This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with students, pre-licensed and newly licensed therapists at the 2018 CAMFT conference. I love seeing all the energy that a conference creates and the friendships that are reconnected. The speakers were brilliant as usual and the conference itself was very well organized. One of the days there was a job fair just for pre-licensed therapists looking to find that job to start collecting those 3000 hours. I spoke to many who were excited with anticipation about the possibilities. I also spoke to many that felt they had just been thrown into the deep end of the pool. They want to know how do they promote?
A few associates were concerned because they had jobs lined up, but they also needed to find some of their own clients. I would hear I don’t have any money to advertise, what do I do? Where will my clients find me? What if I don’t know enough? Who should be my client anyway?
These are all good questions and I know that not having any answers causes stress, anxiety, and dread. As I spoke to these warm and caring practitioners it was apparent that they so wanted to do the right thing, if only they knew what that was. I was able to give them 3 FREE actions steps and I wanted to share them with you.
3 Free Steps to Promote You
1.Blogs that Promote You.
My first question was do you blog or have you blogged before? The answer was almost always “No.” I would then inquire why not? Then many had the deer on the headlights look and would say “I don’t know how, I am not a good writer, or what would I say, I’m not that smart.”
Wow, what comes to my mind is how in this process are these people not getting the confidence that should have. To know that they do know a lot and they have valuable information to share. I reminded them that they have Master’s degrees (FYI only about 9% of the US population has one) and if they could write for grad school and graduate; which they did, then they certainly could write a 500 to 1000 word blog.
To make it even easier, write about what you know, about symptoms you have worked with and strategies that have helped your clients. Clients often have questions about therapy, about their symptoms and about treatment. This is the information your client wants to know and perfect topics for you to write about. Additionally, use your graduate school papers content by repurposing the content to educate your reader. You may have to modify it some for your client’s purpose but you have already created it, use it.
2. Social Media that Promotes You.
Post content to your Professional social media pages. Find and use the platforms that your clients use. Post consistently to one or two platforms, post daily or weekly if possible. Post quotes, photos, links to your blogs, interesting articles that you have read that would benefit your clients. Post pictures of you at the conference with the logo, a speaker you meet, your friends at the conference, a picture of you with the new book you picked up. There are lots of things you can post, be you, let your personality shine through. You can find more information in the blog Social Media, What’s All The Frenzy?
3. Videos that Promote You.
Videos can be used to attract clients and they can be posted to your social media or website pages. Creating videos can be an effortless process and it’s completely free. Make your videos 1-2 minutes long, talk about topics that are of interest to your clients. Think about creative titles such as “Parents, 3 steps for an easier bedtime.”, “4 keys to a successful date night?” What to improve your sex life? Ask these 3 questions.” If you are having a problem with titles look at some blog title generators like Blog About by Impact. Make sure you host your videos on YouTube. It will save you storage space on your computer and since YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google your videos will clients find you. Make sure you index your videos with your name, state, and city. It also helps if you can add the subtitles to your video, this is something YouTube can do automatically for you. Check out Dustin NcCorchuk’s 9 Steps to Video SEO-How to Rank Videos in YouTube (in less than a minute).
Remember there are plenty of clients that need our help and we must make it easy for them to find us. Completing these 3 Free action steps to promote you are a wonderful place to start. You got this, you do.
All Rights Reserved, Therapist Practice In a Box, Sherry Shockey-Pope, 2017-1018©