SAIF Golden Charter

Showcasing on social media

At a recent meeting to discuss sustainability in the funeral sector, I experienced a revelation about one aspect of culture and practice within the profession. But first, let’s talk about social media.

Facebook is a fantastic tool for independent funeral directors to develop an audience of local friends and followers – people who are going to use your services when the need arises.

As a digital platform it has been around for quite a while and those of us who adopted the tech when it was launched in the UK are now 15 or so years older. This is significant because many of this generation are now family decision makers with children and, importantly for the funeral profession, who bear the daunting responsibility for arranging a parent’s funeral.

Many of us have an uneasy relationship with Facebook. We can’t live with it and we can’t live without it. It is designed to tap into our innate sociability as a species. It works.

Try as we might to limit our use, most people I know find it invaluable for keeping in touch with friends, updating people on their lives and finding out about news in their communities. So, as an independent funeral director, it’s easy to see why being on Facebook is essential.

Some funeral directors are understandably hesitant about using this platform, citing fears that it risks cheapening the profession. Indeed, it would if it were used to broadcast promotional messages. It’s not about advertising; it’s about developing relationships and showing people what your values are and the difference you make in your community and beyond. Certainly, that should be the case for funeral directors.

Now, back to that revelation I mentioned at the start.

During the meeting, several funeral directors spoke of funeral arrangers being the key to changing behaviour when it comes to influencing families to make more environmentally-friendly funeral choices. This got me thinking. If arrangers hold the key to this, then they surely are important in other areas too. In the context of social media, funeral directors succeed on platforms like Facebook if they are able to provide a steady stream of original and unique content. But this can be a challenge. In order to truly drive engagement and interest in your business, you’ll need to share lots of stories about the funerals you’ve directed.

Of course, we’re not talking about doing this every day. But if you were able to talk about aspects of funerals you’ve conducted at least once a week, that would make a big impact.

The people who are going to help you deliver that content are surely your funeral arrangers. With that in mind, it’s well worth putting a process in place for arrangers to collect relevant information to pass to the person responsible for your social media activity for scrutiny and potential posting.

The types of topics you’re looking for are unusual floral tributes, funerals with a likely large turnout, or motorcycle or horse-drawn hearses, to name but a few. Perhaps create an internal checklist of possible items of interest to educate your arrangers of suitable material and then include this as an item on the weekly team meeting agenda to track stories.

Two funeral directors with whom I work – Mortons Funeral Directors and H. Porter & Sons – are experts at gathering the right information and then having it vetted to ensure it’s safe and sensitive to post on social media.

With some common sense ground rules, talking about funerals on social media can be done in a sensitive way and one with which families are comfortable.

My ground rules for involving vulnerable people in communications activity are simple – always explain why you’re asking for their assistance and where their story will appear. If they say no, never try to persuade anyone to change their mind. Anonymising case studies where possible will result in a higher volume of content too.

If you build this kind of information gathering into the funeral arranging process, your arrangers could play an important role in ensuring families in your community are aware of the good work your business does for local bereaved people. And that is incredibly powerful.