Does your community have a social media presence?  Are you active on Facebook or Twitter or blog regularly about happenings at your community?  If so, you are continually looking for good content to keep your posts interesting and keep the subscribers coming back.

One good source is living all around you!  Your residents have stories to tell and many are more than happy to tell them.  They may want to share tales of their lives, how they made the decision to live there or discuss great activities or outings at the community.

Getting the residents involved in a community’s social media adds the human touch to the property, tells the story of their past and promotes many of the positives at a community.  It is a great way to stimulate the creativity of residents and promote a community, all at the same time.  If you have a social media program, discuss it with your residents and see how many volunteers come forward.

If the residents at your community are involved in social media, tell us about it here.  Has it been a positive for them and the property?  Has there been any downside?  Please share your experiences!

Thanks, Doug

We are continually looking for great places to distribute the FREE New LifeStyles guide to senior living and care.  As always, we need your help!  If you come across a location where our guides could be picked up by those that can use them, snap a picture.  We will grade the pictures on benefit to our demographic, as well as originality, humor and artistic quality.  If you can’t snap a picture, send us your suggestion, those will be eligible, too!  We will post the best pictures on our Facebook and Twitter pages!  Top three suggestions will win $25 gift certicates to Starbucks or Target. 

E-mail the pictures, telling us the location, to newlife@newlifestyles.com

(make sure New LifeStyles is available in your area, for a complete list of our areas of coverage, log on to www.newlifestyles.com )

Contest ends February 15, 2012.  Thanks and have fun!

Social Media is being touted as one of the best new mediums to reach your clientele. Whether it’s through blogging, discussion boards, social sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others, there are numerous opportunities to reach current and potential clients and referring agents.

 New LifeStyles would like to help you reach those individuals thru our social network:

Be an active participant in the New LifeStyles senior living blog and/or forum providing answers to senior living questions:

You can drive the topic and market your community and services during a week in 2012.  Send one post with helpful senior living information and one with information about your community/services. Take the opportunity at any time to browse the forum to comment on and/or answer any posts, as well.

Reply now with the week you would like to promote your senior community or service on the New LifeStyles forum. All post will be linked on the New LifeStyles Facebook page, Twitter account,  and LinkedIn page.

Another value ad from New LifeStyles Media Solutions

Another summer has flown by and now it’s time for school, football and hopefully a break from the heat (or rain depending on where you are).  It’s always nice to have something new to start school, but here at New LifeStyles, we thought it would be nice to give you something new for your Fall marketing.  It’s the New LifeStyles mobile site!  Your presence in our guides and on our regular site gets you a presence on our mobile site.  It works on all platforms by going to www.newlifestyles.com on your mobile device.  Now you can reach our comprehensive senior living and care information at anytime from anywhere.  It is a streamlined version of our site, allowing fast navigation for searching, ordering a guide and contacting advertisers or New LifeStyles.  Try it today!

September is the space reservation deadline for the following markets:

• SF Bay Area – already a number of new advertisers for the next edition.  Not too late to join them!
• South Florida – one of our largest distributions, almost 80,000 copies per edition
• Pittsburgh – another guide that will have a number of new advertisers this fall, with an extensive coverage of SW PA and Pittsburgh
• Orange County – One of the big originals, great distribution and strong online traffic.
• Santa Barbara – fantastic area, great way to promote your community or business
• New Jersey – distributed statewide and in PA, NY and DE.  A great value for your advertising dollars.
• Central Massachusetts – join the great variety of providers that have been long-running participants in this guide

New copies of our guide should be arriving for the following markets, you can also check them out online, via our web site:

-          Sacramento

-          Fresno/Bakersfield

-          Arizona

-          Colorado

-          Maryland/DC/Virginia

-          Northern New England

For more information, contact us immediately!

New LifeStyles continues to design and take multiple sites live every month.  We are diversifying the looks offered to clients and diversifying our customer base, giving you more creativity for you dollar and helping you make a great impression. To get the latest information on our web design division, friend New LifeStyles on Facebook , connect with us on LinkedIn, or follow us on Twitter.

We will be kicking-off the Fall in grand style, with great values on all of our advertising options.  You can invest in our long successful guides, our award-winning web site or both.  Make sure your web site is reflecting the current look of your community or organization AND receiving solid traffic.  If not, call us, we can help you align all aspects of your marketing plan.

 Doug

As we continue to bake to a nice golden brown here in Dallas, our friends on East Coast got a nasty visit from Irene over the weekend.  (Why Irene?  In a few years will the storms get names like Hunter, Taylor, Harper and Britney?)   It looks like advance preparation made it easier for many to get through it, but tragedy did strike, unfortunately.

