Blogging for Funeral Homes

How can funeral homes use blogs as a value-added service to their families?

There are some general strategies that would apply to all funeral homes and then others techniques can be applied whether your funeral home is in a large city or a smaller town.

General Blogging Strategies for All Funeral Homes

• Press Releases
• Upcoming Funeral Home Events
  
• Special Memorial Events and Guest Register Signing
• Helpful Information About Funerals
• Frequently Asked Questions
  

Press Releases:
Let your community (and the world) know if you have had any promotions or new hires. If your funeral home has received any awards, recognitions, or designations. Plus create a Press Release your your firm or staff have achieved any anniversaries, such as 50 years of supporting your local service club, or a staff member has been employed for 20, 25, 30 or more years. These may seem minor or insignificant, but it helps humanize your company and after a while, you will be surprised how many people mention those items to you. As a bonus, you may get your story picked up by your local media!

Upcoming Funeral Home Events:
Do you have Grief Support Group meetings, Open Houses, Funeral Home Tours, Cremation or Pre-Planning Seminars, and Christmas Memorial Services? Use your blog to promote them. Yes, put these events in Calendar module of your website, but using your blog, will get in front of your community's eye easier and with more detail.

Special Memorial Events and Guest Register Signing:
Even though most funeral homes that might be experimenting with a blog will probably already have some form of Online Guest Book, you should create a blog posting letting your community know that they can come by the funeral home to sign the Register. For instance, for President Gerald Ford, Princess Diana, or the slain RCMP Officers, many funeral homes made guest books available to be signed, so the next time this happens you can create a blog giving people the details.
This also applies for Special Local Memorial Services for these types of people. Sure it is going to be covered in newspaper, TV, and more popular websites, but since you are the local authority on death and funerals, you can make a positive comment or promotion of an event.

Helpful Information About Funerals:
Your current website may have a "Helpful Info" area but that should not stop you from adding to your content. During slow periods have different members of your staff write short explanations about:

• Why do People View Their Loved Ones?
• What is Involved in Embalming?
• Suggestions for Personalizing Services (this can be continually updated)
• Social Security Benefits

Once you are ready to update the content of your funeral home website, all of your homework is already done.

Frequently Asked Questions:
Similar to helpful information, as you have to answer questions for the families that you are serving or for inquiries over the telephone, write them down - or better yet, enter them into your blog and select "Save As Draft" until you are ready to post each question. Once you have a dozen or so, have your web developers upload the new questions to your existing FAQs page.

For Funeral Homes in Smaller Towns:
Blogs are a great way to communicate with the residents (and former residents) of your town. Your funeral home website or blog could become the portal so that members of your community can keep abreast of the towns activities. Whether it is plays, art shows, parades, church bazaars, your web presence will "virtually" bring the town together. Even people who no longer reside there, probably check your website for recent deaths. This also applies to snowbirds who like to keep in touch - many funeral homes that are located where winters are cold have members of their community travel South, and constantly receive condolences via their website saying, "Joan, we are really sorry to hear that your Mom died. When we get back from Florida in April we will have you over for tea."

For Funeral Homes in Larger Cities:
Most likely you are in a competitive situation so the best thing to do is start a blog. Get your blog established. Yes, if possible, have it part of or associated to your website, but don't let your web developer impede your progress with high costs and design issues - blogs were designed so that the non-techies could could communicate on the Internet with ease and little expense.

Once you get started you can have your web developers insert a small column window on your website listing all of your recent postings. Throughout your blog postings, link back to your website: "For More Information About the Benefits of Viewing - Click Here"
After a while, you will have compiled a lot great material so that you can update your website or have enough in-house content for a Newsletter or eNewsletter.

I am sure that there are a lot more great ideas out there from fellow funeral professionals, please feel free to add your comments.