Hear directly from our customer success expert on making the most of digital signage in your senior living community.

By: Sarah Adams | Client Success Specialist

June 20, 2022

K4Community Digital Signage enables staff to engage, entertain, and communicate with residents and guests through text, images, and videos on monitor displays across the community campus. This digital communications tool delivers high-quality and dependable experiences for residents while saving staff time, resources, and costs associated with traditional, printed and manual communications. And with access to hundreds of professionally designed digital templates, creating content to distribute through this channel is a breeze.

Engage with Residents

K4Community Digital Signage is an excellent resource to leverage when working to build communication with current residents. Digital signage is a dependable, centralized location of upcoming events, dining information, and more. K4Community Digital Signage ensures residents stay up to date no matter where they are in the community, and staff members have a centrally managed, high-quality communication tool that seamlessly delivers content to TVs across the entire campus.

If digital signage is new for you, a simple tool to try first is K4Community’s calendar widget. The calendar widget is located in the Content Creator and can import all published events from your Events Manager directly to digital signage displays around your community. You can choose from a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar widget. Widgets provide constantly up to date information without the hassle of re-editing a document if event details are changed. 

Want to know more? Below we will cover four simple strategies used to upgrade your communication from good to great through efficient utilization of your community’s digital signage.

Provide Helpful Information for Staff

Do you have a break room or staff lounge? Improve staff engagement and morale through personalized digital signage just for them. Celebrate work anniversaries, highlight staff accomplishments, or simply take a moment to tell someone you appreciate all they do for your community and residents.

Utilize Signage for Friends & Families During Visiting Hours

Help bring your community to life for visitors by highlighting the depth of activities and events, photos of residents, and much more.

Welcome Prospective Residents

Does your sales and marketing team have a scheduled visit for a prospective resident touring your facility? Strategize this opportunity in order to create a warm welcome for your visitor and help them envision themselves making your community their home.

FAQ’s:

This is all new for me, where do I begin? The K4Connect Learning Center is a great place to start when beginning your K4Community journey. For current customers, reach out to your customer success manager or contact our Support Team for more information.

Not yet a K4Connect customer? Reach out here to schedule a demo or to learn more about our K4Community Digital Signage solution and more ways we can help your community create great technology experiences today.  

Need Assistance? As always, if you are in need of assistance please contact our Support Team by either emailing support@k4connect.com, or by calling (855) 876-9673. 

“Discover the numerous benefits of the most recent K4Community updates.”

By: Diana Gore | Product Marketing Manager, K4Connect

April 6, 2022

K4Connect is proud to deliver exciting new technologies and features to senior living communities and operators with this quarter’s K4Community release. 

This quarter, our team focused on features that benefit residents, their family members and community staff in the areas of:

• Amazon Echo Show with NEW features for community staff, residents and their families
• Targeted Content and Resident Groups in the K4Community Plus App/Web and Voice
• Resident Check-in Enhancements that increase safety for residents and provide more flexibility for staff teams
• K4Community Plus App/Web Updates that improve the personalized experience 

Here’s how our newest features and updates improve the lives of residents and their family members, as well as increase staff efficiency in senior living communities.

1. NEW Amazon Echo Show Features

We are excited to deliver a multimodal experience for older adults with our Amazon Echo Show integration. This integration increases resident independence while keeping them connected and informed.

The hybrid touch and voice device includes dynamic video and voice calling, customizable ambient content, daily event and activity information, and more.  

 

Highlight features include:

• Voice calling with community contacts (ex. front desk, dining, maintenance, etc.)
• Video and voice calling with fellow residents
• Video and voice calling with family and friends
• Customizable ambient home screen content to proactively alert residents of upcoming meals, upcoming events, or notices

2. NEW Targeted Content and Resident Groups

Drive higher impact engagements with content that speaks directly to different residents and interests. Ensure you are getting relevant content to the right group of residents with the added ability to create and manage resident groups. Zero in on your resident communications with the ability to segment communications and content with specific resident groups. Whether by care setting, special interests, committee membership or campus location, staff can better engage residents with more narrowed and customized communications. Additionally, this update enables more robust reporting and data insights around resident and staff usage.

New Features:

• Create and manage resident groups
• Add residents to specific group(s)
• Community staff can create and designate a piece of content, event calendars and/or menu information to be shared with desired resident groups.

