I’m happy to have been asked to contribute a chapter to the upcoming Kates-Boylston book, entitled The Funeral Director’s Guide to Social Media.

My chapter assignment is dedicated to Pinterest and how funeral homes can incorporate both pins and Pinterest marketing into their social media efforts.

Just a quick side note

As a side note, this is not my first chapter contribution to Kates-Boylston publications. The last Kates-Boylston book I contributed a chapter to was the The Funeral Director’s Economic Survival Guide: A Comprehensive Handbook on How to Cut Costs and Boost Revenue which was published in 2009.

My 2009-authored chapter (Chapter 4), entitled How to Allocate Marketing Dollars in a Tough Economy, was more about marketing budget allocation.

Since then, I’ve written numerous articles about digital and social media marketing for death care providers.

Back to present day

Writing an article is one thing, but writing a whole chapter … well, that requires some deeper research and that’s where I think you can help me!

Does this sound like you??

IF YOU ARE MARKETING FOR A FUNERAL HOME or are a FUNERAL HOME PROPRIETOR or MANAGE/OPERATE a DEATH CARE SERVICE OR are an INDUSTRY SUPPLIER using Pinterest in any way, shape or form to:

• Drive traffic
• Generate visibility or awareness
• Support or complement any marketing campaigns or PR outreach programs

… please consider being interviewed for this chapter, to be entitled Pinterest Marketing 101 for Funeral Homes, I’ve been assigned to write (and which is due, hello!, by or before New Years Eve!).

CLICK HERE TO BE INTERVIEWED. THANK YOU!

The post Pinterest & Death Care: The Funeral Director's Guide to Social Media appeared first on .

Volume 1: Work samples from ICCFA

If you’d like to see the individual items in the slideshow above with complete caption descriptions, you may do so here.

Volume 2: Advertisement makeovers and more

If you’d like to see the individual items in the slideshow above with complete caption descriptions, you may do so here.

The post Portfolio Samples appeared first on .

Hardly qualifies as a “Facebook of Death” in my view.

That said, however, the concept of how the Death Notice Directory was born was directly influenced by an experience on Facebook. Founder Glen Miller says, “One of our good friends recently lost a family member and posted an RIP message on her Facebook wall. Above her RIP message was a previous post made by her expressing what area of the house she enjoyed making love. The next subsequent post was an illustration of her Farmville score. I said to my wife, there has to be a more dignified way for people to share the loss of a family member.”

Hence the launch of Death Care Directory.

Learn more by visiting http://www.deathnoticedirectory.com/about.php.

The post The "Facebook of Death" for the dearly departed appeared first on .

Case in point … right here in my back yard … on February 18, 2011, Jennifer P. of Manassas, Virginia complained on Yelp about the Baker-Post Funeral Home & Cremation Center:

“Most expensive cremation service in town. I have been calling funeral homes all day to get quotes on direct cremation here in the Manassas area. There are at least 4 funeral homes that provide direct cremation and Baker-Post is the most expensive of them all at over $2000. Ridiculous rip-off when competitors are charging $900 for the same services. It is very important to cost compare death expenses to avoided getting ripped off in your time of grief. Stay away from these guys.”

About three weeks later, the owner of the funeral home responded to Jennifer’s one-starred review:

“As the owner and operator of our business, I need to point out that the information provided in the comments made by Jennifer P. are inaccurate. There isn’t a funeral home in the Manassas area that offers Direct Cremation for $900.00. We are the only funeral business in Manassas that has made the investment to the families we serve, to offer our own crematory on site, where your loved one will never leave our care. We are also not the most expensive, and we do not “rip-off” the families that we serve. We take extreme pride in the care that we give to each and every family that we serve and before comments like this are made, there should be accurate information provided. I encourage the general public to stop, see our facility, and discuss the cremation process and the costs that are associated with this service. Shopping prices over the phone is not something I would encourage, especially for a funeral. Our business carries on a 116 year tradition, as the original family owned and family operated funeral business in the Manassas area. Businesses that have been able to continually serve their communities for that length of time are not ones to usually “rip people off”

Michael C. Post – Owner / Director
Baker-Post Funeral Home & Cremation Center
703-368-3116″

Here’s what Michael did right:

