You’re probably already familiar with user-generated content (UGC) and how valuable it can be in promoting your senior living brand. But UGC’s little sister is employee-generated content, which can prove just as valuable.
Below, we explore what employee-generated content is, its benefits, and tips for encouraging it in your community.
Executive Summary: Employee-Generated Content Can Boost Your Senior Living Marketing
- Employee-generated content is similar to user-generated content in that employees create content about your community and share it on their own personal social media channels.
- Content your employees create gives prospects another perspective on your community.
- Employee-generated content also helps marketing teams fill in content gaps and support efforts to have more human-generated content.
- Provide employees with clear guidelines on posting etiquette, hashtags, privacy, HIPAA, and guideline violations.
Table of Contents
What is employee-generated content?
Why is employee-generated content so powerful in senior living?
Benefits of employee-generated content
Tips for encouraging more employee-generated content
What is employee-generated content?
Employee-generated content is exactly as it sounds: Your employees act as influencers by sharing videos, images, and experiences about working for your senior living community. They can share these things on their own personal social media channels. They can also appear in your community’s social media content. Or they can do a combination of creating their own content and appearing in your brand’s content.
Why is employee-generated content so powerful in senior living?
People love hearing what other people have to say about the community. This is why reviews matter. (This is known as social proof.) While you could argue a community’s employees are biased, employees are still people with their own thoughts and opinions. Not to mention, they’re not being paid to spin your community a certain way.
Plus, your employees show another side of your community, one that’s not easy to duplicate in marketing materials. Think about it: Your community’s success rests on the day-to-day experiences residents and families have within your four walls. You could have the most amazing amenities in the world, but if your employees are rude, unhelpful, or unkind, those amenities won’t mean much to the family that’s worried about their mom in memory care. Or the older woman whose husband needs assistance getting on and off the toilet.
Bottom line: Your staff matters to your community’s marketing success, and likely much more than you even realize. What employees have to say about working in your community can lend a lot of credibility to the marketing claims you make on your website and elsewhere.
Benefits of employee-generated content:
- Employee-generated content helps build trust. What employees have to say about working in your community can lend a lot of credibility to the marketing claims you make on your website and elsewhere.
- Employee-generated content helps maintain that all-important authentic online presence while building overall brand awareness about your community. Employee-generated content tends to be less polished—and that’s a good thing. Day-in-the-life videos can be especially compelling.
- Employee-generated content feeds the current trend for human-generated content. According to Sprout Social’s 2026 Content Strategy Report, the #1 thing consumers want brands to prioritize is human-generated content. People are tired of AI slop.
- Employee-generated content boosts senior living marketing teams. Marketing teams are already stretched thin, trying to do more with fewer marketing dollars. A posse of influencers and content creators can help fill the gaps.
Tips for encouraging more employee-generated content
Provide clear guidelines.
People need guardrails. Otherwise, someone will eventually run amok, which can hurt your community and the employees who are following the rules.
Clear guidelines keep everyone in check. Some items to clearly communicate in your guidelines:
- Posting etiquette. The last thing you want is someone spending company time creating endless TikToks. Let employees know that while you encourage them to share experiences on their personal social media channels, doing so shouldn’t interfere with their daily job responsibilities.
- Handles and hashtags. Don’t assume your employees know all your handles or the best hashtags to use. Provide them with a list (and keep it updated).
- Privacy and HIPAA. Reiterate rules around resident privacy and HIPAA. If your community requires residents and their families to give permission to have their photos taken, include this policy in the guidelines and tell employees that before posting anything featuring a resident, the marketing team must review it to ensure the resident has given permission.
- Resident dignity and respect. Remind employees to always question themselves when taking photos or videos involving residents. Are the residents depicted in a respectful, dignified way? If not, the employee shouldn’t take the picture or shoot the video.
- Consequences for guideline violations. The guidelines won’t mean anything if you don’t enforce them. Explain who’ll be in charge of enforcement (someone from the marketing team makes the most sense) and outline the consequences if an employee violates the guidelines.
- PRO TIP: Make sure the punishment fits the crime (in other words, don’t make it one-size-fits-all). For example, what happens if an employee posts a pic featuring a resident who declined having their picture taken? If it was an honest mistake and the employee didn’t realize the resident was on the no-no list, a warning is sufficient along with some ongoing training. Intentional rule-breaking or repeat offenders will warrant bigger consequences.
Empower employees to create strong content.
Providing easily accessible assets, like logos, images, and appropriate b-roll, can help take an employee’s content from meh to WOW. Making certain hardware available to your employees, like tripods and lavalier mics, can also be helpful. You can also provide tips and tricks for taking great videos. And don’t forget about giving employees branded swag, like shirts and hats, that they can wear in their videos.
Tag, comment, and cross-promote.
Don’t let your employees’ hard work operate in a vacuum! Comment on their posts. Share and cross-promote their content. You could even have a fun feature called “Employee post of the month” that you share on your social media channels, website, and newsletter.
Offer incentives
People love rewards! Consider running a monthly raffle for an Amazon or Starbucks gift card, and include every employee who posts content that month. At the end of the year, you could do the “top three” employee brand advocates and give larger monetary gifts to the winning staff members.
Need help creating compelling content that drives conversions? Let’s talk.
Our senior living team of marketers, designers, and writers has decades of experience that translates into effective copy that can convert web traffic into tours and tours into move-ins. Get in touch and let’s chat about your content needs.
