Are you a psychotherapist or a professional life coach and feel overwhelmed about how to market on social media? If you are a licensed psychotherapist like me, you may have added concerns about confidentiality. Don’t despair – you can have a social media presence on Facebook and maintain your confidentiality. In this article I am sharing some tips to get you started.
As I was saying in my previous article, having social media presence is KEY if you are a business owner and that includes counselors, therapists, and coaches. Nowadays people don’t look for information and find about who you are as much on your website; instead majority of them use social media, and especially Facebook as a “social proof.” That is, unless they are older generation who are more used to traditional marketing including yellow pages or professional directories. So if you want more clients, you will – sooner or later – need to learn how to make yourself visible and establish yourself as an expert on social media, especially when it comes to younger generations who mostly use their mobile devices.
When I launched my business in January 2013 I was lost as many of you. I had a personal Facebook page and even a business Facebook page but I didn’t have a clue how to market myself so I made plenty of mistakes. If you can, I highly recommend hiring an expert who will help you accomplish things more efficiently and you will see the return of your investment. Here are some tips:
1. Separate your personal Facebook page from your business Facebook page. In this way, you will be able to maintain confidentiality and your clients or prospective clients will not have access to your personal and family information. Always make sure that you set the settings about who can see your posts as only FRIENDS on your personal Facebook page. Also, be mindful what you post on your business page. Try to be engaging and also use funny or inspirational posts and you can post some family photos but don’t include too much personal information.
2. Participate in Facebook groups that are related to your industry. I suggest quality over quantity. Don’t spam the groups with promotions; instead get to know group members or even create your own group like I did to attract holistic entrepreneurs. Good idea is to start with a couple of groups.
3. Create Facebook ads – campaigns at a low cost to get more likes, and use targeted marketing to reach your ideal clients. I have just started doing this and I have seen more people visit my page as well as I got new sign-ups for my email list. You can just start with $5/day for 3 days. Always learn from what hasn’t worked and adjust the approach. It’s also important to know what your intention for the campaign is: get more likes, take people to your website, or promote a special event that you are doing.
4. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. In all your posts and messages, people need to know what you can do for them, how you can solve their problem, and they also need to get to know you as a person. Many therapists make mistake that they don’t use common language and are too clinical. My coach suggested using 4:1:1 ratio. This means that for every 6 posts that you do, you want to have 4 engaging/funny/inspirational, 1 clinical post, and 1 promotion/sales ad.
5. Last but not least, to be most efficient, you can SCHEDULE your posts in advance. I am still figuring this one out as sometimes my creative brain works better when I get inspired by life events, my clients, or what I am struggling with at the moment. Play with it. I am now scheduling 1 post a day for the next 30 days and each day I have a different theme that I follow, such as sharing inspirational posts on Mondays.