3. Resident Check-In Enhancements

Our award-winning automated Resident Check-In feature gets even more powerful with an additional check-in and reporting window. Staff can now add a second alert report that will automatically be delivered to a customizable list of staff members at a scheduled time.   

New Features:

• Increased resident safety with reporting that captures remaining resident alerts from the first check-in window of the day
• Improved staff communications with the ability to customize recipients on each report

4. K4Community Plus App/Web Updates 

Residents now have more control over their personal information and can opt-out of showing their profile in the Directory of  K4Community Plus (App/Web). Don’t worry, if residents change their minds they can quickly and simply opt back in to showing their profile and connecting with other residents. 

Ready to learn more about K4Community? Book a demo today!

“Learn about four new, impactful K4Community updates.”

By: Diana Gore | Product Marketing Manager, K4Connect

January 18, 2022

K4Connect is proud to deliver exciting new technologies and features to senior living communities and operators through our K4Community solution. 

This quarter, our team focused on features that benefit residents, their family members and community staff in the areas of:

• Dining and Menu Communications – a NEW offering for community staff, residents and their families
• Segmenting content based on care setting in K4Community Plus
• Enhanced calendar widgets
• Integration updates

Here’s how our newest features and updates improve the lives of residents and increase staff efficiency in senior living communities.

1. NEW Dining and Menu Communications

Reduce redundant, time consuming work with our new menu communication feature. Following  our “create (enter) once, publish everywhere” philosophy, staff members now have a quick and simple way to communicate menu information via K4Community Plus, Voice, Digital Signage and Direct Broadcast. This robust and highly customizable feature enables senior living staff to save time as they create and share menu information. 

 

Highlight features include:

• Repeating menu options available to accommodate common menu cycles and reduce repetitive data entry
• Ability to automate dining and menu information via our newest integration with Grove Menus

2. NEW Content Segmented by Care Setting(s)

Ensure you are getting relevant content to the right group of residents with the added ability to segment based on resident care setting. Community staff can designate a piece of content, event calendars and/or menu information to be shared with desired resident groups. Additionally, this update enables more robust reporting and data insights around residents and staff usage.

3. Calendar Enhancements

Increased customization options with calendar creation widgets allows staff even more flexibility as they design calendars while still benefiting from time savings that comes with the automation of event data. Over 20 new designs were added to the content calendar giving staff more options to choose from.

4. Integration Updates 

In addition to seeing their dining/meal balance, residents can now see their FullCount and Volante transaction history in K4Community Plus. This gives residents easy access to their full transaction history enabling them to review information like date/time, amount and location of a transaction as well as image receipts, line items descriptions if applicable. 

Ready to learn more about K4Community? Book a demo today!

Cost-effective and time-efficient strategies to leverage the value of public relations for your community.

 

By: Lindsay Hull |Director of Media, Zer0 to 5ive

December 8, 2021

Public relations is a fantastic way for senior living communities to raise their awareness in the market through the credibility that comes through the press. At the same time, tight marketing budgets and already stretched staff bandwidth can make a potential public relations campaign seem out-of-reach.

However, there are several ways senior living communities can embark on an affordable and easy-to-implement public relations plan to help generate local and regional visibility — and, most importantly, drive occupancy. We’ll dive deeper into a few of them below.

1) Develop a simple process

While there are many routes a PR campaign can take, the best strategy for a team with limited resources to take is to keep it simple. Know from the beginning what you can and can’t do — how much time you can devote to public relations (you’ll find out that it’s harder than you think) and how much you can budget towards this type of work. That will help you formulate a manageable plan, which is the most important step to success in PR.

2) Think local, local, local

Much has been stated about the decline of regional and local news media. However, there is still a vibrant audience for this type of news — and it’s an audience filled with potential prospects interested in finding a senior living community to eventually call home. 

According to Pew Research Center, an estimated 35.6 million Americans had either a print or digital subscription to a daily newspaper in 2020. A separate survey found that 24 percent of people above the age of 65 and 38 percent of those between the ages of 50-64 said they followed “local news” very closely. These findings are a good indication that local news is still alive and well and likely your greatest asset. 

