Post-90s generation gains millions of fans by creating content with "90-year-olds": How do nursing homes achieve a 100% occupancy rate through short videos?
After lunch, in the hall of Tianjin Jukang Elderly Care Nursing Home, Feng Yan called out: "Grandpas and grandmas, shall we go downstairs to play for a while at half past twelve?"
The "going to play" Feng Yan refers to is shooting short videos with the grandpas and grandmas. Over the past three years, the self-media account "Funny Stories of the Gen Du Nursing Home" of Jukang Elderly Care Nursing Home has maintained a daily update frequency, and now it has more than one million fans on Douyin alone.
Sometimes Feng Yan leads the grandpas and grandmas to discuss hot topics in the workplace and daily life, and sometimes they "ride on the trend" to share the views of the elderly on hot topics. Many young people respond in the comment section: "I believe this, they have been there before" "The grandpas and grandmas in Gen Du Nursing Home are totally sober-minded about life". The grandpas and grandmas feel very proud when seeing the comments and likes, and often forward the short videos to the "Harmonious Big Family" group chat.
Comments under the "Funny Stories of the Gen Du Nursing Home" account
Similar nursing home accounts have emerged in endlessly in recent years. Compared with the quiet and peaceful impression in the past, these nursing homes are more like playgrounds for the elderly, and their accounts have become a world for them to create content, giving the elderly a space to express themselves and building a bridge for external communication.
The change in the content of elderly care institution accounts is essentially a microcosm of the silver economy's transformation from supply-driven to trust-driven. Behind this boom, is it just a marketing gimmick, or a signal of operational reform of elderly care institutions? When elderly care institutions no longer rely solely on location and beds to make profits, what kind of business are they turning into?
Recently, AgeClub paid attention to the content marketing transformation of elderly care institutions, and had an in-depth dialogue with Feng Yan, the person in charge of self-media operation of Tianjin Jukang Elderly Care Nursing Home, to analyze how a two-person operation team achieved 100% occupancy rate of the institution while creating hit videos.
PART 01
Get millions of fans by "playing"
Elderly care institutions become popular on short video platforms
From "elderly care" to "enjoyable elderly life", the spiritual pursuit after material satisfaction is an important indicator. In Feng Yan's eyes, shooting videos is not work, but playing with grandpas and grandmas to make them happy and feel the attention and recognition from the outside world.
The content of the "Funny Stories of the Gen Du Nursing Home" account is very rich, including the sober-minded speeches of grandpas and grandmas, chemistry classes held in the nursing home, parody of classic plot clips, daily vlogs, and conversations with the children of the elderly. In terms of content selection, Feng Yan does not set restrictions, and will try to shoot with the elderly whenever he sees an interesting topic.
In addition to "Funny Stories of the Gen Du Nursing Home", accounts such as "Hubei Jingshan Hengyuan Nursing Home", "Spring in the Chunxuanmao Nursing Home", "Weird Dean Liu Hua from Tangshan", "Dean Zhao for Elderly Care in Jilin", "Guode Elderly Care Intelligence" also belong to elderly care institutions, and have achieved certain results in communication data.
Douyin homepages of the above accounts
The content of these accounts can be roughly divided into two categories:
The first category is the discussion of hot topics by the elderly, mainly about workplace, relationships, daily life and so on. This kind of content accounts for a large proportion, and the speeches of the elderly can easily arouse the resonance and discussion of young people, with good data performance.
The content of the two accounts "Guode Elderly Care Intelligence" and "Spring in the Chunxuanmao Nursing Home" is mainly based on this kind of "inspirational quotes". According to public reports, the video shooting team of Chunxuanmao will have staff beside to give prompts to the elderly during shooting.
Feng Yan also added to us that the elderly do not read from scripts completely, and will have more natural expressions combined with their own careers and experiences. The role of the elderly in video shooting is a "creator", and the process of shooting and posting videos is also a kind of healing for the elderly.
The second category is the daily life of elderly care institutions. The main content of the three accounts "Hubei Jingshan Hengyuan Nursing Home", "Weird Dean Liu Hua from Tangshan" and "Dean Zhao for Elderly Care in Jilin" all fall into this category.
Among them, the content of "Dean Zhao for Elderly Care in Jilin" and "Weird Dean Liu Hua from Tangshan" is relatively rich, including dean's ward round, kitchen meal preparation, cultural and entertainment activities and so on. "Hubei Jingshan Hengyuan Nursing Home" focuses on cultural and entertainment activities, and gains the attention of the elderly through resonant song and dance performances.
