question is how do, what kind of activities do we do with the community? Number two how do we conduct them, or go about conducting them? And then number three what would be more like recommended when it comes to posting on LinkedIn? Those are my three questions.
Speaker 1:I'll just use these examples, and I'm sure the three ladies that are on the screen with me can also help with this. But these home care agency owners are networking, visiting and making connections, of human to human connections with their local communities. Now, the one that's in the middle here, tipa Snow's positive approach to dementia care. All these people are on Zoom. I just use that because Tipa Snow is pretty famous in her own way and she's not a spring chicken, she's the bottom right and she's got like 3 million followers on TikTok and all she talks about is dementia. So my point is what for her anyway, is that you can talk about things that are definitely not sexy to the world and still make a very big impact on the world or on your local community. So you can see the activities these folks are engaged in. You decide a nonprofit you know the Alzheimer's Association. This one is the Act Now Foundation. I don't know how he got hooked up with this, probably through his chamber of commerce or Rotary or VFW. You get introduced to people and you decide, hey, I'm going to go support this little event they're having. And then you go take pictures and you make a little donation or whatever you do. Hope and Mo they have. It's all about the sales training. They have a whole suite of places they visit every single week and when they visit or something interesting is happening at that place where they would like to have good referral sources, they put their lawn chairs out and sit down and have a talk about the place together. This is Dale in the middle. He's covered up by the teep of snow. He goes around to all of his potential referral sources every single week and sometimes he does a video by himself. This one was the stroke community, I can't remember. It's covered up and I can't get it to come out from to the front. But anyway he goes to an event or knows about an event that someone else in his networking group of people have recommended to him and he's doing a little video about this nonprofit and how we should support it or how he supports it. We have folks like this one right here in the middle. They're at a grand reopening. I want to say that's Caravita, but I can't see the name on the picture. This might not be, but anyway their team went to a grand reopening of another place, another skilled nursing facility or assisted living, and they all took a picture Gratitude. Home Care up at the top went and met with the Arbor Company I think it's a independent living or something like that and castle keepers took a picture of their cute little office dog. So you can get involved in your community in any way you want, but usually visiting those places is great.
Speaker 1:I would avoid taking pictures that include seniors that you don't have permission to take pictures of. So it's you and your referral source. It's you and the front of the building. It's you by yourself. It's you with a group of staff. It's not the aging adults in the picture usually. Sometimes you're celebrating your 100th birthday and that's fun, but these are all pictures that don't include seniors that are actually there as residents.
Speaker 1:I hope that answers your question. Did I miss anything? And Jodi asks so are these on LinkedIn or on Facebook, as well as our website? It depends on how much you want to promote it.
Speaker 1:If it were me, if I were doing these things, this would not be just on LinkedIn. This would be on my Facebook. The same exact post would be on Facebook and the same exact post would be on my website as a blog post. I would do all these things and when my monthly newsletter went out. I would make sure that the at least one of the pictures in this group of pictures was in my newsletter, so that my community the people I'm sending out my e-newsletter to each month also knew how much we're out in the community supporting others. So I would put this everywhere. I wouldn't limit it to just LinkedIn, but I would definitely include LinkedIn in all of these things. So, website, your e-newsletter that should go out once a month. And Facebook If it's a video, you should also post it on TikTok, youtube, wherever else you can have an account. So, anyway, we'll come back to some of that as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, ladies, let me know if there's any more questions. So I wanted to show you a little bit about how things change when you start using this method online. So I'm using Jim's post about the Act Now Foundation and I want you to see that what we're looking at. The next picture over right here, the second one from the left, has two yellow arrows and it says Applause Home Care. Right here, the second one from the left has two yellow arrows and it says applause home care. So Jim is posting on his professional profile page. Also, I want you to know this when you put together a LinkedIn profile, which I'm going to get to in a minute.
