Using social media to grow your business

Most people are using some form of social media, whether to keep friends updated on what’s happening in your life or to manage your professional network. But social media has also positioned itself as an important marketing tool to grow businesses.

Social media is a great way to market and grow your business in the digital space, as it connects with your regular community and can reach larger audiences that are yet linked with your business.

However, some businesses are still not accessing the potential of social media within their marketing strategy. So in what ways can social media grow your business?

HelloLeaders spoke with a small community aged care provider and a large aged care provider about how they utilise social media to benefit and market their organisation.

Increasing reach and finding new clients

Social media can be a first stop for many potential clients looking to consider you as an aged care provider or service option. 

While your website provides all the information that a client needs to know before accessing your services, your social media is a window into the day-to-day of your business.

It can provide a unique insight into how your business runs and the benefits it is providing to its clients, as well as give a visual of what life may be like using your service. 

Lauren Patten, Business Administrator from Edward River Gardens Residential Aged Care in Moulamein, New South Wales, said that the community-run organisation uses social media exactly for that reason – to show potential clients what they get up to.

She says that a lot of the clients looking for aged care facilities and options are now on social media, so they need to be able to connect with them through this new format.

Putting up regular posts on social media can also broaden your reach online and push out your brand further, which can increase the likelihood of becoming a household name in your community or area and becoming more known among people looking for a facility or services.

Building community

While social media is a great way to increase your reach online, it is also a fantastic place to foster your current clientele and their families and friends.

For Hall & Prior Health & Aged Care Group in Western Australia and NSW, social media has been an important place for them to showcase residents and their stories.

“Our main focus is storytelling and that everyone in our home has a story to tell. We see value in everyone’s story,” explained Gabi Mills, Communications and Publications Manager at Hall & Prior.

“We want to translate that into something which engages the reader or the visitor to our pages and makes them want to find out more about the special places we run in WA and NSW.”

Easy access communication

During the pandemic, Edward River Gardens and Hall & Prior both found social media an important tool to push out vital information to their clients.

“It really started over COVID-19 because people weren’t able to come in, they couldn’t see residents often and have that day-to-day touch that they would, especially with lockdowns,” said Ms Patten.

“We definitely used the platform as a way to branch and connect with people. Not just people who had families but people in the community.”

Mr Mills agreed as Hall & Prior found social media a brilliant way to provide real-time information on lockdowns or changes to other COVID-19-related rules.

“It was nearly a daily basis of changes; that visitation was changing or requirements of vaccines,” explains Ms Mills.

“We were able to keep the lines of communication open with social media.”

Some aged care providers may also be avoiding social media because it can open up an easy avenue for negative feedback, comments or responses. However, even with the potential for negative feedback, it can be a great way to show how your organisation deals with difficult situations.

Setting up your brand image

People who access aged care can look at providers and services and see something very clinical. Social media is a marketing tool in which you can really humanise your business and the people who work for you.

Many aged care providers share stories of their clients and customers and give them a voice. This simple technique can set a tone and environment for how your business is translated across to potential customers.

Ms Mills said, “It is all about reputation building and building the reputation of the brand as a whole.

“You do have a degree of control over the messaging you are putting out there [on social media] and because we have so many homes on our books, they are creating stories every day that we can use in an effective way.”

She explained that this is important for their business, because they want to keep a strong branding focus on being a quality provider and as a “stalwart” of the industry for many years.

“[Social media] is definitely a consistent communication of our values and brands, and that is what we try really hard to represent through everything we reproduce,” said Ms Mills.

Positioning yourself as a worthwhile employer

With ongoing workforce issues in the aged care sector, using your social media to campaign for more workers and advertising job vacancies can be really beneficial.

Since you are controlling the branding you are putting up on your social media, it gives you the opportunity to also showcase your business as a worthwhile and trustworthy employer.

Many people looking for work will often check the social media page of a business to see how active they are on social media, to understand what the organisation’s values are, and to see what working there may look like.

Your social media page can be a great way to tell a story and show prospective employees that your business is one they should want to be hired by.

Hall & Prior are currently using their social media to run workforce campaigns and advertise vacancies they have within their business.

Ms Mills adds that the organisation is intending to use social media to run a campaign that will be encouraging the right people to work in aged care.

Social media is multipurpose

Using social media within your marketing strategy doesn’t have to be aimed at one focus, but multiple areas that you want to showcase or improve within your organisation, like increasing client base, advertising bed vacancies, or campaigning for staff.

Hall & Prior has found social media has been greatly beneficial in more ways than one, as it can be used to benefit the multiple strategies and aims of your business.

Ms Mills explained, “We are using it to fill beds and attract staff, and really build on the voice and brand of Hall & Prior as a whole as a friendly, welcoming, compassionate, caring organisation in WA and NSW.”

Since social media can be versatile in use, it allows businesses, like Hall & Prior or Edward River Gardens, to engage with their online communities in a lot of different ways.

Ms Patten said her organisation has held successful charity drives on their social media, which has assisted in giving back to their community – an important part of being a community-driven and community-owned business.

Choosing the right media platform

When using social media, it is important to choose the right platform to meet your marketing needs.

For instance, Facebook has a higher older audience in comparison to Twitter. But if you are looking for targeted content, Facebook and Twitter have a larger community audience but LinkedIn is largely marketed towards an industry audience.

Ms Patten said that Edward River Gardens uses Facebook mostly for their marketing and community building, as other social media platforms, like Twitter, aren’t as relevant to their demographic.

Similarly, Ms Mills said that Facebook tends to host more content that is relevant to people in aged care, the community, and aged care workers.

Whereas social media platforms, like LinkedIn, are best suited for Hall & Prior content that is industry-focused, like appearances at sector conferences, opinion pieces, or interviews in newspapers and other media.

Ms Mills added that while social media is an important tool for Hall & Prior, it is important that it is integrated into their broader marketing and business strategy.

“Social media works in tandem with traditional forms of communication, it will never be enough to just do social media. It will never be enough just doing social media. You have other stuff going on in the background,” said Ms Mills.

From the experience of Edward River Gardens, Ms Patten said that social media is the “tool of the future” for businesses.

How have you seen social media grow and build your business? Tell us in the comments below.