I always get asked a lot of questions when I tell someone I work at a mortuary… and run their blog. People always ask: “What does a mortuary have to blog about?” – well, that’s a good question!

I didn’t know exactly myself until I began working on the project several months ago with my CEO, Neil O’Connor. He had the foresight several years ago to create a blog, but the content didn’t quite match the grand dreams he had.

At the beginning of this year, he decided a re-vamp was necessary (since blogging was bigger than ever) so he asked for volunteers from our staff to join a blog team.

I initially hesitated, asking the above question & wondering where this could possibly go.

We had our first blog meeting, and we turned in our first blogs, and we all wrote about the same thing: death & the mortuary.Talk about depressing! Our “re-vamp” needed a re-vamp.

Neil approached me about taking over as editor, and after my first blog post failure I felt passionate about making this work. I jumped at the chance to take this on. I just finished a master’s degree in English Literature and editing is something I love doing – who would’ve thought a mortuary could put my degree to some use?

The new game plan was to keep the blog upbeat, providing inspiring, thought-provoking and encouraging content for normal people dealing with the ups & downs of life.

We launched our blog this year on May 1st  with a small following of 25. 2 months later, we are at 118. It’s not a huge number but it’s a surprisingly nice following for something as obscure as a mortuary blog!

Here’s why I think it’s working, and why other mortuaries should consider blogging:

Blogging Helps Us Inspire:
We decided to write on a ratio with about 80% of our content being positive, allowing the other 20% to be death or grief-related. We can’t and don’t want to ignore death & grief on our blog, but we also don’t want to be constantly weighing people down with sorrow & pain. Keeping the content uplifting and relevant to people in all different aspects of life is  unique to our mortuary blog.

Blogging Keeps Us Active in The Community:

We know that mortuary blogs are probably not going to be the next BIG thing, so keeping the content community related & relevant to our readership is really important. O’Connor has an extensive reputation in our community so incorporating other local businesses, churches, organizations & community figures is something we try to do –  and will be exploring more thoroughly.

Blogging  Encourages Team Building:
Because our blog team is exclusively made up of our staff, we have been able to learn a great deal about each other through our writing. It’s been a tremendous blessing to learn about my co-workers in such deep and wonderful ways.

Not only do we feel more bonded in our mission to blog & serve our community, but I think the blog has enabled us to present ourselves as a strong united front of professionals, and most importantly, as real people. Our industry does not have a great reputation in the “heart” aspect of service. However,  it seems like a lot of that stigma has been erased for anyone who sees our Blog, Pinterest, or Facebook pages.

My hope is that our blog conveys our company’s heart for all the people we interact with.

Overall, it’s been a great experience and a lot of fun discovering what social media can do for a mortuary.

See how you can make your mortuary a positive force in your community by starting up a blog and carving out your niche in the social media world.

What do you think of mortuary blogs? What other ways do you think social media can benefit our industry? Share your thoughts!