I was able to read some of the news coming across on Twitter during and after the storm and it sounds like most senior communities made it through with little or no damage although many assisted living communities and nursing homes had to evacuate, which can cause extreme stress on residents and staff and logistical nightmares.  It was refreshing to see stories where almost all staff showed up for work and others covered for those who couldn’t make it in.  Even read one good story of a former ship captain, who as a resident formed a team to go around and make sure all windows were properly latched, as during the last storm leaks had occurred through the windows.

Were there any heroes at your community or in the surrounding community that went above and beyond during Irene?  Any good stories from your community?  We would love to have you share them with the visitors to this blog and recognize their efforts.  Once again, we at New LifeStyles hope that everything went as smooth as possible and things are back to normal quickly!

Is it just me or are you becoming overwhelmed with information too? Every day I get at least 3 webinars invites & the same number of offers for white papers in my in box. I could make a full-time job of attending training sessions and reading-up on new findings. There is no way I can do my job and keep up with all of the offerings, no matter how enticing they may be.  Now maybe I’m in too many groups, on too many message boards and have signed up for too many newsletters, but I get a lot of good tidbits here & there.

Read More

America is suffering through a terrible addiction epidemic, the smartphone.  Everywhere you look, people have their heads down, staring at the small screen or working the keyboard furiously.  Couples ignore each other at dinner, people walk straight into fountains and you have an excuse not to make eye contact on elevators.  They have become the adult pacifier.  Information or interactions that formerly could wait for hours, can’t wait for seconds.  Am I part of the epidemic, of course.

What I noticed last week in Orlando was the effect of the smartphone on a tradeshow.  It could eventually lead to the demise of the tradeshow.  Three reasons:

1)  Your potential clients that are walking through the show, with you hoping to catch their eye?  Too bad, they just walked right by, with their head down, looking at voicemails or a video of three Norwegian electricians doing cannonballs into a vat of chocolate pudding.  I saw this many times, somehow resisting the urge to trip them (attendees, not electricians)

2)  Attendance seems light, but registration is strong.  People are much more in touch, so they know when they have other obligations to attend to instead of going to the tradeshow.  People that were on their way may have gotten e-mails during the previous session.  So, instead of waiting, they feel the urgency to work on the issue now.

3)  Tradeshow personnel also are not engaging prospective clients as in years past.  You would always see rows of people standing on the edge of their booth, waiting for clients, talking to other vendors or passerbys.  Now, they are slumped over in chairs, using their phones for business or downloading video of two Norwegian plumbers making a functional vehicle out of sardine cans.  Looks terrible and if I am walking the show, I don’t stop, I keep walking, wondering why I bothered.

Those are my thoughts and observations.  Its an ugly trend that is hurting the ROI on tradeshows.   Would love to hear your views (and e-mail me any interesting video involving Norwegian skilled labor).  Cheers, Doug

Marketing Elder Care with Facebook – Use Your Business FAN Pages Wisely! (Video)

Social Networking: You Better Start Getting Personal

What You Can Learn About Senior Living From Charlie Sheen

2 Tips for Making Your Goals Attainable

Patients flock to Facebook for health care needs

How One Degree Makes All the Difference

Enjoy the fist weekend of Spring!

Positive Attitude — Positive Impression

Mature Market Experts Gem of The Day: Death of the “Continuing Care Retirement Community”

In the Nursing Home, Assisted Living, Home Health and Support, and Independent Living business, we HAVE to be available when the customer needs us, but are we?

Social Media Can Make a Difference in Your Digital Marketing

More and more senior communities, care and service providers and product companies have a  presence in the world of social media.  However, many clients continue to come to us every day for advice on getting started, the extent of what they should do, how to measure the benefits, etc.

We can help you in this process.  The main thing is to put your initial thoughts down on paper and then take action.  Ask yourself a few simple questions:

-          How much time to we have to devote to Social Media?

-          Do we feel qualified to put a plan in place, set up pages, etc

-          Is our competition using Social Media?  If not, great, get ahead of them, if yes, you better catch up and pass them!

-          If you work with a company to get everything set up, such as New LifeStyles, is there someone at your company that can maintain your presence, keep things updated, respond to leads and perform other basic functions?

Once you get these questions answered, you are ready to go.  Just contact New LifeStyles and we can get your Social Media plan in place!  You can e-mail or call Luke to get started (800-961-7750).

Where do you need the most help with Social Media?  Let us know so we can make sure our plans are covering the needs of our clients.  Thanks!  Doug