The trend of building personal IP has also spread to the accounts of elderly care institutions. AgeClub noticed that all the popular accounts are trying to build the personal IP of the dean or the elderly in the home, and take this as the core competitiveness to show the harmonious atmosphere in the institution and the positive spirit of grandpas and grandmas enjoying their old age.
Take the account "Spring in the Chunxuanmao Nursing Home" as an example. Four fixed elderly people appear on camera, and each of them has their own unique language and body expression style. The average age of the four elderly is 77 years old, and the oldest Grandma Yu is already 91 years old this year. She still speaks clearly and fluently in the videos, full of energy.
The creation of personal IP actually has a counterproductive effect on the elderly themselves. Chen Zhuo, the operator of the Chunxuanmao account, once said that he hopes to let the elderly who were originally negative about life rediscover a healthy, complete and positive self in the role they create, and the elderly do gain a sense of achievement and regain their passion for life in the process of creation and being noticed.
Generally speaking, the purpose of these accounts is not to produce original high-quality content, but to focus on showing the living state of the elderly in elderly care institutions.
PART 02
Make "ideal elderly care" concrete
Content operation becomes a new business
In Feng Yan's view, when elderly care institutions create content, on the one hand, they can show the real appearance of the institution to the outside world and eliminate misunderstandings, and on the other hand, it is also an objective demand for marketing.
The "2024 Annual National Bulletin on the Development of Elderly Care Causes" released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Working Commission on Aging in July 2025 shows that by the end of 2024, there were 40,000 registered elderly care institutions nationwide, with a total of 5.077 million beds, but the overall occupancy rate was only 45.4%.
The industry generally believes that a nursing home needs to reach an 80% occupancy rate to break even, but data shows that in 2024, the average occupancy rate of elderly care institutions nationwide was less than 50%, and the bed vacancy rate in some areas even exceeded 60%.
Content marketing has a significant effect on increasing the occupancy rate. Feng Yan said that after the account became popular, the institution has maintained a 100% occupancy rate for a long time since 2025, and now the elderly even need to queue up to move in. There are also many elderly people or their children consulting about admission in the background and comment section of the account.
Most importantly, the institution has almost zero cost in content operation. Feng Yan revealed that Jukang Elderly Care Nursing Home has never invested in traffic for the account, the only equipment is a second-hand iPhone, and the operation team only includes Feng Yan and a post-90s assistant.
The key to such a good effect lies in the accurate reach of the algorithm, and the communication content concretizes the "ideal elderly care" in the eyes of children.
The actual users of elderly care services are the elderly, but the people who actually search and place orders are their children. Meituan data shows that a large number of disabled and semi-disabled elderly do not have decision-making ability, and their children aged 30 to 50 are better at using online products. Young people are used to checking the address, price and reviews on their mobile phones.
Searching for "elderly care institutions" on Meituan will display information about surrounding institutions and experience packages
Liang Bowen, head of commercial brand of leading elderly care service brand Fushoukang, once said that as the parents of the first generation of only children gradually enter the stage of needing care, their children often prefer to obtain information, compare services and check reviews through online platforms first. If users make decisions online, elderly care services should also extend to the online space.
The city-wide recommendation mechanism of content platforms such as Douyin can accurately push content to families with potential needs within three to five kilometers around. Even if there are only a few thousand city-wide exposures, as long as there is real demand, the family conversion efficiency is far better than traditional offline promotion.
The core strategy of content marketing is to hit real needs with a small entry point — give up high-end promotional videos, use the real scenes of elderly care institutions to let potential customers intuitively feel the living state of their parents here, so as to associate that their parents can also realize "enjoyable elderly life" by moving into a nursing home.
Bi Xiaona, deputy general manager of Beijing Chunxuanmao Health Care Service Co., Ltd., once publicly stated that the fans behind their accounts are mainly young and middle-aged groups aged 30-40, and they achieve the communication of brand and service concepts through soft implantation of the logo on the clothes of the elderly appearing in the videos.
Fans of this age group are the main force of family elderly care decision-making. The improvement of their impression of elderly care institutions can shorten the decision-making chain of family elderly care consumption to a certain extent.
For a long time, the account "Funny Stories of the Gen Du Nursing Home" has maintained a daily update frequency to maintain exposure intensity.
