Shownotes
Feeling disheartened by low engagement on your posts? Wondering if it’s even worth using social media when no one seems to be watching?
In this first episode of a 3 part series, we’re digging into the content side of social media for therapists in private practice — what to post, how to make it meaningful, and why even quiet followers might be paying more attention than you think.
You’ll learn:
- Why visibility isn’t the same as validation
- The 50/30/20 rule for balancing engaging, informative, and promotional content
- How stories, hashtags, emojis, and reels can gently boost your reach
- What your page insights can teach you (even if they feel discouraging)
And if you're looking for ideas about what to post over the summer months, this episode also includes campaign ideas using awareness events, such as:
- Bereaved Parents Month
- National Picnic Month
- World Listening Day
- International Self-Care Day
- Non Binary People's Awareness Week
This episode is full of practical tips — and a whole lot of reassurance.
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
You can also find me here:
The Good Enough Counsellors Facebook Group
Josephine Hughes on Facebook
Josephine Hughes on YouTube
My website: josephinehughes.com
Keywords
social media for therapists, content creation tips, engaging social media posts, growing private practice, therapy marketing strategies, social media engagement, building an online presence, mental health content ideas, posting on social media, therapist social media tips, summer campaign ideas, therapy growth group
Transcripts
During Mental Health Awareness Week, one of the members of Good Enough Counsellors asked, is there any point posting on my page when I've hardly got any followers?
Speaker A:And I think most of us can identify with that feeling of spending ages writing and creating a post only for there to be crickets.
Speaker A:It's so disappointing.
Speaker A:But here is what I've learned.
Speaker A:Posting isn't about instant results, it's about planting seeds.
Speaker A:Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect.
Speaker A:I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want, and today I'm tackling the question we've probably all asked ourselves at Summer Point about social media.
Speaker A:Why bother posting when hardly anyone is watching?
Speaker A:In this episode, I'm starting with just one aspect of the answer, and that's content.
Speaker A:And we will come back in future episodes to talk about other parts of the answer, which include consistency and community.
Speaker A:But I'm tackling this one step at a time because it takes a while to to get your social media feed to work and I don't want to overwhelm you.
Speaker A:And so it's important that we just do this slowly and gradually.
Speaker A:If you're not sure what to post in July, I'm also going to be sharing some summer campaign ideas to help you post authentically and feel human, rather than it being hard.
Speaker A:First off, let's talk about content and why what you post actually matters.
Speaker A:Now, the first thing I'd like to say is that sometimes we can see things in a very negative light, and if we're not getting very many responses on our social media, we think that really there's no point doing it.
Speaker A:No one is watching and so why do I carry on?
Speaker A:But often people are reading, they are looking, it's just that they're not commenting.
Speaker A:And that's something that I'll talk about in a moment don't to help you address.
Speaker A:So first of all, let's just acknowledge that sometimes we don't see the full picture.
Speaker A:And I've certainly found that people have approached me for help and they have never ever commented on any of my social media posts.
Speaker A:And I imagine that I'm going to get particular people who would come forward to work with me because they're the ones who are commenting and engaging with me.
Speaker A:But often it's quiet people who come and work with me.
Speaker A:So don't think that just because people aren't commenting that doesn't mean they're not reading.
Speaker A:That's the first thing to say.
Speaker A:And what I have to say to qualify, that is, we do have to work at making our posts interesting to people.
Speaker A:Social media is social and there's only a limited amount of reach you're going to get if you talk about terribly serious subjects a lot.
Speaker A:Because people pick up social media, they do it to relax.
Speaker A:They do it when they're waiting at the door, doctors or sitting on a train.
Speaker A:You know those moments during the day, they're a bit bored, having a cup of coffee, think, oh, I'll pick up my phone and have a look at social media.
Speaker A:And they don't really want to be reading terribly serious things.
Speaker A:And I think this can be a little bit problematic for us as therapists because obviously we deal with quite serious things and we're wanting to help people who have problems to feel better.
Speaker A:But it's not about talking about all these difficult things like suicide, for example.
Speaker A:Yes, we might mention that at points, but those sorts of posts are things that I think we should pepper our feed with lightly.
Speaker A:We need to have a lot of things in our feed that enable us to connect with people.
Speaker A:And here I'm going to give you a little suggestion about the balance of different posts that you should have on your page.
