The other day, I read an article on Connecting Directors that reported nearly half of all Facebook users are over the age of 35!

In the article, I also read that the 55+ Facebook demographic (also known as the Baby Boomers) has grown nearly 81% in the last two years! So my point is pretty obvious… you can’t afford to neglect your social media presence.

I wrote an article on some huge social media mistakes I’ve seen funeral homes make in the last year. And since it’s a new year, it’s a great time to make some fixes that will make a big difference in your funeral home’s reach and engagement with client families.

So why not try making these 11 easy fixes to your social media today?

 

1. Customize your cover photos

Your social media cover photos are usually the first thing the user sees when they land on your profile. Cover photos showcase your company, so it’s worth using these to brand your social media presence consistently. A lot of funeral homes make the mistake of using a photo of their facility as their cover photo. While giving visitors a peek into your funeral home is great, most photos we found didn’t exactly show off their facility in a good way.

Instead, we found a lot of pixelated, old photos that made the funeral home look scary and intimidating. Instead of following everyone else, why not create a unique cover photo on your profiles? You can customize your cover photos on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ company pages – and you can customize your Twitter background too. Some funeral homes are already doing this successfully, here are a few examples:

Walker Funeral Home‘s Facebook page is a great example of a cover photo that builds a trust factor with families. With a unique variety of photos of their friendly staff and facilities, their audience gets a peek at who they are and the kind of care they offer:

 

Caleb Wilde, a sixth generation funeral director at Wilde Funeral Home, uses his Twitter to images to show off his unique personality and viewpoints in funeral service. We love his Twitter bio the most… it says “I’m the last person to let you down in Parkesburg, PA.” His Twitter background, photo and bio show that you shouldn’t be afraid to have a little fun with your online personality:

 

We also like Skinner Funeral Home’s Google+ page because their cover photo includes a beautiful photo that has a calming effect on the user. Again, this is another great example that shows you don’t just have to put a photo of your staff and facilities on your social media… you can also get creative:

 

Need some help figuring out what type of cover photo will work best for your funeral home? Check out Mashable’s guide to social media profile photos.

 

2. Update your “about” section

One of worst mistakes you could make on social media is forgetting to properly fill your “About” or “Bio” section out. By including information like your address, website URL (we’ll get to that next), hours and contact information in them, you’re making it easy for your potential families, community and press to get a hold of you.  Plus, doing all this will help with local SEO (which helps you target mobile device users), regular SEO and on-site search. Google+ has excellent search features (no surprise there), but all the social sites have their own internal search engines, and a good about page will help people find you.

Sunset Hills Cemetery, Funeral Home & Crematorium makes it easy for their audience to find their website… along with their address, contact information and hours:

3. Link to your website on each social media channel

Social media is a great way to communicate with potential client families, but it’s also an excellent tool for sending them back to your website to see what you have to offer. The only way they can do this is if you link to your website in your social media profiles. It’s amazing how many funeral homes forget to do this, especially because it’s so easy to do! Need some help linking your website to your social profiles? Here’s how:

On Twitter, go to ‘edit profile’ and put your website link in the appropriate field:

 

On your Facebook page (NOT your personal profile), click the ‘update page info’ button and scroll down to near the bottom. You will see a field for entering your website (you can enter multiple websites if you wish). This will show up in the contact info section under the about button on your page:

 

On Google+ go to ‘about’, then edit the ‘links’ section to add your website. You can also add a live link in the ‘story’ section:

 

4. Encourage your employees to go social

Involving your employees in your social media presence is a great way to put a face to the names your potential client families see online. Encourage your employees to add your company to their bios, to be active on your social media profiles, to comment on posts on your page, to respond to customer queries, and more. Not only does this humanize your online presence, but it will also increase your engagement on social. Just be sure to set some guidelines for employee social media engagement prior to letting them loose on your account.

 

5. Add images to your posts

Did you know that pictures are the most shared content on social media? It shouldn’t be a surprise, given the huge popularity of Instagram and Pinterest. More images = more engagement, so include images in your social media posts to attract more eyes to your content. As you can see below, the funeralOne team used an image to ask our social media audience a question, and the engagement was amazing. From that one post, we received 33 likes, 11 shares and 72 comments!

Need help finding great images? Use tools like Pinterest, Google Images, Flickr’s Creative Commons and other image-based websites.

