Using social media to market your care service

Facebook

If you’re looking for somewhere to start, Facebook is the platform of choice. With nearly 45 million people in the UK using it, it’s safe to say that a lot of the people you'll want to reach will already be using it.

There are a variety of functions that you can utilise, including:

• Creating a Facebook Page
  It’s important that you create a business page and not a personal profile as this will allow you to add business specific details, like your opening hours, location, a biography and a bit about the support you offer.
• Creating a private Facebook Group
  This is great for sharing updates and photos with relatives and loved ones.
• Creating promotional adverts
  This is perfect for recruitment as you can advertise to specific people based on your desired demographic, including age group, gender, location, job title etc.

Instagram

Instagram is great for showcasing your service in a more visual way and highlighting things you can’t capture in words – remember, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. It’s a fantastic tool for building a picture of what it’s like in your service for those in receipt of care and can be pivotal in helping relatives decide which service to choose for their loved ones.

It’s great to get in the habit of taking as many photos as possible, so be sure your team are capturing:

• Activities (in your service and externally)
• Food being served
• Celebrations like birthdays and Christmas
• Staff delivering care.

Here’s a handy guide on how to set up an Instagram business profile.

Twitter

Twitter is slightly harder to get used to, especially compared to Facebook and Instagram, but holds the added value of real-time conversations with thousands of people. Utilising Twitter will allow you to expand your brand, share your expertise and show your followers that you’re a leader in your chosen sector.

Here’s some more information on setting up a Twitter account.

TikTok

This is one of the newest platforms but is capturing a huge amount of interest with 3.7 million active users in the UK alone. What’s different about TikTok is that it solely uses video, allowing you to create short clips to showcase your service, your team and people you support.

You can share your profile with all the groups you can, from relatives and the people you support to staff members. For attracting new business, it's a great way of showing off what a real day is like in your service.

Here’s some information on how to set up a business TikTok account.

Top tips

• Respond to comments on your posts.
• Develop competitions to drive audience participation, like giveaways or discounts.
• Use eye catching images.
• Try to post on a regular basis but prioritise quality over quantity.
• Utilise insights to grow your social media, like who’s engaging with your posts, age ranges, locations etc.
• Use hashtags to help people find your content and think about having a hashtag just for your service.
• Gain consent from people who are identifiable in any images or videos you’re putting onto your social media platforms – remember you may need to consider mental capacity.
• Use high quality images.

There are a wide variety of other social media platforms, including YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn all of which can serve a purpose to you and your service. Regardless of what platform you use, make sure you're active as much as possible. If you’re completely new to social media, chose one platform, work on this and build onto it in stages, don’t try to jump into all of them at once.