After a long day at the office, you’re feeling accomplished.

You set up your team’s schedule of events, conducted an arrangement conference, completed a stack of paperwork, and found time to reply to emails. Then you realize you forgot one thing…

You didn’t brainstorm ideas for your funeral home’s social media.

There goes your evening.

For social media success, you need to keep your social media profiles fresh, engaging, and educational for families. But you may not always have the time to be creative and make a plan without missing any steps. That’s okay!

If you’re brand-new to social media or simply want strategies to improve, these 9 tips can help.

Brush up on digital marketing terms

To better understand your social media, you need to familiarize yourself with marketing lingo. Words like “clicks,” “engagement,” “impressions,” and “views” are associated with it. Knowing their definitions can help you set goals, build your online presence, and improve your social media.

We’ve created a digital marketing terms cheat sheet that you can use as a reference! Access it here.

Know your audience

Whether you’ve been posting content for a while or want to start somewhere, you should always keep your audience in mind. For funeral homes, there are two audience categories: preneed and at-need. Some people might fall into both categories.

When you’re planning content, you want to think of ideas that both groups would find valuable. For at-need families, you need to post more than obituaries. Families need to know you’re trustworthy and can guide them through the difficult journey ahead. Preneed families need educational information about how they can plan ahead for their funerals with your business.

>>> Learn more about your audience and post ideas here.

Use a consistent brand voice

What is your funeral home’s personality?

That might seem like a strange question to consider, but it’s important to think about to determine your brand voice. Marketing experts at HubSpot say, “Your brand voice is the personality your brand takes on in all of its communications. Your voice serves as a guide of what to say and how to say it.” (HubSpot)

Whatever you post on social media or your website will build your brand voice and shape how families view your business. If you’re like many funeral directors, you want to be seen as trustworthy, empathetic, knowledgeable, etc. That means you should adopt a trustworthy and empathetic tone on social media to project that consistent brand voice.

How you say something is just as important as what you post, so don’t overlook the importance of developing a brand voice and posting great content.

>>> Get great content ideas here.

Keep a content calendar focused on value

French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

If you want to improve your funeral home’s social media success, you need a content plan tailored to your audience so you can meet various social media goals, including:

– Increasing page followers

– Boosting impressions

– Standing out from your competitors

That means you need to plan your content! Not only does planning ahead protect you from needing to find things to post each day, but you can save time by planning weeks or months at a time.

An easy way to create a content calendar is to first determine which days you want to post content. Every day might be a bit ambitious, but 2-3 days a week could be sustainable.

Let’s say you determine you want to post on Tuesdays and Fridays. From there, you need to plan out the type of content to share that fits your audience. You could share photos of your staff and facilities on Tuesdays and answer funeral-related questions on Fridays. Keep content varied and valuable.

>>> Click here for more ideas to try.

>>> Click here if you’re too busy to create a content calendar.

Write clear captions

Remember the brand voice point from earlier? You need to determine your business’s voice to be able to write captions that sound like your brand and align with the content you decide to post.

To write clear captions, you first need to have content to post, whether it be an image, video, link to an article, etc. Try to write a caption that encourages people to click the link, like your post, or engage with your brand. Think about why the reader should care about your post (what’s in it for them?).

From there, use a writing assistant or spell-check tool to ensure your captions are free of errors and strike the right tone every time.

>>> Or you can work with a team of marketers and professional copywriters.

Look for appropriate images

You’re going to need images or graphics to go along with the captions you write, but you need to do this legally. Don’t make the mistake of finding images on the internet to post that you didn’t create, didn’t get permission to use, or didn’t give credit to. It’s possible to find royalty-free, copyright-free images that are available for commercial use (always check the terms of service), but you typically have to pay to license images you want to use.

Many funeral directors don’t have time to dabble in graphic design, take photos, or find royalty-free images. Get time back in your day and work with a digital marketing company that employs professional graphic designers who can create unique content for your funeral home.

Try video

If you want to post content to improve your social media and connect with families on an emotional level, video is the way to go. It helps you be memorable, enhance your online reach, and share the people behind your funeral home. Video can be candid/organic or professionally shot, produced, and edited.

Candid or organic videos can be as simple as you going “live,” sharing a short video of your facilities, or answering a question for families. You can even use your cell phone and a simple microphone to create these in a pinch.

But if you’re like most funeral professionals, you want high-quality videos that highlight your story and passion for what you do. An experienced, knowledgeable AV team can achieve that! For example, our AV team films on location, uses professional equipment, lighting, and sound, and edits the footage to create unique videos.

>>> See what else video can do.

Engage with your audience

After you publish your posts, you’ll likely see a few reactions and comments over time as your page gains followers. Followers might “like” or “heart” obituaries; on other posts, people may leave comments or ask questions. Depending on the comment, you should interact with it by giving it a “like” or reply with an answer to a question. This action will show your followers that there are real people behind the business profile, and they’ll be more likely to continue engaging with your posts.

Interact with other businesses

Your funeral home has relationships with other businesses in your community, from local restaurants to non-profits. You want to interact with these businesses on social media to increase your page reach and get in front of new potential followers!

If your Chamber of Commerce posts about an event they’re hosting, you can “like” the post or write a comment. You can also browse local news profiles and share posts that might be relevant to your followers, such as stories about hometown heroes or new construction projects affecting your town.

These other businesses might even return the favor by sharing your posts with their followers!

Managing social media isn’t easy. We can help.

With everything else on your plate, managing social media is something you likely can’t prioritize. We understand. Our social media managers, copywriters, videographers, and graphic designers are here to create content tailored to families, so you don’t have to worry about a thing.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what our clients have to say about the results they’ve seen and the time they’ve saved:

“I’ll get emails on specific content that is scheduled to be posted, which is nice because there’s not much I have to worry about now that FDL has taken over that for us.” – Matt Bailey, Bailey Family Funeral Homes

“I saw positive results as soon as I signed up…I don’t even have to think about social media because I know FDL has it covered.” – Curry Belk, Belk Funeral Home

“I don’t have to worry about our social media anymore. I used to spend hours each night wondering what to post – now, I may spend 10-15 minutes a week approving a few posts that FDL wants to send out for us.” – Jonathan Acosta, Norco Family Funeral Home

“FDL also saves us a lot of time. It’s so much easier to review and approve a post that FDL created for us than for our staff to create a social media post from scratch.” – Jonathan Quier, Ludwick Funeral Homes and Cremation Care, Inc.

Ready for social media success?

Request a demo!