Social media hasn’t traditionally been something we’d all think of as fundamental, but now it’s become essential. Since the pandemic started, we are all online more than ever. Social media usage has shot up, and it’s not just eyeballs, it’s new levels of engagement.

We recorded a podcast episode earlier this season featuring an active 80-year-old woman who for the first time is participating in Facebook groups. She even said she’s clicking on ads when they relate to her. This reminded us that people identify with stories and remember stories better than statistics or images. Social media is a powerful tool, especially today, because while it’s image-focused, it’s also story-centric. And right now is a great time to start telling better stories.

It is unusual to be able to share your organization’s narrative with audiences from very different places. Social media is an extremely useful tool in this regard. With social media, you can communicate your brand in a unique and authentic way. You can also build connections between residents’ families, staff and leadership, and prospects—all in one place where those groups have exposure to one another.

In terms of your community’s culture during Covid-19 and the world we see down the road, presenting how your community champions social distancing and safety measures is crucial. Showcase your hard-working employees, perhaps sanitizing common areas or bringing life and joy to the kitchen as they prep food for in-room delivery. Highlight personal interviews with residents that focus on how glad they are to be in such a safe, supportive place during this time. You’re reassuring your existing audience, and your prospects, that you’re going above and beyond.

Your culture is also your community-management work—the voice of your brand, from the language you use in captions, comments, and reshares, to the level of engagement you have with your audience. A community that invests time in engaging with their audience tells a story to customers that they value authentic human interaction and they value their residents like family.

3rdThird suggests leaning on content marketing while you’re unable to offer prospects in-person tours. While we don’t have in-person events going on, livestreamed and Zoom events can help keep leads engaged. We collaborate on event ideas, we handle the technical setup and coach the community contact on how to best present the event and invite prospects to attend these virtual events from the comfort and safety of their own home.

We can’t give a one-size-fits-all answer to how your particular community or brand should respond to Covid-19 on Facebook because we’re seeing such varying situations across our client base. In general, though, we want to reinforce confidence in our audience about everything we’re doing, whatever the level of crisis is at the community.

The message isn’t, ‘Covid-19 will never happen here,’ but rather, ‘We are prepared for every possible situation and will keep you informed.’ The key is to handle these communications in a delicate way, where you direct traffic to more serious updates on the website. Or take the conversation offline and keep your social media space as a main point of positive updates and contact for your families.

There’s a lot you can do on the ground at the community, but we also want to mention the benefits our clients receive from working with a team of industry-savvy, social media professionals. With Facebook Ads, we can target by niche at an affordable spend. With traditional digital advertising, behavioral and lookalike audiences can often be a bigger buy-in, but on Facebook, a $500 or even $200 spend can be broken down into five or six precise groups for testing. Our targets are online, engaged and comfortable interacting with brands online in a way they might not be with traditional media.

With organic management, we focus on building a branded editorial calendar that’s in line with communication and storytelling goals during the pandemic, reinforcing customer trust and building your audience.

Visit 3rdthirdmarketing.com/pivot to see how we can help you optimize your social media presence!