In this final episode of my mini series on why clients don't follow you on social media, I discuss the importance of being clearer about who you're trying to reach and what you want to be known for.

When you consistently talk about a specific area of work, people begin to recognise you for it. That recognition builds trust, helps clients find you, and can even lead to speaking opportunities, referrals, and wider reach.

Takeaways

• If your followers are mainly therapists, it may be because your content and conversations are happening in therapist spaces.
• Authority isn’t about being the expert in someone’s life. It simply means being recognised for a particular area of work.
• Being specific helps people remember you and makes it easier for the right clients to find you.
• Repeating the themes you want to be known for builds recognition over time.

In the episode I also suggest a few themes you could explore this month:

Stress and overload – April is Stress Awareness Month, a good opportunity to talk about burnout and workplace stress.

Identity and visibility – With Autism Acceptance Day and Lesbian Visibility Week, you might explore masking, identity, and inclusive therapy spaces.

Connection and companionship – April is also National Pet Month, which opens conversations about loneliness, comfort, and grief for pets.

You can listen to Liezl talk about her work in Episode 76 and access her website HERE

If you’d like support identifying your niche and communicating clearly to the clients you want to work with, you can find out more about Therapy Growth Group in the link below.

You can also find me here:

The Good Enough Counsellors Facebook Group

Josephine Hughes on Facebook

Josephine Hughes on YouTube

My website: josephinehughes.com

Setting up in private practice? Download my free checklist HERE

Need ideas for how to get clients? Download my free handout 21 Ways for Counsellors to Attract New Clients HERE

Keywords: private practice marketing, social media for therapists, overcoming imposter syndrome in therapy, therapist referral networks, marketing for mental health professionals, branding for therapists, themes for therapy content creation

The information contained in Good Enough Counsellors is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this podcast are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this podcast.

Josephine Hughes disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this podcast.

So the thing about when you know who it is you're trying to reach, it has all sorts of knock on effects.

You know which groups to join, you know which conversations you want to be a part of, you know what sorts of professionals you want to reach out to and connect with, and you know the types of words and language that your client uses. It means that you can connect with people. Community is a big part of social media.

Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect. I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want and create the practice of your dreams.

In today's episode, I am completing the little series we've been doing on social media for private practice and why clients aren't following you.

So we've already talked over the last couple of months about this, so you can go back and find it if you look in the social media episodes for February and January. So do go and look at those two episodes, or should I say listen to those two episodes if you'd like to catch up.

And today we're going to talk about something slightly different but really relevant to helping you get seen by clients. And that is helping you to be clear about who you're trying to reach and it's something that gives you authority.

I'm going to talk a little bit more about authority and how that can bother us as therapists. But I just want to start by saying authority isn't about being louder or grander.

It's not about your ego, it's about actually being clear enough that the right people can recognise you. I'm going to talk about how you can establish authority as somebody who people could come to in the area that you work in.

So really what I'm talking about today is that being clear builds authority and when you are known for something that helps you to be discovered for it as well. But let's just have a little think about why it might be problematic for you just to be followed by therapists.

On the one hand, let's not forget that therapists can be a great source of referrals. So it's always useful to have therapists who are following you as well.

It will be useful if you get known for something in particular because other therapists may then make you the person, the go to person and they'll tell other people about you. So please don't be disheartened if you're mainly followed by therapists. But obviously you do want to reach Clients as well.

So what might be happening is you might be posting mainly in therapist spaces. So perhaps while you're having conversations, it's mainly in therapist spaces.

Might be that the way that you're actually putting stuff out there is actually engaging more with other therapists who are interested in it. So it might be the level at which you're actually describing things. There's obviously the shared language as well.

And that that means that more therapists will follow you. And when that begins to happen, the algorithms will pump you out more to other therapists.

And obviously if therapists are engaging with your page, they will get to see more of your page.

And so it becomes a sort of circle that you put more out for therapists, you get more therapists following you, you put even more out and the algorithm brings them to you. And then before you know it, you have got a great following. But they're all therapists.

And if you're looking for cl, you actually want to reach clients as well. It's not wrong, but it's thinking about how you can meet clients.

And in order to get beyond it, in order for you to get beyond this echo chamber of therapists or this little bubble, lovely bubble of therapists who follow you, is to be really clear about who you're actually trying to reach. I'm going to give you a lovely example of this.

But first off, I want to just quickly differentiate between different terminology because I think a lot of therapists worry if I'm using this word authority. It sort of makes you sound as though you need to be the expert.