3) Contacting local news

It does take effort to reach out to local news outlets. While there are services that can help you quickly find contact information for reporters, the cheapest and most effective way is to scour the names of reporters at local newspapers and TV affiliates. Most newspapers (like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) have an easy-to-access online list of reporters, what they report about, along with their contact information. Local TV stations (like WCCO-TV in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market) also have the same kind of contact information.

Where to find contact information for local publications online:

• Staff lists 
• Reporter bios (often hyperlinked in articles)
• Media or advertising kits 
• Newsroom general contact (this contact is often the hub for disseminating information to the appropriate reporter or writer)
• Tag news outlets or specific reporters in your social posts of local happenings at the community
  

However, it’s also important that you know who covers what. Research what reporters have covered the types of stories you’d like to appear in — reaching out to a sports reporter about the opening of a new community is simply wasting your time.

4) What’s a good story?

Local news outlets want news that focuses on people first. Keep that in mind when approaching reporters about a new community opening or a big happening in your community. 

It’s very possible to pitch a specific news event that impacts the lives of your residents. For example, a Raleigh TV station did a quick piece about seniors at The Cardinal at North Hills receiving 150 free Amazon Echo Dots that included video of residents opening these gifts — plus a mention of how it became the first voice-enabled senior community in the country.

Another way to attract local news is by inviting the local press to an event — like this article about a Halloween visit to an equestrian center planned by a California senior community and this segment about a tea party held at Georgia community during this past Mother’s Day. 

Examples of newsworthy community happenings:

• Community grand openings or campus expansions
• Promote your seasonal or unique programming; bonus if the local community can join to experience it! (new fitness programs, celebrated chef joining the dining team with a local inspired menu)
• Tech implementations impacting resident life (how residents are using tech to create new friendships, engage in new experiences)
• Leverage holidays to tell unique resident stories (Celebrate a resident veteran on Veterans Day, a former bakery owner on National Cookie Day)

5) Leverage Any Press Coverage

Getting coverage – placed articles or news segments – from your PR outreach is great. But what’s even better is knowing how to leverage your media coverage to drive interest in your community.

It’s certainly possible that someone might read an article or watch a local news segment about your community and decide to check it out. But it’s more likely that you’ll have to use your own efforts to translate a media appearance into occupancy.

The best way to do so is to make sure you have an “In The News” area located on your website that’s easy to find. (While this might seem simple, you’d be surprised how often this is not the case.) Those articles and segments will give visitors to your site a good idea of what to expect at your community — and if they like what they see, they may take the next step and ask you for more information about a possible move.

Also, including these appearances in any email blasts or newsletters you send out to prospects and potential residents can also have them click on a call-to-action. Newspaper articles and TV segments are almost always kept on an outlet’s website permanently, meaning you can always recycle any stories about your facility over time.

“Understanding the role technology plays in improving resident quality of life, augmenting staff challenges and creating meaningful community experiences.“

By: Natalie Jones | Director of Marketing & Communications, K4Connect

November 17, 2021

Over the past year, resident safety, wellness and satisfaction have been increasingly top of mind for both residents and staff. As senior living operators continue to navigate post-pandemic life in their communities, it is critical to understand and value the role technology can play in improving resident quality of life, augmenting staff challenges and creating meaningful community experiences.

In the K4Connect Fall 2021 Insights Report: Technology Trends Driving Resident Safety, Wellness and Satisfaction, data and survey responses strongly point to technology as a way to strengthen safety measures in resident homes, increase community-wide visibility and team productivity for staff, and expand wellness offerings for residents. The report also explores how residents measure their personal satisfaction and happiness in a senior living community. Check out the infographic for highlights of the report, and head to this webpage to download the report in full. 

“Resident happiness is key to your community’s success. Do you know what residents say contributes most to their happiness?” 

By: Dr. Cindy Phillips | K4Advisors Managing Partner, K4Connect

November 15, 2021

For decades, most senior living communities have conducted resident satisfaction surveys. And for decades, the leaders in those communities have worked diligently to digest and plan initiatives to improve their scores. I was one of those leaders, and it proved difficult to move the needle on results.

After reviewing the results from our recent resident survey (administered via the K4Community App), I think you might be surprised by the gap uncovered in what residents say, “makes them happy”, and what the staff shared “they are doing” to drive resident satisfaction. It might be time to change some of your strategies to match the most important drivers of resident happiness.  Let’s dig into the details.