Speaker 1:Stop thinking that it's like Facebook. It is not like Facebook. Your professional profile, your human you profile, is your professional profile. This is. I rarely post a picture of my kids unless it's something that I'm really proud of them or now. You should just save that for Facebook and grandma and grandpa and stuff like that, that's all fine. This is where I post all my professional stuff and I don't care who sees my professional stuff. I want people to see my professional stuff. But you also should have your organization that you work for or own right now should have a page, a company page that is put together correctly, which we'll talk about, and that page will also benefit from everything you do personally if you share those posts between the two.
Speaker 1:So you can see that I have the second picture here is Applause, home Care, the company page and look at the impressions over time. We're looking at about a year's worth of impressions. Look how big that went up. So you can see that over time, because Jim started doing this, he started tagging his own company, he started tagging other companies, he started engaging with people. The impressions went way up over the course of a year. And if we look at the next picture, it says page views. So we can see that his page views on mobile especially. That's the dotted line here that you see. Look how far that went up over the course of a year. That's amazing, and most people are using this app on their phones, so you can see the difference there and that's why the mobile went up. And then over here on the final on the right hand side, you can see that his company pages engagement rate also had an increase over time. So all of this helps not only you personally, but if you share all of this good information, these great posts, with your company page, it will help your company page as well, and that's the whole.
Speaker 1:Object of the game here is to get more visibility online in front of your referral sources. Okay, now I'm looking at Approved Senior Network Marketing. This is our company page. So what you can see is back in October we really started to hit it hard and really started to post. I started to post a lot. I started to really get into and the catalyst was a client that we had that was really into LinkedIn and I thought, okay, let's see what happens for us If we're doing all this work for this client, then let's see what happens if we do it too. And, sure enough, look at the impressions over time. This is just from October of last year to the 1st of June, you can see, and we don't have nearly as many reactions as, like Jim does, but this is our.
Speaker 1:The next, the picture in the middle, is our page views, and you can see how those have gone up over time. And the last picture is a follower metric and you can see how we have 1,384 followers and new followers in the last year is getting up there up to almost 500. Some people have way more followers on their business page, but you can see how our organic activity took a spike and started to get more consistent over time. So I just wanted to show you that this really does work for your business page as well as your personal page. This is also something that I recommend that everybody takes the time to do. This isn't everybody on our team, but this is a lot of our team, especially our leadership, and we asked everybody if they would put this banner on their professional profile and each one of these. You don't have to customize these for each person, but in this case, our graphic designer did put our names and sort of our titles behind each one of these, and when everybody takes the time to do that on their profile, it really helps your branding and helps people know who you are, who you work for, and it's really a nice touch. So I highly recommend that, if you have office staff or some key personnel in your life that work for you, that you ask them to do this. It's not hard, it's really easy to add a banner behind your name, okay.
Speaker 1:Next thing Do you have any questions? Are we good? We're good yes. Okay the thing do we have any questions? Are we good? We're good yes, okay.
Speaker 1:The next thing I want to talk about is your personal profile and what to put there. If you look at my professional profile, you're going to see that I changed it recently based on some recommendations, and this is really helpful, I think. So the first thing I did was you have this little bit of space to articulate what you do, and sometimes in this little space I see it says director or owner. It says one word owner of. What is what I want to know. So if you really want people to see what you do, who you are. You want to make sure you fill this in appropriately. So the first thing I did was put how many years we've been in business. So for 16 years we've been doing home care marketing and sales. We help home care agencies get more clients, more referrals and hire better caregivers.
Speaker 1:Home care marketing expert at Approved Senior Network Marketing. Notice that it doesn't say owner, it doesn't say co-owner. It used to say RNBSN somewhere else. But anyway, it just gives you the solution to your problem. It tells you what we do, how we solve problems, and that's what I recommend everyone do. It only says our company name at the very end, which is fine. Do it only says our company name at the very end, which is fine. I want people to know what problems we solve and this also shows up really nicely in a Google search. I highly recommend that you change what's underneath your name to make more sense. Also, you can see the followers there. Over the years that's just gotten real.
