How Your Funeral Home Can Own Your Local Community on Facebook

Article by: Mark Thogmartin, VP of Business Development at DISRUPT Media

You may have created a beautiful Facebook page for your funeral home. The engagement on your page may be excellent, with many fans Liking, Sharing, and Commenting on your posts. But if these folks do not live within your service area, your page will do little to increase your business and improve your bottom line. So, how do you generate visibility for your page among the people most likely to become your customers? Here are some ideas:

• Use photos and images of places and/or people instantly recognizable to your local public. As users breeze through the images that fill their news feeds, they are more likely to slow down and stop when they see an image of someone or something they recognize. A photo of a beautiful sunset framing a local landmark will garner attention and Likes. Perhaps you can invite Comments by asking “Have you ever picnicked here?” or “Do you have wonderful memories of this place?” Facebook native video has been shown to improve reach in the news feed. It does not need to be studio quality. If folks recognize a face or location featured by the video still image, they will probably stop, click, and watch. Imprinting your logo on photos or including a shot of your funeral home in the video will generate positive connections to your brand.

• Recommend and feature local establishments and businesses on your page. This will not only generate goodwill among your local business owner friends, but it will also cause viral exposure as you tag them in posts, thereby increasing the sharing that may occur as a result. Use your cell phone camera to take photos of you or your employees as they patronize the restaurants, theaters, shops, organizations, and agencies in the area. If you have recently undergone a remodeling project at your home, feature photos of the finished product with the contractor’s name prominently displayed.

• Take an active part in community events, and publicize your involvement on your Facebook page. Perhaps you can drive your funeral home’s Hearse in the local parade and take video or photos to post. Sponsor an event at the local school, and include a photo of yourself and the principal, the homecoming queen, or the spelling bee champion. Sponsor a little league team, and congratulate them on every victory or at least congratulate them on a game well played.

• Host a contest on your page in which local places or people are featured. Take photos of the funeral home owner’s dog on a walk, but take the photos from an unusual angle or framed in such a way as to give only a slight hint of where the photo was taken. Invite comments as to where Fido was on his walk that evening. Or, how’s this for an idea…hold a Halloween contest in which the winners are chauffeured, by you, in the Hearse, to a local restaurant for a Halloween themed meal. The restaurant owners can participate by creating a special “ghoulish” menu just for the winning couple.

With a little imagination and planning, you and your team can find fun and creative ways to appeal to the local population on your Facebook page. If you run out of ideas, our team at DISRUPT Media has worked with a number of funeral homes to help them successfully tell their “story” through our exclusive four part FUNERAL Social Design Process. Our process is what enables DISRUPT Media to claim that we are the funeral profession’s only full-service social media management firm. Our clients who are a part of our FUNERAL Social Design Process are seeing an increase in post reach and engagement of over 300%. Go to http://funeralsocial.com to find out more about the services we offer.