 

6. Expand your reach with hashtags

When you get started on social media, it can be hard to build a following at first. One of the best ways to expand your reach and build a following is through the use of hashtags. Hashtags are those little words next to the number sign (ie. #FuneralHome #DeathCare) that you see a lot of on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram.

Here is an example of a hashtag used by the funeralOne team to expand the reach of our content:

Hashtags are used to identify the conversations and messages surrounding a certain topic. For example, FCCFA used hashtag #FuneralDirector to tweet an article on the topic of funeral directors. The smartest, social saavy funeral homes consistently use and follow certain hashtags to:

– Identify your brand

– Keep tabs on the conversations related to your brand

– Contribute to those conversations on a regular basis

– Expand your content’s reach

– Track what happens to your content on social media

– Check on trending topics

The great thing about hashtags is they are so easy to start using, andthey have such a profound impact on your social media efforts. Need some help using hashtags? The Next Web’s guide to hashtags will help you get started.

 

7. Include a Twitter handle in your sharing button

If your funeral home has a blog, you’re probably using some type of social sharing plugin that allows people to share, “like” or tweet your content (like the one below).

 

One of the mistakes many people make when using a social sharing tool is leaving it at the default settings. Usually, when someone shares your content, the user’s post will promote the plugin developer’s social media account rather than yours. For example, if I tweeted content on a funeral home’s blog using the social sharing tool called XYZ, my tweet would be promoting XYZ’s Twitter handle rather than the funeral home’s.  That means the funeral home gets no benefit from social sharing… and who doesn’t want to benefit from a tool they’re using on their blog?

If you customize the settings of your social sharing tool to include your Twitter handle, you can easily track what is happening with your content and respond instantly to mentions, keeping you more connected with client families. Here’s a great example below, from the funeralOne blog.

The funeralOne team customized our social sharing tool to include our Twitter handle so we can keep track of conversations surrounding our content:

 

8. Remove links from updates

When you post a social media update with a link on Facebook and Google+, the site pulls in the image and excerpt. After that, you don’t need the original link anymore because the thumbnail and description are clickable. Instead of annoying your fans and followers by having the same information twice, remove the link from the update window and use that space to provide your own commentary. Let’s compare the examples below:

In this status, the text link is completely unnecessary and makes the status look very busy:

 

 

However, here, ASD Answering Services deleted the link from their status so they could provide their own commentary on the article. Doesn’t it look clean?

 

9. Add a CTA to your photos

We’ve said before that images are the backbone of social media sharing. But don’t just share a photo; use it to encourage users to take action with a call to action. Hubspot has a guide on how to do this for Facebook, but it will work for any social media site. Here are a couple of examples I really liked:

Skype’s timeline photo includes a scene from an ad and a short link that’s easy for users to follow:

 

Macy’s uses their cover photo to promote a hashtag that supports a social media campaign they’re running:

If you have great images of people enjoying your funeral services, why not use these to entice your viewers by wrapping them up into your own social media campaign? You have everything to gain, and nothing to lose!

 

10. Use social media advertising

Twitter has promoted tweets, Facebook has sponsored stories (but they’re on their way out so take advantage of them sooner than later) and now Google is working on something similar for Google+. Social advertising is huge and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Use social ads(below) to make your funeral home’s content stand out, and you’ll be surprised how much your traffic, engagement and business will increase. For help getting started with social advertising, check out this grande guide by one of our favorite marketing firms, Eloqua.

 

11. Promote your Facebook page

Do you ever wonder how companies get thousands of Facebook likes in just a few months? It’s simple, from Facebook’s “Promote Page” tool. By promoting your Facebook page, you’re increasing your audience and the amount of people who see and engage with you online. Here’s how you can promote your page:

To promote your page, simply click the “Promote Page” button above your cover photo:

 

Then, you’ll want to figure out your target demographic. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to target a specific audience. You can sort them out through their country, likes, interests, age, gender, etc.:

 

After you choose your budget and the duration of the campaign, you’re done! We love this tool because it helps you reach people who would like your Facebook page if they actually knew about it. To get additional help with Facebook advertising and tips, check out this guide to Facebook.

 

Final words

These 11 social media fixes provide an easy way to improve the way you manage social media in 2014. Do at least half of these and you are sure to notice an increase in interactions with potential client families! What are you waiting for… these are all VERY low hanging fruits in your social media strategy, so get started on them today!

How do you plan to improve your social media in 2014? Tell us in the comments below!