Feng Yan and his assistant usually start shooting at noon, and the video can be released at around 2 p.m. Content operation is now also sold externally as a business of Jukang Elderly Care Nursing Home. In his spare time, Feng Yan will help other elderly care institutions in need shoot videos and create content, and copy his own capabilities and methods of operating short video accounts to other institutions.
Service providers that provide short video operation for elderly care institutions have also appeared on the market, and Yunqibang Network is one of them. Founded in 2016, the company focuses on online marketing services and has served many elderly care projects.
Yunqibang Network has summed up several rules in shooting: when shooting the elderly, first build trust, try not to interfere with the natural behavior of the elderly, and at the same time accept the uncontrollable state of the elderly, and collect materials when the elderly are in a good state and more cooperative.
PART 03
The elderly shoot videos for young people
How can elderly care institutions do a good job in marketing?
Young people's voices often appear in the comment sections of these accounts. Content marketing that is not entirely aimed at the elderly actually reflects the changes in the elderly care decision-making chain.
In the past, the customer acquisition logic of elderly care institutions highly relied on offline promotion, community on-site services, acquaintance referrals, and word-of-mouth accumulation, which was a typical offline slow traffic model. However, in recent years, the industry traffic pattern has changed, the traditional offline customer acquisition channels have shrunk, the customer acquisition cost has continued to rise, and the natural passenger flow has plummeted. The online space has become a new channel for elderly care institutions to acquire customers.
Online short video traffic has now become a new competitive position for elderly care institutions.
On the one hand, online platforms such as Meituan and Dianping have become important reference materials for elderly care families when choosing institutions, and the pressure on institutions to invest in traffic has increased; on the other hand, the decision-making chain of elderly care services is long, and the trust threshold is high. Users often need to compare for more than half a year before making a decision. The conversion effect of pure advertising is limited, and scenario-based content is needed for assistance.
In January 2026, the Beijing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Meituan, and elderly care service institutions filed by civil affairs departments began to enter Meituan and Dianping. By the end of March, 163 elderly care service institutions in Beijing had launched the Meituan elderly care special page.
Not long ago, JD launched elderly care service consumption subsidies, and the whole process from application to use can be completed in the app, which further promotes the online acquisition of elderly care services.
In addition to the online trend, the "2025 Research Report on Beijing Institutional Elderly Care Market and User Consumption Behavior" shows that 80.3% of elderly care institution consultations are initiated by children, and the elderly themselves only account for 5.4%, which has a typical "family decision-making" feature.
Content marketing precisely hits the anxiety of children, transforms children's anxiety about the quality of their parents' later life into watchable, comparable and shareable content products, and then concretizes the abstract responsibility of "filial piety" into the actionable behavior of "I found a good nursing home", realizing the shortening of the family decision-making chain.
In order to cater to the children behind the screen, the changes made by nursing homes are not limited to marketing methods.
Most elderly care institutions will establish a mechanism for daily interaction with children, either updating the situation of the elderly in the home in group chats or moments, or using digital intelligent technology to let children check the daily life of the elderly at any time. Sometimes Feng Yan also invites children to participate in short video production to show the elderly care institutions from the perspective of children.
The space design and activity design of traditional nursing homes are oriented to safety and practicality. Under the trend of content creation, institutions have begun to consciously create "communicable moments". Huaihai Health Care under Huaihai Industrial Group launched the "Health Care Mini Theater", and short plays such as "Nursing Home for 60 Yuan a Day" and "Grandpa is Forced to Work" have gained a large number of fans who urge to update. Family members feedback: "Seeing my mom laughing like a child in the video, I feel extremely at ease at that moment".
The marketing process of Chunxuanmao continues even after the elderly move into the institution. During the visit, Chunxuanmao will design the model room and visit route according to the needs of the elderly, making the visit and admission process more life-oriented, so that the elderly feel safe, warm and scenario-based, instead of creating a gorgeous, high-end but cold model room in the traditional impression.
Some nursing homes are also trying participatory service designs such as grandparent-grandchild classes, regular vlog reports, birthday party live broadcasts, and family days, which can not only reassure children, but also meet the expectations of the elderly to communicate more with their children. Children's consumption logic has also changed from paying the monthly fee at one time to understanding the needs of the elderly through daily communication (such as accompanying consultation, age-appropriate products or other value-added services), so as to realize continuous consumption in the home.