In this article, under mild constraints on the sectional curvature, we exploit a divergence formula for symmetric endomorphisms to deduce a general Poincaré type inequality. We apply such inequality to higher-order mean curvature of hypersurfaces of space forms and Einstein manifolds, to obtain several isoperimetric inequalities, as well as rigidity results for complete r-minimal hypersurfaces satisfying a suitable decay of the second fundamental form at infinity. Furthermore, using these techniques, we prove flatness and non-existence results for self-similar solutions to a large class of fully nonlinear curvature flows.