Everyone is talking about it. Social media. The new place to be. You almost feel Fear Of Missing Out by not having your practice there. But you shouldn’t buy into this popular narrative.

For a therapist in most cases social media channels are pretty… useless. 

Think about it. When you are searching for a specialist in your area, do you go to Facebook to find an eye doctor? Or do you go on Instagram to find a heart surgeon? A GP on Twitter?

No? So why are you having your own social media channels for your private practice?

When you are looking for a specialist you probably ask your friends about someone good that they can recommend or you simply go into Google search and you type: profession & your city, for example: Dentist London.

That’s exactly how your clients are looking for you! 

And not even mention that Social Media it’s quite time-consuming and can be frustrating at times. If run properly and constantly for years, social media can somehow increase your brand awareness or drive a bit of traffic into your website, but you need to think about what your goal is:

1)    You want to spend precious hours each week creating content just to get 2 or 3 likes from people that are not in your target audience and get no appointment requests? 

2)    Or do you prefer to position your services in the search results so the people that actually actively searching for you can come to your website and book an appointment with you?

Furthermore, without spending plenty of money on advertainment on Facebook or Instagram you won’t reach more people. And especially you won’t reach those in your target audience – people who are struggling with their mental health and could use your help. Facebook publicly stated:

“We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.”[2]

Basically, they are making organic posts to be less visible so you would have to pay them to promote your content. Organic reach in social media is broken, especially for therapists. 

So, if not social media, what is the solution? Sign up to a few directories and wait hopefully that somebody eventually will find you? Well, not exactly.

If you want to get more clients you must think like them.

We need to make it as easy as it is possible for potential clients to be able to find you!

According to Hitwise, over 68% of consumers start their mobile health research with a search engine[1]. That means they start looking for you using either Google or Bing!

Search results is the place to be! Instead of wasting hours and hours on creating content for Instagram or Facebook make sure that your website is on point. Make sure that your website is visible on the Google search and can be found quite easily.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1.     Is your practice could be found easily on Google? When you type: counsellor + your city, is your website coming up on the first page of search results? If not, you need to fix it.

2.     Does my website convey trust in me and my services?

3.     Is it easy to book an appointment with me from my website?

4.     Is my website optimized for mobile search? Mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices generated 50.81% of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017[3].

In the modern era, the internet is where people go to find what they need — including therapy. If you don’t have your own website, create it as soon as possible. But be aware of services like Wix or Squarespace to build your website. They are pretty easy to use, but they are terrible when it comes to online visibility. You can have the greatest website in the world, but if no one will be able to find it in search results, it’s basically useless.

If you like the idea of clients coming to you without spending time on any social mediachannel or you need some help with getting your services on the first page of google search results so the clients can find you easily, send me a message today.

================================================================

Sources:

1)    Hotwise – https://hitwise.connexity.com/rs/371-PLE-119/images/hitwise-mobile-search-report-us.pdf

2) Wired – https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/04/facebooks-move-end-organic-search-isnt-surprising

3)    Statistica – https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices

#socialmedia #therapists #marketing