Ethical Storytelling

This blog post is part of a weekly newsletter written by Elizabeth, founder and CEO of Welbi. Subscribe to get this newsletter every week.

Real Life Matters

We’re living in a world where it’s harder than ever to trust what we see online.

Between AI-generated images, heavily filtered content, and overly curated marketing, people are skeptical of what they see online – and rightfully so.

Families evaluating your community are looking for something different: not perfection, but reality. They want to believe that what they see on your website, social media, or brochures reflects what they’ll feel when they walk through your front door.

Effective marketing reflects reality. It’s built on real images, real people, and real connection. Your marketing should be using images captured and shared with care, transparency, and consent. Lean into trust and authenticity over perfection, and when prospects go from your website to your community, it will feel like the same place they saw online.

The Challenges of Getting Real

Getting authentic photos and stories isn't always easy:

• Staff don’t always know who’s approved for marketing use
  
  
• Consent forms are buried in paperwork or often outdated
  
  
• Marketing teams are nervous about making a mistake
  
  
• Using real resident stories can feel risky or like too much work to do right
  
  

So instead, communities default to stock imagery or AI generated content. The result? Your vibrant, meaningful lifestyle programming gets lost behind someone else’s idea of “what senior living looks like.”

Why It Matters

Families are evaluating you before they ever step through the door.  And what they want to see is proof, not a promise.

• What kinds of experiences do residents actually have?
  
  
• Who are the people who live here?
  
  
• Will they feel like they belong?

Photos, videos, and testimonials are your most powerful tools to answer those questions, when used ethically and intentionally.

What Ethical Storytelling Looks Like

• Consent-first content
  Ensure residents have opted in. In many locations consent is regulated. We recommend that staff digitally log consent from residents. Can images captured by the community be shared privately with family, such as in private photo feeds? Privately within the community, such as in the community portal? And publicly within various marketing efforts like social media, website, and print marketing? These layers of consent give resident’s agency.
  
  
• Consent may change with age or changing needs
  It’s important to understand as a resident moves from care levels that their consent for sharing images may change as well. When changing care levels, are previous images still okay to share, but new ones aren’t?
  
  
• Upload and tag photos for residents in real-time
  By uploading and tagging photos with residents, you can automatically see what their consent levels are. Tools like Welbi make this easy, and even blur residents faces when their consent isn’t available to share photos within the community or privately with other families (such as in group photos). This makes it easy for marketing teams to pull a live feed of approved photos to use as well.
  
  
• Resident-centered narratives
  Don’t just showcase “picture-perfect” moments. Show diversity in age, ability, background, and emotion, not just smiling faces, but meaningful ones. Highlight experiences from the resident’s perspective.
  
  
• Empowerment over exposure
  Make storytelling something you do with residents and their families, not to them. When you include them in the process, you build trust. Sharing photos with residents and their loved ones comes first; access for your marketing programs is a bonus.
  
  

With that foundation in place, you can confidently share:

• Candid, seasonally appropriate event photos on social media
• Resident stories in your newsletters
• Lifestyle snapshots on your website
  
  

The result? A brand that feels vibrant, transparent, human, and deeply trustworthy.

Because the best kind of marketing doesn’t look like marketing at all.  It looks like life well lived.

Thanks for reading,
Elizabeth Audette-Bourdeau
CEO, Welbi

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