Speaker 1:I don't follow everyone or I don't connect with everyone that sends me a connection. If they're in another country, I'll be honest with you. I don't connect with them because I can't use their services and I'm not going to answer them and I'm not going to communicate with them, so I get a lot of spammy stuff and so I don't connect with everyone. But I do reach out almost every day to a person that is in the market that we serve and I offer up a connection. I don't necessarily know them, but usually when they see who I am and what I do, they will connect back, and I recommend that you do that as well, not only for to grow your personal network of humans in your local area, but also to professionally reach out to them as needed. And so reach out to people and connect with them. And then this button says visit my website.
Speaker 1:I think that you have to have a paid version of LinkedIn to do this. I'm not sure it might be a free, I can't remember now. I do have a paid version. I've had a paid version for a long time. You don't have to have a paid version to make this work for you, so just know, right now, the free version of LinkedIn is really all you need. Unless you're a recruiter, you're probably going to want the paid version. Please optimize your profile as much as you possibly can so that people instantly know who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:So here's an example of here's Dale. Again, he's our buddy at Cardinal Home Care. He did put in founder owner at Cardinal Home Care. But if I were Dale, here's what I would do. This is just a suggestion. He probably won't do this, but this is what I would do. I would put how many years I've been in business and if it's only been a short time, I just leave that off completely. And who cares? I put, he put or I put times five years. Owner of Cardinal Home Care located in Fairfax Virginia. Cardinal Home Care located in Fairfax Virginia. Those are, that's the very first sentence. If I want someone to see what it is, I do this. Is it right here? Owner of Cardinal Home Care. And I want them to know where I'm located.
Speaker 1:We help seniors stay independent in their own home. Senior home care, companion care, personal care for seniors. We serve all of Northern California. Call me for more information, 333-333. So if I were to give him a recommendation, I would say something like this would be ultimately very helpful, and his banner behind there is not bad, but I would probably redo this so that on mobile his phone number shows up in the header or something else about him or his website address. I wouldn't just use the logo, but it's better than nothing at all. So kudos to him for that. And he does have a lot of followers and he does reach out all the time, so he's doing a great job.
Speaker 1:I would just make sure this is what my profile said. All right, your business page is very important. So if you don't have a company page, make a company page. This is not the same as a professional profile. It's a company page and it's really important that you do this correctly so that you are abiding by the terms of service. You can only advertise. If you ever want to advertise. You have to have a company page in order to do that. You can't advertise a post or boost a post or any of that on a personal profile. It has to be through your business page. So the same rules apply.
Speaker 1:We have a banner back here that's similar to the ones we all have on our professional profile same color scheme and then that's our little profile picture and then it says what we do. It's not as robust, but it says home care, marketing, home care sales, training, home care website. So you should say home care in Fairfax, virginia. Senior home care, companion care, personal care, respite care, whatever. If there's dementia home care, let people know what problems you solve right here underneath that and then fill out everything. I use the same information in the about us.
Speaker 1:I try to mix that up and make sure I try to mix that up and make sure I try to make mix that up and make sure it says all of the right stuff. I used to put us under home, under medical, but I now have us under marketing. You should be under either hospitals and medical or under health services or something like that. They don't really have a home care thing in there, so that's unfortunate. And then you need to post from your company page occasionally or all the time would be great. So down here in the bottom of the screen you can see first of all, talk to us about home care marketing. If someone comes across this page, they can click on contact sales and it'll open up a form and that'll be sent to us. It'll be sent to me, probably. And then under featured, I always feature a couple of posts and I try to do that, mix that up once in a while so that people see something about us right away. All right, so your business page is really important. Fill out everything you possibly can. All righty, here is a secret tip about LinkedIn that you didn't know but will really be helpful to you.
Speaker 1:I recommend that everybody has a newsletter that goes out to your clients and your referral database once a month. If you don't have someone like us doing that for you already, then it can be an easy thing to forget. Then it can be an easy thing to forget, it can be an easy thing to pass off when you're busy, but it really does help keep your name top of mind in front of all those folks that you've gathered up in your databases your leads, your referrals, everything. Linkedin has the option for you to have a newsletter. They don't yeah, they do call it a newsletter. So I called ours our newsletter Home Care Marketing Minute.