And I just know from listening to therapists who talk to me that the thought of being labeled the expert, I mean, A, it really brings out the imposter syndrome, B, none of us want to be the experts in our clients lives. We know and respect our clients. So we can really sort of have a bit of a visceral response to the idea of being an expert.

So let's just unpack it a little bit when I talk about what I mean about authority. So expertise is obviously a reflection of your knowledge and skill. It's not quite the same as authority though.

So authority in the way I'm talking about it today is whether or not people think of you what when they think about a specific issue.

So I just want to reassure you that you don't have to think of yourself as an expert and you don't go around telling everybody that you're the authority. This is something that you earn.

And I'll tell you how you can do that it basically happens when you shout consistently and clearly around one particular area. So authority isn't about being superior, it's about being recognised. Okay, and how do you actually make that happen?

Well, to be an authority in an area, it needs to be a specific area. If you talk about everything, that just keeps you invisible. You're just generic. You're like every other therapist out there.

Whereas if you're very specific, it does create. Create recognition. And what you need to do is you need to keep repeating things over and over and over again.

And as I've been preparing this podcast, I've been thinking about me and what I've been doing, and I actually have been talking about marketing, about being specific about niching for a number of years now. Anybody who's followed me for a while will know I do talk about this a lot. And it has led to me being one of those authorities in the area.

And I do get people now who ask me to make contributions because I do know about this sort of stuff. So repetition really helps. And I'm very specific about what I talk about in many ways. You know, perhaps I should have done something different.

I don't know if talking about therapist marketing is the thing that really appeals to lots of therapists. I think you'd much prefer it if I talked about some other area of cpd.

But I chose to talk about marketing because A, it's a passion for me, and B, it's something that I just love to delve into and really love to help people with. So there you go. That's what I do. But I've been fairly consistent about it. I've talked about it a lot, and that's sort of helped to build trust.

So when you're really clear, people know who it's for. You know, obviously with me, you know, I'm talking about therapist marketing, and it's also helped me to think about where I need to be.

Where do I need to be visible? So I'm quite visible in Facebook groups, for example, where other therapists are.

And I talk about marketing in there as much as possible, A, because it's a passion, B, because I want to help people. So it's often you don't actually need loads and loads and loads of content. You actually just need to have clearer content.

Now, I said I was going to give you an example of someone who's really managed to build up some authority, and that that person is Liesel Laidlaw. So some of you will have heard Liesl on her podcast episode that she did with me. Talking about ADHD and mindfulness.

And Liesl, if you're listening, I hope this is a nice surprise for you that I'm giving you a shout out. But what Liesl's been working on over the last year or so is mindfulness for people who have adhd. Liesl's a trained mindfulness teacher.

She's also someone with ADHD herself and her therapy clients at adhd. So it all melds together really nicely.

And Liesel has consistently talked about ADHD and mindfulness and actually it's something that she's really carved out because not many people were talking about it. She's worked quite hard on making connections and networking. She networks a lot with peers who maybe are ADHD.

She networks a lot with professionals on LinkedIn who are in the ADHD and mindfulness fields. And Liesl's now been invited to do things like speaking engagements. She's got thousands of followers on LinkedIn.

She's really expanded her network and this is because she's been consistently talking about ADHD and mindfulness. So Liesel and I worked on her strategy for getting known and I am really proud of you, Liesel, for doing this and working at it so consistently.

And it is fabulous to see the results that you're getting. Liesl has really expanded her reach beyond therapists by doing this and she's just such a great example of it.

Having a niche has actually really expanded Liesl's reach. It hasn't shrunk it. This is often what we fear. We think if we niche down it means that we aren't going to get as much reach and clients.

But in actual fact, especially online, it really does make you stand out. So the thing about when you know who it is you're trying to reach, it has all sorts of knock on effects.

You know which groups to join, you know which conversations you want to be a part of, you know what sorts of professionals you want to reach out to and connect with and you know the types of words and language that your client uses. It means that you can connect with people. And I just want to very quickly mention here that community is a big part of social media.

When you're clear, one of the things it does is it actually means it's easier for people to find you. So you would be using particular keywords apply to your field that you're trying to reach people with.

And that really helps when people are doing searches. It means that you are more shareable. So people might share your post because you're coming at something with an interesting angle.

You're using your knowledge, you're using your experience. People find that interesting, so they may share your posts more. And obviously, the more your posts are shared, the more people will get to see it.

And also, if you're producing really interesting, useful information, people will save your posts as well. And that means that it gives a signal to the algorithms that your stuff is really valuable. And that helps to increase your reach as well.

And importantly, it makes you quite memorable. People remember you because you're always banging on about the same thing. And so it makes it nice and easy for people to remember who you are.