Speaker A:50% of your posts to be engaging, so that means shareable or relatable, 30% to be informative.
Speaker A:So that might be you're giving them helpful information, psycho education, that sort of thing.
Speaker A:And then 20% to be promotional, where you're telling people how they can work with you.
Speaker A:So let's go back to that 50%.
Speaker A:And the 50% are really about engaging with people and making your posts that people want to answer you and they want to share your posts.
Speaker A:This is where you're trying to get to know people in your audience.
Speaker A:And so you'll do posts perhaps where you've got polls or you're writing about something that's quite relatable, you're sharing something of yourself, of who you are, how you're working, sorts of things that you're getting up to.
Speaker A:So it's very much more of a social side of things.
Speaker A:So for an example, one of the things I often talk about on my social media posts would be sharing that you like to go out walking with your dog and photos of your dog, of you with your dog, because that says something about you as a person, it says something about your lifestyle, but it's not really giving too much away about you as a person.
Speaker A:Yes, people will know you have a dog, but apart from that, you're not really letting people see a long way into your personal world, but it's just something that makes you relatable.
Speaker A:And in order to get people to engage with you, you could ask them to share photos of their dog, for example.
Speaker A:That's something I quite often quote as an example of an engaging post.
Speaker A:But whatever you're posting about, it's always really useful to ask questions at the end so that people have the opportunity to comment.
Speaker A:And you can also use stories in your posts as well.
Speaker A:And when I say this, what I mean is that the way you shape your post can be a bit like telling a story, because people find stories really memorable and really relatable.
Speaker A:So think about how you can use stories.
Speaker A:And what I do is they don't have to be difficult things.
Speaker A:It can just be what's happening in your day and what you're reflecting on and putting that into a therapeutic frame and explaining why something might have happened or what lesson you drew out of a particular experience.
Speaker A:I use this a lot in my newsletter.
Speaker A:It's just a great way of being able to convey a message and you can put a little moral into the story and then you can ask people their thoughts about that particular issue.
Speaker A:And it's a really lovely way to reach people because people always remember stories.
Speaker A:So that's a way of making your post engaging and helping people to get to know you a little bit better.
Speaker A:Now, there's other ways that you can make your posts engaging as well.
Speaker A:I'm going to particularly talk about Facebook, because Facebook is more of my particular social media platform.
Speaker A:And I know a lot of you who are listening have Facebook pages too in your posts.
Speaker A:It's quite helpful to use hashtags.
Speaker A:And this is even on Facebook.
Speaker A:We tend to think of putting hashtags into Instagram posts, but actually Facebook, three or four hashtags on Facebook posts help to increase your visibility.
Speaker A:They can get picked up by the algorithms, and if people are searching, they might find you that way as well.
Speaker A:So finding a relevant hashtag can be a really useful way of getting more eyes onto your page.
Speaker A:And you can just search through the hashtags.
Speaker A:And quite often when you're searching for them, you can see how many thousands of posts there are for each of the hashtags.
Speaker A:You don't really want to be aiming for the hashtags where you millions of posts are attached to that particular hashtags.
Speaker A:You really want to be looking in the region of about anything from sort of 10 to 50k because you're less likely to get lost in all the noise.
Speaker A:So that's something that you can do.
Speaker A:And as I say, you can do that on Facebook as well as Instagram.
Speaker A:On Instagram, you use more hashtags, but maybe no more than ten at a time.
Speaker A:That's considered to be what you should be doing at the moment.
Speaker A:So hashtags can help people to see your posts more.
Speaker A:And the other thing is, and I've been a bit cautious about doing this because artificial intelligence is actually putting a lot of emojis into posts at the moment.
Speaker A:And so I've been really careful about using them because I don't want to do these sort of perfectly produced AI type posts.
Speaker A:But actually, emojis can help to break up text and they can help people to see something that you want to emphasize.
Speaker A:So for example, you might do a little pointing finger, such as leave a message for me in the comments and you do a little downward pointing finger.
Speaker A:Or if you've got a link, you can do a finger that points to the link.
Speaker A:Or if you're talking about something in particular, for example, if it's a sunny day, you might put a little emoji of sunshine in there and it just helps to break the text up a little bit and gives it a little bit of personality.
Speaker A:And that's another thing you can do just to make your post that little bit more visually interesting to people.