• Provided a direct response as the owner rather than having an employee respond on the business’s behalf
• Knowing the local business and competitive climate and being able to clearly communicate pricing discrepancies
• Highlighting the value his funeral home brings to the table to differentiate: “We are the only funeral business in Manassas that has made the investment to the families we serve, to offer our own crematory on site, where your loved one will never leave our care.”
• Acknowledging directly that his funeral home does NOT “rip off”
• Encouraging the public to come by and check the place out shows that hisfuneral home has nothing to hide (“I encourage the general public to stop, see our facility, and discuss the cremation process and the costs that are associated with this service.”
• Reinforcing long history of service in the community is a plus (“Ourbusiness carries on a 116 year tradition, as the original family ownedand family operated funeral business in the Manassas area.”)

Yelp will continue to challenge business owners … but it really shouldn’t have to

Yelp continues to challenge many business owners and proprietors who fear negative commentary but it really doesn’t have to. Below please find some of my quick tips for help mitigate the impact of negative commentary:

• Define a protocol for how to respond to negative comments is key
  Who responds and how should he or she respond?
• Hire or assign someone to regularly monitor ** ALL ** commentary being said about your funeral home or death care service operation
  Knowing what is being said about you at all times, not just the singularmoments when a bad comment is being posted, is very important. Youshould develop an online review process that is responsive to allcommentary, good and bad.
• Change your perspective!
  Yes, negative comments can sometimes be harsh and difficult to face. However, if you view these instances as an opportunity to acknowledge the reviewer, thank them for their feedback and address the comment with diplomacy, you will be able to turn lemonade into lemons and possibly learn a detail or two about your operations or your customer service that you had not yet considered or been made aware of.

In the end, you want to keep a cool head and investigate each review, good or bad, with great care before responding. There are various tools and services to help you monitor online reviews that you may also wish to consider. The goal should be to be proactive and not reactive. When in doubt, seek the advice of a good consultant who can help you to define goals, challenges and solutions in all matters pertaining to online reviews as they pertain to your death care operation.

The post Responding to negative reviews on Yelp: *THIS* is how it should be done appeared first on .

Save the date!!

Thanks to my friends at Kates Boylston Publications, I’ll be presenting the “Building Profits by Boosting Your Online Profile” session at the beautiful Don CeSar Beach Resort in St. Petersburg, Florida on November 3-4, 2011.

These are some of the exciting topics I’ll be covering in my session:

• Understand and harness the power of social networking
• Build market share by serving as an expert in your community
• Integrate your digital marketing efforts
• Develop content and blogging strategies
• Improve your relationship with the media

Interested in attending?? Register here today!

The post "Building profits by boosting your online profile" for your funeral service business planning appeared first on .

According to the Brisbane Times, self-confessed troll 29-year-old Bradley Paul Hampson wrote “w00t I’m dead” across the picture of a dead 12-year-old boy, and posted it on the kid’s Facebook tribute page. In another instance, he wrote the following regarding the real-life raping and murdering of an 8-year-old girl: “My definition of pleasure … listening to her ribs crack. I got mad … so I murdered her.”

Hampson avoided using his real name during his trolling instances; instead he did his misdeeds under an old schoolmate’s name. The man whose name was being used alerted the authorities. Once the police caught Hampson, they also found about 200 images of abused children.

While this instance happened in Australia, the trolling trend could honestly happen anywhere. Death care providers who take the time to educate families about online tributes and social media’ish mememorials for loved ones, especially on Facebook, may want to be aware that under rare circumstances, dispicable acts such as these are regretfully very possible.

And this *just* in the heels of my recently published article “Electronic grieving: Memorialization on Facebook” … geez!

The post Speaking of memorialization on Facebook … beware of "trolling" appeared first on .

I learned about this webinar from an email via LinkedIn I received from my peer and good buddy Thomas Parmalee, Editorial Director at KBP (thanks for sharing the webinar info, Tom!).

The 1-hour webinar on this important topic is being held on May 4, 2011 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. EST.