Speaker 1:And here's the interesting thing about this. So I'm connected to. What does it say? Wait a minute, this you can invite people to subscribe to your newsletter, which I also recommend that you do and it says published weekly 1,830 subscribers. And I invite people to subscribe to it very often and sometimes they don't. But here's the interesting thing this newsletter, every time I put up a new article, it does it emails all 1830 people with that one article that I put up here as an article in my newsletter. So every time I add a post and it should be something or an article to this newsletter, it goes out to everybody. And guess what else is important to know about LinkedIn? Their emails don't go to spam. So if you have never used this feature, this is a great tip to get you in front of people in your local area, whether it's 50 people or 500 people in your local area, every time you post an article.
Speaker 1:Now, an article to me is more than just a picture. It has to be a picture and some sentences about how much you enjoyed your hour, visit at ABC Rehab or whatever it is, and talk a little bit about it, or post a video or whatever you're going to do. Make it worth your while. Don't just send out random willy-nilly stuff, because then people will start ignoring that email. But now when I post here, I can go look at my email and I see, oh, it says Valerie or Approved Senior Network or whoever just sent you a newsletter about home care marketing and it tells them like the title of this post, and people look at it so you can see right back here we started really getting hot and heavy on this. Hot and heavy on this.
Speaker 1:So far, since mid, I guess, probably January, we've had 19,000 article views, and this is just once in a while. Sometimes I'll do two or three in a week and sometimes I won't do one for two weeks. So I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be, but once a week is enough. And then you can see our subscribers have gone down a little bit. We have a lot of subscribers. We have subscribers. We have 463 new subscribers. It's just not the same rate as it had been in the past, but this is pretty cool. 19,000 article views in the last 365 days and 13,000 impressions, 3,882 engagements these numbers are excellent over the last year for us anyway, because we haven't tried that hard and then it'll tell you at the bottom owner president, who's actually looking at your stuff. So it gives you some good data and it's a secret tip that most people don't even know exists.
Speaker 1:So get your newsletter set up, name it something cute and name it something local the Senior Care Minute in Fairfax or the Senior Care Minute St Louis, or something that's local to you that people will resonate with. They see that town name or they see that company name and they're like oh yeah, I wonder what they're up to Do that. So every time you send this out, all the people get that email. Any other questions? So far, no, we're good, okay, cool, this is the actual email that people get. So the Guide to Social Media Marketing for Home Care Agencies with Approved Senior Network there it is. That email came straight to me. It says to Valerie Van Boeven via LinkedIn, or maybe it's from Valerie Van Boeven via LinkedIn. Every time I send one of these out so you can.
Speaker 1:If you were to go to this, you would see it's a pretty long article, so I don't just post little bitty things in here. I try to make it a little bit more worth your while. It's also interesting that every single one of these links in here these bolded words. All I did was copy and paste this from our actual blog. This was actually a blog post on our blog and I copied and pasted it into just make it an article in this on LinkedIn and the link stayed. So if you were to click on any of these links, they go right back to our website. That's worth you doing. Anyway, fool around with this and then invite some people to be subscribers If you use a local name.
Speaker 1:I'm not local, that's why mine doesn't have a local name. If you use a local name like senior care in fairfax, virginia, or something cute and catchy with a local name in it, people will subscribe. They will. They'll think that's pretty cool. Whoops, I need to go back up. Look at me, I just clicked all over the place. Oh boy, whoa, hello, it's Friday. That's right. Okay, here we are. View slideshow. All right, so there's that.
Speaker 1:So any other questions about LinkedIn?
Speaker 1:Max out your profile. Max out your company page. If you're our client, make sure we have access to it. What happens is our clients give us admin access to their company page and we post for them on their company page. We can post for you on your personal page too, automatically, like just five days a week, if you want us to.