Speaker A:I did read something that said, make sure that you know the meaning of the emoji.
Speaker A:And especially for us boomers, of which I am one, it might be helpful to look them up because we often don't know what the emojis mean and we could accidentally say something we don't mean to say.
Speaker A:And I do use emojipedia for that.
Speaker A:So look it up on emojipedia, which is just emoji, and then pedia on the end.
Speaker A:Honestly, it's really easy to find online.
Speaker A:I use it all the time.
Speaker A:So those are just a couple of little tiny ways that you can help to increase your visibility.
Speaker A:Now here's a big one.
Speaker A:And please, if you're standing up, then sit down because I've got to shock you here.
Speaker A:Reels and videos, they really do help.
Speaker A:Now, I started to get a lot of attention for my page and I just did this once a week was that I did a live video on my page once a week when live videos were quite new.
Speaker A:It really brought a lot of people to me.
Speaker A:And nowadays the live videos aren't as effective as they used to be.
Speaker A:TikTok's come in since I first started doing live videos.
Speaker A:And obviously I'm sure you'll know that reels are really effective at getting people to see what you're up to.
Speaker A:And I know I feel as though I don't do enough reels because it feels like it's going to be a really big job.
Speaker A:And I think sometimes it is.
Speaker A:And in fact, I was reading some advice today by a social media manager who said, yeah, sometimes I'll take two hours creating a reel, but it really is worth it.
Speaker A:My heart does sink a little bit to think of making a reel that would take me two hours.
Speaker A:But one of the really effective ways that people are using reels at the moment is they're just doing some sort of shot of them doing something.
Speaker A:So they might be standing at the kitchen sink, they might be out walking their dog, they might be doing the gardening.
Speaker A:Just a little reel that lasts for less than a minute.
Speaker A:And you upload that in your phone and it's so straightforward to add some words on top and you can just make a tiny little point, just one thing, over the top of that reel of you.
Speaker A:But the good thing about it is it's showing your face and that really helps as well.
Speaker A:It helps people to get to know you and it makes it very personal.
Speaker A:So let's all have a little go at doing reels.
Speaker A:Do get in touch if you do a reel as a result of listening to this podcast, please, please, please, please do contact me.
Speaker A:You know where to find me.
Speaker A:I'm on good enough counsellors on Facebook or I'm hejosephinehughes on Instagram.
Speaker A:Get in touch.
Speaker A:Show me your reel.
Speaker A:I'd love to see it.
Speaker A:And just before we move on, I want to mention our page insights.
Speaker A:So it's really helpful to keep an eye on which of your posts are doing really well.
Speaker A:And let's talk a little bit about the numbers here.
Speaker A:Obviously, you probably see reels that have reached millions of people, or people will get hundreds of likes and hundreds of comments, but when you're starting out, that's really not a realistic thing to expect.
Speaker A:I very rarely get hundreds of comments on any of my posts, but I'm still reaching people.
Speaker A:Perhaps one day I will get some viral post and it'll be seen by thousands and thousands of people.
Speaker A:But actually, I think that's probably unlikely because I'm working with therapists and there's not millions of therapists in the country.
Speaker A:So to expect that of myself is quite unrealistic.
Speaker A:And the thing about metrics is we all have to have a starting point, and if your starting point is zero, to get a post that gets out to 100 people is actually really amazing.
Speaker A:So there's several different metrics that you can look at.
Speaker A:There's things like reach.
Speaker A:So how many people did your post reach?
Speaker A:But actually I think it's really helpful to know how many people actually engaged with your post.
Speaker A:And that's always a much smaller number.
Speaker A:So I might get a reach of say 1,500, something like that.
Speaker A:But actually when I dig down, I'll see that maybe 30 people have engaged with the post.
Speaker A:I still think that's quite good because yeah, 30 people have actually taken the time to read and comment on the post.
Speaker A:And I think that's great because I've reached 30 people who've been interested enough to read what I've got to say.
Speaker A:It's really good to celebrate what you have achieved rather than looking at what you think you should be achieving.
Speaker A:Remember, it's all about slow growth.
Speaker A:But just before we move on, let me finish this section with this thought that actually when you're working on your content, it's about connecting with people.
Speaker A:It's not about performance.
Speaker A:You never know who's been quietly watching and who is quietly building up their trust in you.
