Where Should Senior Living Reviews Be Posted?

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The short answer is “everywhere”.  Choosing a senior living residence or senior care provider is one of most important decisions a senior and their family will make. 

With 72% of consumers trusting businesses more if they read positive reviews about those businesses (Digital Strike, 2022), an accessible bank of positive reviews can make this important decision even easier for families.  

The real challenge is ensuring that your residence and its positive reviews are both easy for prospective clients to find throughout each stage of their senior care journey. Having reviews and testimonials present across your social media accounts, on your website, and on specialized review platforms creates a trust-building digital ecosystem that benefits your residence in three ways: 

  1. Reviews help support a healthy SEO strategy, making you even easier to find via search engines like Google. 
  2. Creates valuable, scalable touchpoints for future residents and their loved ones to develop a positive outlook of your residence and nurture a sense of trust. 
  3. Gives you access to one-on-one correspondence with your biggest fans. 

Why are Reviews so Important Anyway?

Offset Negative Media  

Having a growing collection of positive reviews can be a powerful way to influence the creation of a favorable narrative for senior care communities like yours. Coverage of senior care residences following the COVID-19 pandemic is an especially brutal example of the effect that negative press can have. The media can be unintentionally unforgiving when describing the woes of senior living, inspiring unnecessary doubt, fear, and hesitancy in seniors and their loved ones.  

Positive reviews can help offset negative press by giving prospective residents and their families and insider’s view of the great care and experiences your residence provides. Seeing glowing reviews from those in your care can help turn the tides for your business and support the generation of positive media coverage. 

Celebrate Your Residence's ‘Wow Experiences’  

68% of employees who receive accurate and consistent feedback feel fulfilled in their jobs (Zippia, 2021). What could be better than using residents’ reviews to recognize your staff for the outstanding care they provide?  

Testimonials from current residents and their loved ones provide you with exciting opportunities to congratulate your front-line team members and acknowledge the impact that their everyday actions have.  

This morale-boosting recognition creates a ripple effect through your residence, by affirming your caregivers’ sense of pride in their work, positive relationships with each other, and ultimately above-and-beyond care for your residents.  

Improve Your Residence with Ongoing Feedback. 

Reviews don’t all have to be positive to have a positive impact on your business. Engaging openly and constructively with negative reviews can give prospective clients the impression that your residence’s management team is responsive, open to feedback, and committed to making things right when things don't go to plan.  

While it’s always nice to be recognized for the great work that you and your care staff do, critical reviews can help you continue to refine your services, or address key resident pain points that may be going unnoticed.  

In the moment, you or your care staff may not receive the feedback required for you to make distinct alterations to your senior living residence. Having access to this valuable information allows you to either directly address concerns raised by residents or their family members on platforms like caredupon.ca, and to set future-oriented improvement goals for your business.  

Generate New Business by Supporting a Strong Digital Presence 

Ensuring that your reviews are distributed far and wide across your online presence can help you generate even more leads from prospective residents. Places like your business’ website, Facebook Page, Google Listing and third-party platforms like Cared Upon, work together to create a credible image for your residence. Here's how these online review sources can benefit you in a little more detail:  

Your website 

Your residence’s website is a powerful tool that helps future residents, their families, and other senior living professionals learn about your space, services, and amenities before they reach out. 

Having reviews visible helps potential clients create a positive association with your brand; they’re able to imagine themselves staying with you through the experiences of others. 

Google & Social Media Platforms 

With approximately 23% of senior living sales coming directly from online sources (Creating Results, 2018), nurturing and gaining the trust of prospective residents and their families is paramount to generating more move-ins.  

Keeping your profiles up-to-date and populated with positive reviews and testimonials, benefit the discovery of your business through search engines and places your residence in front of seniors and their families who are already using these social sites. 

Other 3rd Party Review Platforms 

With 68% of seniors present online (2016), up from just 32% in 2007 (BrightLocal, 2016), seniors are becoming search-savvy than ever.  

While your website is a fantastic and necessary place to have positive reviews displayed, clients know that you’re able to pick and choose what appears there. Although reviews posted to your Google listing or Facebook pages garner a little more trust, only 7% of consumers say they're 'not at all' suspicious of reviews on Facebook, while almost two thirds (62%) of consumers believe they've seen a fake review for a local business in the past year (BrightLocal, 2022). 

Using a vetted third-party platform to house your reviews can inspire more trust from prospective clients and their loved ones, helping them feel even more confident in choosing your residence. 

Platforms like Cared Upon have already established trust as a client-focused digital information hub, in addition to offering a place for clients to read reviews that are not directly affiliated with one specific care provider.  

For providers, Care Upon also offers a unique opportunity to view positive reviews and engage directly and resolve negative reviews before they’re posted. This astringent vetting process separates this platform from Google or Facebook where care providers have no control over who, or what is posted about their business.  

This integrated vetting process keeps scathing, personally directed reviews at bay, while supporting mutually beneficial client relationships between residences and the seniors who receive care from them. 

Last, but certainly not least, a third-party review platform can be great for discoverability and SEO, by generating share-worthy content for your brand to be repurposed on your social media channels, and by helping search engines detect the presence of user-generated content on your website, leading to a higher ranking in search results.  

Click here to find out more about how SEO can help you boost senior living move-ins.    

How Reviews Support the Senior Living Buyer’s Journey 

Additionally, your digital presence acts as a significant support for prospective residents through each stage of their purchase decision; in this case, their decision to stay with your residence. Click here to learn more about The Buyer’s Journey from Hubspot.  

In each of the following stages, reviews help ease feelings of uncertainty and worry, while simultaneously instilling a sense of confidence about your residence: 

  1. Awareness: After realizing a need for care, clients will begin their senior living provider search. Ensuring you have a robust digital footprint will help them discover you before your competitors. Having reviews present on third-party platforms like caredupon.ca, Google, across your social media channels and on your website will support potential clients at this stage.  
  2. Consideration: As clients move deeper into their journey, they’ll begin weighing their options. At this stage, finding and reading through unbiased personal experiences can tip the scales in your residence’s favor. Platforms like caredupon.ca function as an unbiased place for senior living reviews, and by being developed specially for the senior living industry, your residence’s listing is automatically placed in front of an audience of your ideal clients. 
  3. Decision: Congratulations! You’ve got a new resident—but the value of your residence’s reviews doesn’t stop here. These reviews help inform the expectations seniors and their loved ones have throughout the move-in process and for the duration of their stay.  
  4. Becoming Advocates: There’s only two things left for you to do now: 
    1. Provide the ‘wow experiences’ your new residents have read about  
    2. Encourage them to share! 


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