Speaker 1:However, sometimes that stuff it's harder because there's logins and everything associated with it. But if you want us to, however, sometimes that stuff it's harder because there's logins and everything associated with it. But if you make us an admin of your company page, then we can post your company page anytime for you. So that's all very helpful. All right, get going on this LinkedIn and connect with me and Annette and Dawn and Lisa we're all on this. Go to Valerie Van Boven. You can see my connections there and find Lisa and Dawn. If you just type our names in the search, you'll find us. If you type a search, if you go to search and you type in social workers in Fairfax, virginia, anybody who has social worker in their title will pop up there and you can see who you might want to connect with in your local area. So make connections every day on LinkedIn and that's it for me.
Speaker 3:Oh, hold on. There's a question. I made a newsletter via Canva. However, it wasn't linkable to LinkedIn with the links. Do you suggest a better way of writing the newsletter? Just maybe making it as a post, or?
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't. So making one in Canva is all pretty and nice, but take the text that you put in that Canva newsletter, just copy and paste the text and put it right into create a newsletter. You can do a post but create an article or a newsletter on LinkedIn. If you just go to, if you Google how to create a newsletter. You can do a post but create an article or a newsletter on LinkedIn. If you just go to, if you Google how to create a newsletter on LinkedIn, there's a whole tutorial there for you to learn how to create that newsletter. If you just want to do a post, copy and paste it into a post. But I would create that newsletter and then make it nice, name it something fun and then put everything that I want to say to people. Copy and paste it out of that Canva thing, put it in there. As soon as you post it, it goes emails out to everybody. Just the text. Just make it pretty. Divide up the text a little bit, make it easy on the eyes. There is the opportunity for you to put a picture for that article and it'll tell you. Actually, if you like, using Canva, if you type in LinkedIn article image, it'll give you the dimensions for the LinkedIn article image and it'll give you some templates and you can just modify one and make it your own for that article. So there's all kinds of stuff you can do with LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:That and groups. I didn't even talk about groups. Honestly, groups are, but we do have a group. We have a group that's home care, marketing and sales. It's got about 5,000 people in it. There are groups that are way bigger. If you type in home care, home health and actually if I were you in the local, my local area, I would type in and look for groups that are. If I'm in Fairfax or Fairfax, virginia, and look at all the groups for Fairfax, are there ones that would be appropriate for you? Is there a chamber group? Is there a rotary group? Is there a healthcare professionals group in your area? Join the ones that are local to you and see how often they're getting posted to and who's in them and connect with the people that are in those groups.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's it yeah, that's how I found you guys. Actually, when I first started. Not, it wasn't in linkedin, but it was a facebook group and I found don fiala and here I am, I know. So those groups are helpful. All right, july, leave behind. It's cool to care, keep cool on us. So this we still have time to take this out. We have a whole what like two and a half, three weeks still. Take this out here. You could go and make changes in Canva and Google. You can change it to your logo and all of your contact info, but you want to take this out to everyone, especially your social workers. And if we go to the next slide, you're going to pair it with these cute little Otter Pops. Of course, they won't be frozen at the time, but you'll just maybe hole punch this. It's cool to care. After you printed it out, wrap a ribbon around the Otter Pops, maybe do a couple of them. I've seen some people do a couple of them. I've seen some people do a couple of them. Someone did have one explode in their car but or leak in their car. So just keep it in a little like box. I would keep it in the Otter Pop box and maybe you know, but you take them in. They're not frozen and folks will love them. They'll put them in their freezers and they'll use them later when they feel like having something sweet and they need to stay cool.