Speaker A:If you're finding it hard to post or you're wondering how to show up in a way that feels just like you, then Therapy Growth Group might be just what you need.
Speaker A:In July, we're going to be working through the 12 action steps to help you create posts that connect with your audience, build confidence, help you with consistency, and help you feel more at ease in showing up online.
Speaker A:We're also going to be exploring how your values and identity can help you create content so that what you post feels authentic rather than forced.
Speaker A:You'll also get daily social media post ideas and access to helpful resources like working on your imposter syndrome and your fears around self development disclosure.
Speaker A:And there's plenty of support along the way because it makes such a difference to be able to have other people alongside you with similar sorts of questions who got similar concerns, and being able to work through it together as a group is invaluable.
Speaker A:You don't have to do it all on your own.
Speaker A:So to find out more, just go along to www.josephinehughes.com therapy growth offer and I'll pop the link into the show notes as well.
Speaker A:And now let's turn to campaigns.
Speaker A:So this is the part of the podcast where I share some ideas for the upcoming month.
Speaker A:And it feels really weird because I'm recording this in the middle of May and I'm talking about July.
Speaker A:So don't ask what's going on in my brain at the moment.
Speaker A:I am getting really confused.
Speaker A:But what I did today is I sat down and I thought about what would we be likely thinking about when we come to the summer months?
Speaker A:And there was a couple of things that I thought, and one is that our work tends to slow down.
Speaker A:So in July, it's quite possible that work will be slowing down for us and it's quite possible that people are absorbed in other activities and that means that our number of appointments might be dropping.
Speaker A:So it's a perfect time to be working on your social media, reminding people that you're there and actually perhaps reaching the pain points, the times when people who've had all these lovely expectations about summer, perhaps it isn't working out quite as they expected or, or alternatively, they just might not be getting the summer vibe.
Speaker A:So let's have a little think about that towards the end of July, hooray, it's the end of school.
Speaker A:For those of us that are in England, those of you who've got clients in Scotland will have had that time already.
Speaker A:But there's that, you know, initial relief, isn't there, of, oh, thank goodness, I don't have to get up to take the kids to, to school, followed by, oh, my goodness, what am I going to do with the kids all during the holidays?
Speaker A:And I think this is a pain point for parents.
Speaker A:It can be really stressful for some parents to have the children at home over the holidays holding my hand up here.
Speaker A:I used to dread holidays and then they'd go well, or I'd look forward to the holidays and then they always seem to go badly.
Speaker A:I'm really glad I don't need to look after small children on holidays any longer.
Speaker A:But this is something that you could talk about in your social media.
Speaker A:You, you could be reaching out to parents who are looking after children.
Speaker A:You could be talking about expectations, are they expecting too much of themselves?
Speaker A:You could be talking about the difficulties of keeping children entertained over the summer holidays.
Speaker A:You could be doing engaging posts, asking people for recommendations, things to do.
Speaker A:You could be sharing, if you've got small children, what it's like for you.
Speaker A:For example, you, you could be using some stories and having some fun about really what it's like, the reality of looking after children over the summer.
Speaker A:And that'll make you seem very relatable.
Speaker A:And actually it'll probably be a relief for people to be able to read someone who is being realistic about what it's really like.
Speaker A:The other thing I thought about the summer months, and it is actually a national picnic picnic month, is that usually we're outdoors a little bit more than during the winter.
Speaker A:And there's a lot of outdoor events that go on as well.
Speaker A:It's the hot dog day on the 16th of July.
Speaker A:So that reminds me of all those summer barbecues.
Speaker A:And I don't know about you, but people say, let's have a barbecue.
Speaker A:And I think for anybody with disordered eating, the concept of barbecues can be quite a difficult thing to face.
Speaker A:So if you're somebody who does work with disordered eating, talking about how people might feel about barbecues, the food, what it's like, and being expected to eat in front of people, and what people might be thinking if they're eating what we could consider junk food, like burgers, that's something that you could talk about.
Speaker A:You also could use this idea of picnics and outdoor events, celebrations for people who perhaps find it difficult to be very sociable, for example.
Speaker A:So you might want to be talking about setting boundaries and about how it's okay to say no and to turn down invitations.
Speaker A:If you've got people who find their families difficult, you know, oh, let's all have a barbecue together.
Speaker A:And there's that dread of being in the family, the.