The good news first – the majority of residents polled (89%) believe their community “cares about my happiness.” An excellent reflection on the industry’s service mindset! The surprise findings reveal an apparent disconnect in knowing what the highest contributors to that happiness are.

Our survey’s top 3 contributors to happiness from resident respondents:

1.       Clean living environment (86% said this greatly/strongly contributes)
2.       Feeling safe (86% of residents said this greatly/strongly contributes)
3.       Having friends/connection with others (84% said this greatly/strongly contributes 

Our survey’s top 3 things community staff is doing to contribute to resident satisfaction:

1.       Meeting with residents, encourage their input/feedback – 47%
2.       Having good community activities/events – 25%
3.       Increasing resident interaction with staff/Making staff available for residents – 18%

 It should concern us that nothing matched in the top 3 of the two groups. Actually, not one community staff listed “clean living environment” or “feeling safe” as drivers of resident happiness. One could argue that these two go without saying in senior living, or that COVID-19 has brought these to the forefront. Whatever the reason, they remind us of what is top of mind right now for community residents.

But an even more subtle (but extremely important) disconnect is around the social component of resident happiness. Our resident respondents ranked “having friends/connection with others” as their highest social driver of happiness (86% more residents indicated this is a stronger contributor than “Being involved in my community”.)

In my mind, this isn’t about the number of activities, nor the interaction with staff (both in the staff top three). This important component of resident happiness is about personal connection with others (maybe just one). It can happen at an event, but it is more likely to happen with a more intentional approach.

I believe the message in this data is for communities to make it their primary goal to foster these connections. Look for more opportunities, not just with activities or events, but across every resident experience (sales, dining, volunteering, spiritual services, etc.), to facilitate these relationships. Think of yourselves as match-makers!

If you want to learn about more about what makes residents happy, check out our Fall 2021 Insights Report.

“We asked and our residents answered. Learn how our latest K4Community release addresses some of the most common feedback we heard.“

By: Diana Gore | Product Marketing Manager, K4Connect

August 31, 2021

The summer months have been busy here at K4Connect. We’ve gathered feedback from hundreds of our users and as a result, we’re proud to deliver exciting new technologies and features to senior living communities and operators through our K4Community solution. 

This quarter, our team focused on features that benefit residents, their family members and community staff in the areas of:

• Newly released Community Insights, a data offering for community staff and operators
• Streamlined layout in K4Community Plus and the addition of a What’s New content section
• Enhanced resident engagement and communication with notifications for community events and announcements

Here’s how our newest features and updates improve the lives of residents and increase staff efficiency in senior living communities.

1. NEW Community Insights
New data-driven reporting tools are available to all K4Community Team Hub users. Staff members now have easy access to data and usage metrics for residents using K4Community Plus, Voice, Resident Check-in, Smart Home and more. This feature enables senior living staff and operators to view key insights related to resident adoption and engagement, as well as staff engagement. The ability to track, measure and analyze community-wide technology usage means staff teams can create even better experiences in their communities based on timely data.

What types of data do communities have access to? Sample insights include:

• Residents onboarded to the K4Community Plus App
• Daily app interactions per resident and trending data
• Daily posts via Team Hub by community team members and trending data
• Most popular app features and event/activity popularity
• Resident Check-In alert information
• And more!

2. Enhancements in K4Community Plus:

• Introducing a fresh new look on the Home Page. The addition of the What’s New section ensures residents always stay up to date on the newest information and content that has been shared since their last visit to the app. The Library section is where residents find an organized collection of content shared by the community. 
• Dining also has a new home in our Web app making it easier to quickly find and view menu and dining balance information.

3. NEW Push Notifications – Increasing communication and community engagement for residents and staff.

• Community staff members now have the ability to send residents a push notification (or alert) when publishing an important post to the K4Commuinty Plus App — whether that is a building notice, a new menu, a change to an event, or any other important information residents should be aware of.

• Residents will also receive push notifications for community events/activities they have signed up for 15 minutes prior to the event.

We love the recent feedback shared by residents using the K4Community Plus App!

Check out Summer 2021 Release to get more information about all of this quarter’s updates. Ready to learn more about K4Community? Book a demo today!

“As the pandemic closed the doors of senior living communities, residents turned to technology.“

By: Natalie Jones | Director of Marketing & Communications, K4Connect

July 1, 2021

The pandemic brought immeasurable challenges to people around the world. How do we get the information we need? How do we stay connected to people while in quarantine? How do I stay active and social?