Speaker 3:Okay, august is National Wellness Month and we have a couple of different takes on wellness month. This one I think this is a Dawn Fiala original and this one is just remember to take care of yourself, because we don't, because we're always running right Our social workers, us, everyone, home care, we're always running. Research shows self-care helps manage stress and promotes happiness. That's why this little string around the finger to remind you to take care of yourself, you can take this out to anyone that you're talking to when you're making your stops, especially those social workers that'll help you with referrals and get some discharges home. But next page, there's the twine string and you can just click on the Amazon link. If you love that. Little eye masks, shower steamers, you can pair this with anything and put it in a little baggie and take it out and just a reminder that you care and so they should take care of themselves too. Next one also wellness month prescription for self-care. This one I just thought was super adorable because I found these little pills that are so cute but must take a 10-minute break, preferably go outside, especially if you're sitting in front of your computer. Again, this is for us to take out to social workers, discharge planners, things like that. And here are your cute little positive pills, positive capsules. They have little positive messages rolled up inside the pill and so maybe throw three or four in that bag. You can get all different types of colors here, and here's all the Amazon links, but I just think it's just a really cute idea, trying to think of different things to do, all right.
Speaker 3:Next, the importance of exercise promoting health and wellness. Again, you can go into the Canva link and the Google Doc and make any changes that you wish, but this is a piece that we want. Social workers, pt, whoever we want them to know that our caregivers are trained in guiding patients through their prescribed home exercise regimen, right. So we want them to know that we understand those things, that these people are coming home into our care and we can help guide them and keep them on that path to getting better, getting well. Getting back to where they were Motivational stress balls and bracelets.
Speaker 3:Here's the same little baggies. I think you can repurpose these for just about any type of giveaway, and I didn't put the bracelets on here, just they didn't fit. But the stress balls are really helpful and they have cute little. You can do it. Keep it up. Stress balls are really helpful and they have cute little. You can do it. Keep it up, okay.
Speaker 3:Next, also, national safe at home week is I think it's the last yeah, last week of August. Let's light the way. So this is a good idea to. I think we talked to someone yesterday that was having difficulty getting into a home. But this will. This could be one of those ways that helped. A free home safety assessment yeah, we probably all do those all the time, but do you market that?
Speaker 3:So make sure that you're letting people know everything that you do, and this is just one of those things. And you can pair it with a little light. Or I have a little key chain light here. Give it to your social worker just a little reminder. You can slap your logo on there like a little sticker printout, or you can have them made professionally but great ideas. There's also these cute little lights or round lights. You can stick to any anywhere that has like a little step, even just one step up.
Speaker 3:I thought that was really cute too, to give away and they could use. Okay, coffee time on me. So this is something that Annette was using. I just made some changes to it, made it in color, but she just the other day I want to say two weeks ago someone asked her if this was still good and if they could still have coffee, and so I just thought that was so cute that this is still coming, coming back to her to have coffee with someone, and so I think this is a really great idea.
Speaker 3:A, they're redeeming by text only. So you are getting the social worker's cell phone number, which is a game changer for you because you will be talking to them and just on your phone, texting back and forth If they have someone that they need to refer to you. It's just a really easy, quick way to do that. But I just absolutely love this. You can use this anytime, not just for August, and you can change out your logo and all that. But this is so cute and they have to redeem, so they have to talk to you and they don't have to go out. Maybe you bring coffee into them.
Speaker 1:I was going to say you can bring them, you can put this on a, or I have it somehow attached to a little empty coffee cup with a little lid like a, not a ceramic one, like a takeout.
Speaker 3:And then you'll be so cute. That would be, would be super cute. Yeah, and they have those that like the dollar store, those that you're talking about, the little plastic, yeah, yeah and those are.
Speaker 1:Look at me also going off of the. Okay, there we go, by the way, just riding with you. When you click yeah, when you click on one of these links, it takes you to something like this where you can use a template for the new design. So when this meeting is over, we will send out the PDF and the replay video, and in that PDF are all these slides with all these links, and the links are live and you can just click on the link and it'll take you to either Canva or Google. There you go.
Speaker 3:September is Fall prevention month. It's also the beginning of fall, but this is another Dawn Fiala original. But just like these socks, our services can help to prevent falls, and that was a segue to the socks that we have here. There's a whole bunch. You can get a whole bunch of these. They have the little grips. It's easy. I mean, you can use them for yoga, the social workers can use them for just about anything, but it's just a really cute idea. Someone had mentioned the other day that they want to actually see if they can get these embroidered with their logo. That's a great idea too, and you have more than enough time to plan that, so I think that would be really cute too. I think we did that with Alibaba. There we go. It was Alibaba. I was trying to remember who it was.