Topics the webinar will cover include:

• Strategies to build your brand on the Internet
• How providing valuable guidance and information can lead to sales
• Ways to manage your reputation online
• Tips on blogging and search engine optimization
• How social networking leads to sales
• The best ways to put your marketing dollars to work online
• How demographics on Facebook fit in with the funeral profession

If you are interested in learning more about this virtual educational opportunity focused on social media and death care, you should learn more by clicking here.

P.S. While I consider Tom to be a good buddy, I was not asked to plug this for him or KPB. I noted the topic and felt it would be relevant to anyone in this industry seeking to further immerse themselves in the subject of social media and its untapped value in death care.

TGIF to all 

The post Kates-Boylston Publications' upcoming webinar: Social Networking for Death-Care Professionals appeared first on .

Electronic grieving: Memorialization of loved ones on Facebook

The post published article: Electronic grieving: Memorialization of loved ones on Facebook appeared first on .

The thing is this … regular, non-celebrity type of people were and already have been using the Internet to share their loss or their experiences at memorials, burials and wakes well before MJ’s passing. Yet with MJs death, it seems like attention to and awareness of “Internet mourning” and web memorializations have been thrust forward unlike ever before.

Given the extensive media coverage of MJ’s passing, folks in the death care services arena who were previously unaware of how people would, could and do use the Internet to assemble gatherings, tributes and online memorials are now hopefully much more aware and enlightened on the subject.

And for those folks who were already aware of these kinds of web-related funeral activities online, perhaps then a better understanding of how people are using the Internet much more today to reach out, share and express their sentiments may have been developed.

For MJ’s memorial, absolutely every form of online communication has been used including blogs, online photo galleries, Facebook, videos on YouTube, tweets on Twitter and much, much more.

Hopefully, funeral service providers and death care professionals were *watching* this phenomenon closely. I hope it was a wake up call to those who have not considered (or deny) how the Internet is and continues to change death.

Various timely examples, thoughts and commentary on this topic are forthcoming.

The post the internet and death … they go hand in hand as of late appeared first on .

Clearly, this is an extensive article that’s full of wonderful information about the cemetery and really positions the cemetery in a positive light as well as a meaningful contributor to the local community.

I was happy to see the cemetery’s web site address published at the end of the article, informing users to “learn more” about the cemetery at www.blairsvillecemetery.com.

My happiness, however, was rather short lived once I found myself on the Blairsville Cemetery site. It’s just so sad to see absolutely zero mention or reference to this super wonderful memorial walk they are adding to their cemetery grounds.

I searched this cemetery web site high and low (not that there was tons to search, mind you) and confirmed that not only what this new memorial walk not being shared at all online but even worse …

… their “News and Events” section was more outdated than my passport. Events listed were for 2007 and 2008 … and we are in mid-2009.

Although it kills me …

Look, I take *no* pleasure — trust me — in throwing this cemetery’s web site under the digital marketing and PR bus. Really. I would much rather report a totally different story or scenario where Blairsville Cemetery was totally on the web 2.0 ball and had an interactive calendar of events posted on their site in addition to more information about their new memorial walk (amongst other things).

So what’s the (real) prob?

The problem with this specific death care site — as well as an infinite number of other funeral service-related sites — is not the web site itself. The web site is simply a symptom of a much bigger problem … which is … the mindset of many death care operators in so far as their view of the Internet’s potential and value not only to their business but to the industry as a whole.

I realize this is a non-profit cemetery challenged with funds and with fundraising…

I used to be Executive Director of a non-profit organization way back when so if anyone knows how challenging fundraising can be, hey … that would be me. The secret ingredient to raising funds of any kind, however, is raising awareness of your cause. And once can’t do that if he or she doesn’t expend the effort to share their story with the community at large. Therefore, while monies can be a challenge, updating this cemetery’s web site with 2-3 paragraphs and a link to the article online is not a huge monetery expenditure. All it would cost is about 5-10 minutes of someone’s time to post and publish the information.

More thoughts … coming soon

In upcoming e-newsletter editions, I will address some of the things cemeteries, crematories and funeral homes can do to improve their web sites to better maximize their internet presence and digital marketing and PR efforts.

Have you subscribed yet?

And P.S – If Blairsville Cemetery or any other cemetery or funeral home really needs help with their web site, marketing, PR and outreach, you know how to find me.

The post dear blairsville cemetery … where's your press and news room? appeared first on .