A social media ambassador program is helping one senior living operator build community while also increasing its search engine optimization.
New Jersey-based Springpoint Senior Living ramped up its social media ambassador program in 2021 after realizing the corporate headquarters didn’t have a personal connection with the 4,000 residents that lived in Springpoint communities.
“The community teams weren’t really thinking about telling their story,” Julia Zauner, Springpoint vice president of marketing and communications, said during a virtual roundtable hosted by senior living marketing group Varsity. “They all had wonderful stories about experiences, the lifestyle, the staff and resident relationships, but they were not geared up for telling their stories.”
Their solution was the creation of a social media ambassador program to help the company post those stories. Employees with daily connections to residents — people who worked in areas such as resident services, dining and wellness — are tapped by community executive directors to add social media posting to their daily responsibilities.
Zauner said that each of Springpoint’s eight life plan communities, along with its assisted living communities and Springpoint Choice continuing care at home programs, has one to three social media ambassadors. The company’s affordable senior housing sites also use ambassadors.
“We didn’t want to distract the sales team from their efforts. We wanted resident-facing roles,” Zaumer said, adding that the company now has a group of 25 to 30 ambassadors throughout the organization who help out in the field as reporters, to create a “vibrant online community.”
With organizational concerns about giving communities direct access to company social media platforms, Zaumer said, the operator decided to create a Facebook page for each community and affiliate. She said Facebook was chosen as the primary platform to communicate directly with older adults and their adult children.
Springpoint provides tools to help the ambassadors with their duties, including clear social media policies and regular team calls to discuss best practices, share ideas and collaborate. The company also uses Reputation.com, which integrates with its social media platform, allowing the marketing team to review and approve posts before they go live. This process, Zauner said, makes senior leaders comfortable about what’s going out and provides an opportunity to coach ambassadors on elements such as photo quality.
Online reviews encouraged
Along with building up their communities with positive stories, social media ambassadors also work to encourage positive reviews from families and residents.
Ambassadors are encouraged to share Springpoint’s online review template in Reputation.com with anyone they encounter who talks about a good experience with the organization. Zauner said the company also sends the template to new residents 60 days after they move in, to ask for feedback and online reviews.
Marketing professionals support the online review process by making PowerPoint presentations that executive directors can share at resident town hall meetings, as well as flyers with QR codes that direct people to an online review site. The marketing team also handles any negative reviews that are received, responding to each one with the goal of resolving any issues.
Zauner said that those online reviews feed individual company and affiliate reputation scores — the number of reviews, the sentiments in those reviews and the response rate. Since 2021, she added, the process has helped the company increase its overall online reputation score from 425 out of 1,000 to 804. The effort also has boosted the company’s number of reviews from 152 to 722 today, and its overall rating moved from 3.5 out of 5 to 4.2. The ambassador program also increased the company’s total Facebook followers 70% and bumped its likes up by 35%.
During twice-yearly meetings with executive directors, Springpoint shares individual community and affiliate reputation scores and their position on a company leaderboard. Communities see their ranking as a challenge and work to move up on the leaderboard, Zauner said.
Online reviews can positively affect search engine optimization rankings and how organizations appear in search engines, which helps with adult children looking for “unvarnished opinions” on communities, she said.