Now, think about asking yourself these questions as an older adult. There is no doubt this demographic was hit harder than most by the impacts of the coronavirus. But, what we also saw was an inspiring shift in how older adults turned to technology to overcome many of these challenges. Particularly in senior living communities, residents leaned on technology to maintain personal connections, stay up to date on the important information and find creative ways to virtually socialize and connect.

We recently released our Summer 2021 Insights Report, “Trending Technologies To Navigate Life and Work In Senior Living During and Post-Pandemic,” that explores this very topic. We found that residents were leveraging various types of technology to successfully navigate daily life in their communities. Check out the infographic for highlights of the report, and head to this webpage to download the report in full.

“Learn about three new, impactful K4Community features and updates.“

By: Diana Gore | Product Marketing Manager, K4Connect

June 3, 2021

We’ve been hard at work the past three months to deliver on our mission to create simpler, healthier and happier lives for residents, their families, staff and community operators. At K4Connect we are relentless when it comes to innovation. And the result of that? We are constantly delivering exciting new technologies and features to senior living communities through our K4Community solution. 

This quarter, our team focused on improvements to features that benefit residents, their  family members and community staff in the areas of:

• Enhanced communication and engagement capabilities in K4Community Plus
• Expanded Resident Check-In functionality
• New integration partners and additional capabilities with existing partners – content, dining and POS

Here’s how our newest features and updates improve the lives of residents and increase staff efficiency in senior living communities.

1. Enhancements in K4Community Plus:

• Highly requested and highly anticipated updates to the Directory make filtering residents, family/friends and staff a breeze. Staff members can control whether or not they want to be included in the Directory as well as what contact information they want to share. 
  
  
• New event updates make signing up for events and managing a calendar even simpler. Residents can now sign-up a guest for an event and join the waitlist if the event is full. They can also add community events to their personal calendar (iCal, Google Calendar) directly from the Event section of the resident app, eliminating the need to manage multiple calendars.

2. Expanded Resident Check-In functionality: Now, K4Community Alexa skill interaction(s) can be designated as a “check-in” event increasing the robust capabilities of our industry-leading K4Community Resident Check-In solution. That’s right – residents simply interacting with their Alexa device registers that they are up and active for the day with our automated check-in tool. 

3. Integration Updates: 
K4Community now offers the most expansive content integration options in senior living. In addition to our existing content partners; CuriosityStream, Coro Health and Spiro 100, we have two exciting new content partners that allow your residents to access even more dynamic content. It’s easy for staff to share and even easier for residents to experience.

• Eversound Select programming provides curated, interactive content and programs that give residents instant access to unique experiences and allows them to connect, learn and discover new interests. Eversound Select offers topics like art, entertainment, history, fitness and more. Residents can access endless content anytime, anywhere from the mobile and web applications that are available through K4Community Plus and enjoy programming from the comfort of their own home through Direct Broadcast. 

 

• One Day University provides access to over 500 fascinating TED talk-style lectures, from over 200 of the greatest professors from the world’s top schools. Together, with K4Community, the One Day University on-demand video library can be shared directly with your residents to encourage purposeful engagement and inspire life-long learning. 

• An update to the Spiro100 integration allows staff to select and share specific content from the industry’s largest library of exercise and wellness programs through K4Community Plus and Direct Broadcast (the in-room TV channel). In addition, staff can save time by automating Spiro100 courses to display ahead of time or on a specific schedule. 

An exciting new Point of Sale (POS) integration and useful updates to our current POS partners were also prioritized this quarter. 

• Our newest POS integration with ServingIntel enables residents to place meal orders in K4Community Plus, giving residents increased independence and eliminating the need for phone calls to staff and paper methods of meal ordering. ServingIntel is a leading provider of transaction management solutions for dining, retail and ancillary activities that enable senior living operators to increase Net Operating income (NOI) and best serve residents, resident’s families, guests and staff.

• Our FullCount and Volante integrations have been streamlined to improve resident management and staff control in the K4Community Team Hub. Both POS integrations allow residents to view dining balance information directly in K4Community Plus.

 

Check out Spring 2021 Release to get more information about all of this quarter’s updates. Ready to learn more about K4Community? Book a demo today!