How to Increase Your Residents’ Community Connection to Fight Loneliness and Isolation

If your communities are like most others you have fewer visitors and your residents are not able to get out into the community as they could just a short while ago. This can cause people to feel a little isolated and lonely. The decrease in interaction with others can also impact your residents’ health.

GPS-based geofencing can connect your residents to their community and neighbors  

Here’s just one creative strategy to fight back and help keep your staff and residents connected to your community and neighbors no matter how long limited visitation and contact with others outside your community are required.  

Here are the steps…

1. Using your CRM or other marketing tools identify the neighborhoods where your current residents used to live. Identify the areas where there is a higher concentration and make a note of the addresses. If that’s too difficult pick a few areas within a few miles of your community to start. 
2. With any resident who is interested, take their photo and/or produce a short video (30 seconds or less) telling people what they’re doing and that they would love to hear from their neighbors in the community how their families are doing.
3.  Using the photos and videos of your residents, and/or staff if your residents are reluctant, build digital advertisements for your geofencing campaign.
4. Your community’s advertisements can be as simple as a photo and a call to action (CTA). CTA’s should state the action that you want the reader to take. For example, “click to tell me how your family’s doing” or “Click here to share your day and photo with me and my friends at AAA Retirement Community.” There are numerous geofencing providers. AdRoll is a leader in the space and a good choice for novices. Expect to pay about $20 to $25 per thousand digital advertisements sent to the homes and businesses you target, and a few hundred dollars more to develop the advertisements you’ll need to run the campaign.
5. Set up a new landing page on your website so people can click on your advertisements and share their thoughts, photos, and videos with your residents. The website landing page should have minimal content with clear and simple step-by-step instructions on how to share text, photo, and/or video replies.
6. Share the replies with your residents and staff via email and print them so they can be shared on a wall or bulletin board in a very visible place in your community.

Using technology to connect to others is an effective and low-cost way to counteract some of the challenges people are facing when combatting loneliness and isolation. In the future, I’ll share some very creative ways that video technology is being used to connect people in senior living communities of all sizes and care levels to their friends and families.    

If you need any help or additional information on setting up a geofencing program let me know. To request a demo of how integrated CRM marketing technology drives occupancy increases click here.

Otherwise, be well and stay positive!