Simple and effective Therapy marketing

Therapy marketing using social media: A quick start guide

Published June 22, 2011

Today therapy marketing has entered into a new world. Therapy, along with other disciplines like coaching, counselling and hypnotherapy, is about close personal relationships with our clients. We have the opportunities with these new social media websites to start building lots of relationships quickly and easily. Some of these relationships will evolve into new clients for us.

The ability for us to take part in and eventually start leading discussions out there on the Internet, gives us a unique opportunity to present ourselves as the professionals we are in a unique way. Done well, social media may be the only marketing tool you need, done badly, it could spell disaster. The simple way to think about this is that social media is about delivering quality in connection to your audience, the disasters occur when you think it is a push sales media. Push sales means you’re trying to just push your message into somebody else’s life whether they want it or not. Think engagement, forget advertising.

Where to start

If you’re currently using any social media services, then that is undoubtedly the place to start. Later in this post I will give specific details for some of the major social sites.

I’m a great believer in staying within your comfort zone. Stay with what you know and what is working for you and build on that. No need to learn an entire new technology just because somebody you talked to at a conference last week uses a different system to you.

So, simply put, use the service you’re currently working with and get it working for you before adding any of the others.

If you’re not using social media at all yet, read the list below and see which is most likely to connect with your ideal clients.

Where are you going with social media?

It’s valuable to have an idea where you want to take your social media marketing. Although it is clearly an evolving field, we can be pretty precise about what we want it to do for us.

We want a space on the Internet to which potential ideal clients could be drawn and where we can engage with them in meaningful ways.

We are not looking for tens of thousands of followers on Twitter. Think of it this way, if you’re running a fairly typical practice then it is likely you will not be needing much more than one new client a month to keep your books absolutely full. Clients do tend to stay rather a long time.

If you were interacting with a massive community, then this would take so much time it would seriously impact on your ability to deliver the service that you want to give. So we’re not looking for massive numbers of followers, or fan bases we are lookinh for numbers measured in the hundreds.[R1]

Undoubtedly it is about quality over quantity. It’s easy to get thousands of fans to a Facebook page, but as you may never interact with them again, what’s the point?

So the endgame is a community of people who you can interact with regularly in a quality way and with whom you have some connection. It doesn’t need to be massive.

The major social sites

Although there are many social sites out there, there are probably three main ones you should be considering at this stage. I’ll use the usual disclaimer that if your target audience is in a specialist community, bulletin board or forum then clearly that is the place you need to be.

Facebook

This for many is the front runner. Not necessarily because it is the best at building relationships, rather, because it is the biggest. Wherever you are in the world there are going to be lots of people locally who are using the service.

The key to success here is setting up a separate page for your practice, usually called the business page or fan page. Keep it separate from your personal friends.

Initially what you’re going to have to do is actively invite your friends to like that page. But as time goes on and the momentum builds, the fan base will increase.

Twitter

This is one I keep hearing lots of good things about. It is nevertheless, by its very nature, the one that can consume the most time.

It’s generally a good idea to set up a Twitter account for your practice, keep this separate from any personal account you have.

Initially you will have to actively go out and follow people who could be potential clients for you, and some will follow back.

As long as what you put out on your Twitter stream is meaningful to these people, and gives value then your number of followers will grow.

Make sure you come across as human!

LinkedIn

This is a business and professional social networking site that can be incredibly powerful if your target market is likely to be in that group.

It’s not the place to talk about your dog being sick this morning. It is a site for people who want to get business done. It is based on trust and relationships. Spammers very quickly get thrown off, thank goodness!

The keys to success are quite straightforward.

Complete your profile and make sure you write a full summary using all the keywords of the things that you help people with. In many of my other articles I talk about your marketing materials being focused on your audience’s needs. The same applies here. You need to talk about the issues you can help them solve using the words they would use.

LinkedIn recently introduced the opportunity to also have a business page. Set one up for your practice. The same rules apply, make sure you write about what you offer using the words your audience is likely to use when searching.

LinkedIn relies on connection with others. Make sure you take the time to connect with all the people you already know. Take the time to build those relationships. Once you are connected with them you have the opportunity to see the people they are connected with. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask for an introduction to the second level people. This can be one of the more powerful ways of using this phenomenal site.

Another thing to consider with LinkedIn is joining as many relevant groups as possible. Not the one packed with other therapists, the ones packed with your target audience.

Enter into discussions in those groups, be seen as sensible, wise and an expert. It doesn’t take long before people start to connect with you.

Another area that you can excel at on LinkedIn is the answers section. People ask questions, and these are categorised. You can answer any of these questions. The originator of the question is given the opportunity to vote on who gave the best answer. If you keep giving the best answers, again this gets you noticed.

The final key to success with LinkedIn is recommendations. Keep asking everyone you know for recommendations. When people search, the research results are sorted by recommendation. So the people with the most recommendations will be at the top of the list.

In summary.

Social media offers unique opportunities in therapy marketing. Using these tools wisely will allow you to engage with your target audiences in a way that has never been possible before. If you take advantage of this, it won’t be long before you grow your own personal tribe, faithful followers from whom you can draw clients as you need them.

John Nolan