Social Media Power List
Top 20 Large Care Home Groups

LinkedIn and Facebook have enjoyed the largest absolute growth since 2018: LinkedIn adding 13.9 million users (66 per cent) to reach 34.9 million, Facebook adding 12.5 million (31 per cent) to reach 52.5 million.

TikTok, which launched in the UK in 2017, has seen by far the largest proportional growth, rising 246 per cent since 2019 to reach 17.5 million users by 2022.

UK LinkedIn users grew from around 21 million in 2018 to 34.9 million by 2022, a 66 per cent increase over five years. This structural growth underpins the sector's rising investment in professional-platform presence.

Barchester Healthcare leads the sector with 50,570 LinkedIn followers across its group account.

Facebook dominates every age group except 13 to 17 and 25 to 34, where Instagram and LinkedIn respectively lead. TikTok's largest cohort is 13 to 17-year-olds (over 2.5 million), a demographic that will age into the care workforce over the next decade.

LinkedIn's 25 to 34 spike (around 20 million) reflects its dominance among young professionals.

Across all 1,479,802 combined followers, Facebook accounts for 50 per cent and LinkedIn for 31 per cent. But LinkedIn's share is heavily skewed by Bupa's 259,000 LinkedIn followers from its wider health services brand.

Excluding Bupa, Facebook rises to 61 per cent and LinkedIn falls to 18 per cent, revealing a far more Facebook-dominant sector.

Bupa's roughly 327,750 followers are excluded from sector comparisons because LinkedIn accounts for 79 per cent of its following (around 259,000), a reflection of its wider health services brand rather than its care home operations.

Including Bupa would inflate LinkedIn's sector share from 18 to 31 per cent, misrepresenting the care home sector's social media mix.

Barchester Healthcare's group account (70,893 followers) leads the sector in corporate social media presence by a wide margin, with HC One and Hallmark Care Homes following in second and third.

This chart counts group and corporate account followers only, excluding individual home accounts, to reveal each organisation's central brand investment.

Barchester Healthcare (231,874) and Anchor (177,732) are clear outliers, with Barchester holding almost double the following of third-ranked Avery Healthcare Group (120,332).

Barchester leads on Facebook (172,039 across group and home accounts) and LinkedIn (50,570); Anchor leads on Twitter (63,017) and TikTok (40,639).

Marham House Care Home (Anchor) tops the individual home rankings, driven by an extraordinary TikTok following of 30,800, the largest single-home TikTok audience in the sector.

St Fillans Care Home and Redwalls lead on Facebook engagement. Individual home accounts are predominantly Facebook-led, with TikTok a pioneering outlier.