Speaker 2:We ordered like a thousand of them with our company logo right across the toe.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, and I think the person who asked yesterday is on this call too, so they got their answer Okay. So rehab week is September 16th to the 22nd, so ice cream social time. It's hot outside. It's a great way to connect with the social worker plus anyone who's there, any people who are needing to leave the rehab or that are there for a while, but this is a really great way to show them that you care about the community. Don't go to every single person, just bring one of those big tubs of ice cream, plan ahead of time and make sure that it's okay and next slide. Here we go. So just some cute little colorful ice cream scoops, cups that come with the spoons and you can just go out and make a day of it, maybe hit two or three places that week or something, and be respectful of the budget, but I think this is a great idea to connect and get out there.
Speaker 3:National Assisted Living Week here's another really good one September I can't even see it 8th to the 14th. This is their kind of what they're looking at this year. They have a theme each year. This year was Inspiring Generations and they are celebrating the individuals who live and work in assisted living. So they're combining it all and just celebrating all that make it possible. So I just thought this would be really nice to take out to the assisted livings when you're out talking to maybe the director of nursing or whoever. I still left these in there, didn't I? Okay, I meant to remove these, but I still thought they were cute, so maybe you will too too. I just thought that inspiring, right. So I just thought these little glass jars with the little warm fairy lights were very inspiring.
Speaker 1:I don't know, but we can skip that huh yeah, they're cute and you can put a little cotton in there and make it look like a little cloud or something.
Speaker 3:I don't know that's cute and I just I think I picked this again and I see it on the top of the slide but to inspire was to feel. What was it feel? Oops, can you go back or right to the feel with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative, to fill someone or something with the urge or ability, I don't remember what, but it was there. It's been so long now I feel, but I just thought it was really cute to fill the glass jars with something inspiring cute.
Speaker 1:You can put your little pills in there with the fairy lights so they can grab inspirational pill thing super duper cute.
Speaker 3:And then I did find these on the website here, for this is a living week and there's I. You can see I stole their logo there, but I just thought these are really cute pins you could maybe take to them and then they don't have to get them themselves and they're pretty inexpensive here and I think that they might appreciate that you can repurpose those same bags. Yeah, that was really cute. Oh, back by popular demand Get patients home in a snap. So this was originally for National Lobster Day and it was getting time to get home in time for dinner, but we wanted to switch it around a little bit. It's like superhero-y looking Call us now for snappy discharges For all your home care needs. We will get you home, your patients home, in a snap. Yeah, I thought that would be cute to just repurpose there. And then we have the snapped Cheez-Its and if you wanted to look at the more healthy version, there's the Harvest Snout Peas. Just play on the name and take something like this out when you're visiting. And I think they're really like this.
Speaker 1:Love it. I think somebody did this and shared pictures with us, didn't they? Yeah?
Speaker 3:she, yeah, she did a whole bunch. Yeah, there was a couple. Yeah, we should put them in here all right, I think that's everything.
Speaker 1:Any questions from anybody? Any additional comments? Get out there and take pictures of these and put them on LinkedIn, do you? When will this video be sent to us? That's on me Usually, or maybe we can have something. Usually over the weekend I get this. We have to edit out the first part of it where we're just talking before everybody comes in, and then we put it up and Annette sends out tons and tons of emails and reminders to let you know that the video is posted. It'll also be in the forum. The announcement that it's alive will be in the forum time over the weekend. It will definitely be done, because I'm not going to have time to do it next week, but we will let you know, I promise. Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, I think that's everything, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. On continuum, we'll meet again in two weeks. I think we might have a guest speaker. I haven't figured that one out yet, but I have an idea in my head, so we'll let you all know what's coming up okay, have a great weekend.
Speaker 3:Bye everybody.
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