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After attending and presenting at the 2009 AAHSA convention, it’s obvious that senior living communities are serious about figuring out what to do to promote their communities via the Internet.

Mary Beth Fritz from Greystone Communities, and Randy Eilts and I from GlynnDevins all presented on Monday morning to a group of 100-125 people who came out bright and early to learn more about digital strategies.

One statistic that particularly hit home with participants at the session was that in 2005, our communities were receiving approximately 10% of their initial inquiries via the Internet, and in 2009 that number jumped to 23%. That is a significant increase and emphasizes why communities want to be sure they are doing everything they can to make the most of their digital initiatives.

Here are some of the great questions we received after our session and on the tradeshow floor:
 
1.      Are communities sharing more via their web sites? If so, how much is too much?

2.      Which social media tactic should I use first? 

3.      If I start using Facebook, LinkedIn, You Tube, etc., who should manage this and how long will it take?

4.      How can I be sure that my web site is optimized for search engines?

5.      We have 4 to 5 community web sites and a corporate web site as well. They all need updates and I want them to have some consistencies. How would you recommend we create a strategy for this?

6.      What kind of video do you think works best on the web, and how much do I have to spend to create a video?

7.      How can I drive more people to my web site?

8.      What do I need to do to add Google Analytics to my web site? 

9.      I saw your example of an interactive site plan. Why do you recommend we invest in something like this?

10.   I want to create an online community/social networking site for my community. How can I go about doing this, and should it be something I let anyone view, or keep it protected for resident use only?

Over the next five weeks, we will take two of these questions each Wednesday and provide you with our thoughts on them, so stayed tuned and let me know if you have more questions by leaving a comment below or emailing me at jwait@glynndevins.com.

If you missed “Building Relationships in a Digital World” this year, we posted the presentation on the blog for you to review. It is in the left-hand column, under Presentations. Or you can follow this link:
Building Relationships in a Digital World. 

And for those of you who wanted a link to the social media video Randy showed in our presentation, here it is:  http://www.youtube.com/user/Socialnomics09#p/a/u/2/sIFYPQjYhv8