Social media plays a significant role in today’s professional world.

Being active online allows current and potential client families to find information about your funeral home and feel more connected with your funeral home and its employees. Social media is the perfect place for showing you’re down-to-earth and care about helping families through their difficult losses.

You don’t have to be active on every social media platform, just pick one or two platforms that your funeral home wants to focus on.

Twitter Lingo

To start, we’ve compiled a short list of common Twitter terms and phrases.

Hashtag: a word or phrase after the pound sign (#) that relates to a specific topic

Tweet: a post on Twitter

Following: Twitter pages that you subscribe to (click “follow” to subscribe to a page)

Follower: Twitter pages that subscribe to you

Username: how you’re identified on Twitter

Geotag: adding a location to your tweet

Pinning a tweet: keeps an important tweet at the top of your page

Retweet: reposting someone’s tweet

Direct Message: private message sent to another Twitter user

Home: where your tweets and tweets of who you’re following appear

Handle: another name for your username, which comes after the @ on Twitter

Personalizing your Twitter Account

The name of your Twitter account should be your funeral home’s name, such as “Example Funeral Home.” Your handle can be your funeral home’s name or a variation of it depending on the availability of the name. Other Twitter users can mention you in tweets by including your handle in the tweet.

Since tweets have limited characters, it’s best to choose a short handle if possible so that people are more likely to mention you.

Some examples of handles could be:

• @examplefuneralhome
• @examplefuneral
• @exampleFH

Your profile photo could be your funeral home’s logo and your header photo a picture of your funeral home, something funeral-related, or a solid color or pattern that represents your funeral home’s brand. The recommended dimensions for the profile photo are 400×400 pixels and the header photo recommendation is 1500×500 pixels.

You also should include your funeral home’s contact information, location, website link, and a short biography. Your bio can be a maximum of 160 characters and should briefly describe your funeral home’s mission.

An example of a Twitter bio could be:

“We’re committed to providing families with the best possible funeral service and grief resources to help guide you through your difficult loss.”

What to Tweet

Your tweets can be a maximum of 280 characters and you can include photos or videos. Here are a few tweet suggestions to give your funeral home some ideas:

• Share links to your funeral home’s blog posts or other funeral-related content
• Post about your funeral home’s latest updates and accomplishments
• Ask questions using Twitter Polls to find out your families’ funeral wants and needs
• Show photos or videos from your funeral home’s latest event or educational seminar
• Retweet other funeral professionals’ tweets about funeral news and trends

When writing your tweets, you should include one or two hashtags at the end of your tweet related to the topic of your tweet. For example, in a tweet about Memorial Day or Veterans Day, you can include #memorialday or #veteransday, or in a tweet sharing a blog post about personalized funerals, you can include #personalization and #funeraltrends.

Hashtags allow people to easily find tweets about topics they are interested in, so your tweet is more likely to be seen when you use a hashtag.

You also can respond to other Twitter users’ tweets by clicking “reply” or you can “like” their tweet by clicking the heart icon. You can see all the tweets you’ve liked under the “Likes” section on your profile page.

Through promotion and advertising, your funeral home can gain more followers and website traffic. To promote your tweets, click on “promote this tweet,” pick your target location and budget, and then confirm your selections. You also can create a Twitter advertising campaign based on your funeral home’s goals and target audience. To learn more, check out Advertising on Twitter.

Who to Follow

Your funeral home can follow Twitter pages of influential funeral professionals and organizations to stay updated on funeral news and trends.

Some other suggestions of pages to follow are your community’s hospice care centers and other important community resources, your client families to show you care how they’re doing, and following back relevant people who have followed you. Don’t feel obligated to follow back every single person who follows your page. This would only clutter your home feed with unwanted content.