Speaker A:So again, that's something that you could touch on to be real with people about what it's really like.
Speaker A:This might work well for you.
Speaker A:If you've got LGBTQ clients and they're going to a family barbecue, where you've got old people who don't understand what it is to be non binary and they're getting misgendered.
Speaker A:If you've got introvert clients who just want to curl up and die rather than going to a family to do.
Speaker A:I always remember my son being under the table for quite a long time, for example.
Speaker A:And also your neurodivergent people, what's it like for them to be in those occasions?
Speaker A:Is it a lot of sensory overload, for example?
Speaker A:So think about summer in relation to those particular client groups.
Speaker A:Another idea I had was thinking about, this is something that's close to my heart is the heat and how difficult it can be for women of a certain age to be coping with the summer heat.
Speaker A:Some people absolutely love it.
Speaker A:Others can get really hot, bothered and burned out.
Speaker A:You could do.
Speaker A:If we have a heat wave, you could do something around coping during the heat and how that makes us all a bit scratchy and how we welcome the heat.
Speaker A:And then after about three days, we've all had enough of it.
Speaker A:For example, you could do something overheated, overwhelmed.
Speaker A:And over the summer heat, here's how to cool down emotionally.
Speaker A:You can make it, as I say, serious, but also there's that little bit of light hearted joking about it.
Speaker A:If you're an outdoor therapist, this would be a perfect time to talk about outdoor therapy and how that can maybe help you cool off as well.
Speaker A:So there's a lot you can do around the heat and how it affects different types of people.
Speaker A:Something else that's coming up actually is the thought of grief.
Speaker A:And obviously some are supposed to be a happy time, but for those people who are grieving, actually they could be feeling very alone.
Speaker A:And July is Bereaved Parents Awareness Month with the actual Bereaved Parents awareness day on July 3rd.
Speaker A:This could apply generally to all sorts of people who are experiencing loss and sadness.
Speaker A:You want to address that, acknowledge it.
Speaker A:Sometimes that's all people need is that acknowledgement, isn't it?
Speaker A:But also you might want to do something to talk about how therapy might be able to help them at the moment and think about perhaps how they might be finding some joy and how that's okay, even if they've been bereaved.
Speaker A:So if you're a bereavement counsellor, you probably can come up with quite a few ideas about the intersection of summer and bereavement.
Speaker A:There's also a perfect day coming up, whatever your niche is, and that is World Listening Day, and that's on the 18th of July.
Speaker A:Of course, that's what we do, we listen to people.
Speaker A:So it's a perfect opportunity to talk about what you do.
Speaker A:However, I think it's actually really about listening to things.
Speaker A:So it could be.
Speaker A:You could ask people for their favourite songs, for example.
Speaker A:So if you wanted to do a post that was more trying to engage people in a light way, you could use World List Listening Day to ask them about their favourite music.
Speaker A:But I do think it's a perfect opportunity for us to talk about the power of listening.
Speaker A:So if you've been wondering, is it worth posting, it is.
Speaker A:Posting helps people to find you and trust you and they will remember you when they're ready.
Speaker A:So whether you've got 20 followers, 200 followers or 2,000 followers, the same rules apply.
Speaker A:Create good content and use the seasons, like summer, to post things that connect with real life.
Speaker A:It's what people are talking about.
Speaker A:All you're doing is joining the conversation and bringing in a therapeutic perspective.
Speaker A:You never know who's quietly watching and the right post might turn up for them and just encourage them to reach out to you.
Speaker A:Now if you're listening to this and thinking, I know I should be posting, but it's just so hard to keep going when no one's watching, you're really not alone.
Speaker A:It's exactly why I created Therapy Growth Group.
Speaker A:It's to help people who are trying to reach out to clients but feel discouraged in doing so.
Speaker A:Therapy Growth Group is packed full of support around using social media to attract clients every day.
Speaker A:There's ideas for what you could post on social media.
Speaker A:There's lots of training in there as well to help you.
Speaker A:But most of all, it's all about encouraging you to be you and helping you to see how you can bring your unique self to social media.
Speaker A:Because being you is like a magnet to attract clients.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening.
Speaker A:Do come and join my Facebook community.
Speaker A: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.
Speaker A:And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream.
Speaker A:I really believe you can do it.
Speaker A:Sam.