You don't have to be loud, you don't have to shout. You just need to be clear. If you're clear rather than vague, it will help clients find you. So here's three top tips.

Number one, just keep repeating what you want to be known for. I mean, obviously you can repost stuff, especially if it's popular.

You can build up a little sort of bank of posts that you use, but also just come at it from different angles, but around the same subject. Just keep repeating and people will get to know you. Number two, speak in your client's language. Remember to use the words that they use.

And number three, this is really important. Spend time where your clients already are. So think carefully.

If you're concentrating and focusing on a particular area, where do the types of clients that you're looking for hang out? And going back to Liesel, she uses LinkedIn because it's a professional forum and she can reach other professionals that way.

So for her, she chose that specifically to be able to reach out to other professionals. And it's really that simple. You don't need to have special hacks, you don't need to chase the algorithm. You don't need to be a performer.

You just need to be clear. And this is exactly what we do in therapy growth group.

The reason I do my marketing with therapist work is that I absolutely love helping you be clear and finding out what lights you up and how you can use that to speak to clients.

I really love delving with you into your background and your experience and what that means for your niche and how you can communicate that effectively to clients. Clients. That's what we do in therapy growth group. It's absolutely foundational work.

It will stand you in good stead for wherever you decide to market yourself. And it's all done in community so you can be supported as you go.

One of my members said this week that this is one of the things that he finds most valuable about being in the group, is that having the support there means he's more courageous to experiment, to try things out, knowing that it's okay to do that. So if you'd like to find out more about therapy growth group, just check out the link in the show notes.

And now, as it's my social media episode, we are going to move on to think about themes that you could use for April. Number one, I thought would be quite important is to talk about stress and overload.

Reason I'm suggesting this, this is April is Stress Awareness Month. We've also got World health day on the 7th of April and health and safety at work on the 28th.

And I think you could tie that into subjects such as burnout, stress, the nervous system, how chronic stress affects the body. You could talk about when coping isn't actually coping and you could talk about workplace overwhelm.

So if stress is one of the things that you want to get known for, this is a great way to repeat and reinforce the fact that you work with stress, especially say, if you want to be working with, say, burnout workplace stress. Brilliant time to use that. The second theme I wanted to talk about was identity and visibility.

And the reason I'm choosing this this month month is that April is Autism Awareness Month.

We've also got World Autism Acceptance day on the 2nd, International Asexuality Day on the 6th of April, and Lesbian Visibility Week on the 20th to the 26th of April. And there's actually a Lesbian Visibility Day as well. So you might want to talk about different aspects of this.

So you could talk about masking, for example, in of terms visibility. You could talk about the emotional cost of not being seen. You could talk about how you create inclusive therapy spaces.

Basically, what you're doing is you're showing that you're being really a safe person. You're showing the acceptance of these different identities and you're also being very clear.

So if you work with, say, neurodivergent people, that's coming across, you're doing the repetition again. You're being safe, you're being clear and you're showing authority. The third theme I wanted to pick out was connection and companionship.

You know that I am a cat mum now, do love my furry friends and we can celebrate them because in the UK it is National Pet Month for the whole of April and a couple of us days are Dog Therapy Appreciation day. On the 11th, 7th and therapy animal day on the 30th. I reckon as counsellors, we could nick those days, don't you?

I think they're just as important for the UK as for the us. So different angles you could use.

If you're someone who, say, wants to be known for bereavement, then you could talk about grief for pets, for example. If you're somebody who is reaching out to people who are lonely, then that can be an angle to talk about how pets give us companionship.

If you're someone who wants to be known for working with trauma, you could talk about the way pets help us to be regulated.

I think the lovely thing about talking about pets is that it just shows something around connection and it shows that you're a real person, you're not just there performing on social media, you actually understand people and, and if you want to share about your pets, that makes you relatable.

And now I'm going to bring this mini series about trying to break out of the therapist bubble and for more potential clients to follow you, I'm going to bring this little series to an end. A very brief summary of what we've talked about.

So, in January, we talked about how language creates connection, so people are more able to connect with you when you use language that they relate to. In February, we talked about your tone, what's coming across in the way that you're speaking because that helps to create safety.

And then this episode has been all about.

About being clear, about knowing who it is that you're trying to reach, becoming an authority so that people recognise you for who you are and you become a go to person in that particular area. You'd be very pleased to know that this means you don't have to be louder, you just need to be clearer. Thanks very much for listening.

I hope this episode has been helpful and I'll see you again next week. Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community. Good enough, counsellors.

And for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please Visit my website, JosephineHughes.com if you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every, every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe you can do it.