June 7, 2024 byHomesteaders Life Company
Featured,Funeral Home Business
Funeral service professionals need and deserve reliable sources of information that they can depend on to help them better serve their customers, stay up to date on the latest trends and continue to develop their skills. Ten years ago, our team established the Homesteaders Blog to help bring those insights to anyone who can benefit from that expertise.
For the past decade, the Homesteaders Life Company blog has been a consistent source of knowledge and support for funeral professionals. Over those years, we have delivered new blog posts on an average of a weekly basis. Today, there are hundreds of posts on our blog, available anytime for funeral professionals who need resources to support their business.
We see the blog as a reflection of you, our readers. Much like Homesteaders, the blog is here to support what you do every single day. We focus on content that promotes development, tips for success, funeral marketing, industry trends, aftercare, community engagement and so much more.
Our team personalizes that content, just like our preneed solutions. We know there is no one-size-fits-all solution for preneed. Together, we choose solutions that make a difference for your business and the families you serve. Our blog runs the same way. We use your stories, our stories and the stories of our client families to enhance each post.
Personalized Stories
Everyone has a story about the death of a loved one. As funeral professionals, you witness these experiences daily and have your own stories to tell. Our authors infuse personal stories from clients and staff into our blog content, to deliver authentic storytelling.
Tim Briggs, the general manager and vice president at Oman Funeral Home & Crematory, shared his journey that led to the creation of Treasured Memories Community Funding. We also featured beautifully written obituaries, alongside tips for crafting a memorable obituary yourself.
Our team of writers even weave in their own stories, hoping you see yourself reflected in our posts. Marketing Communications Specialist Nicole Eilers shared her experience in one of our most-read posts about comforting texts to send someone who is grieving. Marketing Campaign Manager Niki Smith also shared how she got creative with a digital graphic memorial on Facebook after the death of her mother.
Funeral Business resources
Over half of our blog posts are dedicated to business topics for funeral homes. Whether you’re looking to develop a comprehensive marketing plan, want to comb through the funeral planning checklist or implement a customer relationship management system, we strive to cover every topic that impacts your business.
We love getting creative with topics for you to discuss with client families, like when we shared lessons from grief from cinema, while also covering frequently referenced topics like American flag etiquette and traditions. We also tackle common questions from funeral attendees, and one of our most-viewed posts ever is about what to wear to a funeral service.
Continuous Improvement
We often write about the importance of continuing education and development, both for you and for ourselves. We regularly optimize our blog, analyzing past posts you’ve enjoyed and updating them with fresh, relevant content.
One of the most gratifying aspects of the Homesteaders Blog is that 10 years in, our contributors continue to find ways to help support funeral service professionals by sharing actionable insights about our ever-changing profession. The work is constantly changing, and there’s never a shortage of opportunities to learn and collaborate.
Blog Strategy
Our strategy has always been to focus on you – the readers. We design each post to resonate with your diverse experiences and unique needs.
The average lifespan of a website is roughly two years and seven months. A lot goes into planning, writing, optimizing, promoting and maintaining a blog. It’s even harder to do that consistently for 10 years.
Director of Marketing Alyssa McNab shared some background on the creation of the blog, and the work Homesteaders has done to ensure it continues to be valuable and relevant.
“When we started the blog, we took a deep dive into who would be reading the articles and what type of information they would find valuable,” said McNab. “We researched many different sources, including looking at the search terms that people entered into search engines to get more information about their roles in funeral service and how to operate a successful funeral business. It was important to us to better understand what people wanted to know – and how we could help answer those questions through our blog content.”
Our dedicated team continues this work because you continue to read and spread that knowledge. We thank you, our reader, for 10 years of reading!
As we reflect on this milestone, we reaffirm our dedication to serving our customers with even greater passion and purpose in the years to come. Thank you for a decade of growth, learning and shared success.
Top 5 blog posts of all time
- What to Wear to a Funeral, Visitation or Celebration of Life Service
- A Guide to American Flag Etiquette and Traditions
- Funeral Planning Checklist: Considerations for Families
- 7 Comforting Text Messages to Send to Someone Who Is Grieving
- How to Write an Obituary That Is Creative and Memorable
A final note as we reflect on 10 years of the Homesteaders Blog: We are always open to new ideas. What do YOU want to hear? At the bottom of most blog posts, we invite you to share a comment, and we will do the same here. If you have a great idea for a topic, please share it with us in the comment form below.
