How Facebook Got (Really) Good
As we prepared to launch Carillon’s first-ever social media program late last year, we gave a lot of thought to what we wanted the company Facebook page, in particular, to be about. We decided that what we really wanted was not a company Facebook page at all, but a family scrapbook — informal, genuine and unscripted.
We set out to create a virtual home that perfectly captures what it means to be Carillon, and now, six months later, that’s what we have. Our goal in the beginning was to post photos and stories, event notices and company milestones that would give prospective residents and families all the information they would want or need to make their home with us. Facebook is a corporate marketing tool, after all. We posted pretty pictures of our communities, proud facts and figures about sterling ratings and pleasing customer satisfaction reports. As the “Likes” trickled in, slowly, we checked off that all-important task of corporate marketing – the social media metric.
We didn’t start to love our Facebook page until we stopped posting the kind of photos you would hang over your fireplace, and started posting the kind you put in your wallet. A resident at a community party, her hand over her mouth in mid-giggle. A team member dancing in the dining room, for no apparent reason at all. A corporate executive caught in a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. The “Likes” shot up, the comments sprang forth, and we shared these homespun photos and stories with friends and colleagues.
We stopped posting what we thought others would want to find out about us, and started posting what we already knew and loved about one another. We wrote little captions under the photos the way you would in your family photo album, with an air of familiarity and inside jokes. We gave others a peek inside our everyday lives, and stopped worrying whether we were interesting enough, or fun enough, or photogenic enough, to be featured. We started getting real, and that’s when Facebook got really good.
Ya’ll check us out on Facebook, now, you hear?
Michelle Taylor, Director of Communications
michelle.taylor@carillonassistedliving.com
Posted in Resident and Community Life, Resources, Sage Stories on June 7, 2013