3 Ways to Use Facebook for Psychologists and Therapists

The shop front 

This is the approach for you if…

• You hate social media and don’t need to grow an audience for a product or service
• Your business thrives on referrals from your personal network and word of mouth
• Your aim is to have somewhere for people to check you are a real person not to generate engagement or a social presence.

How to do it

• Create a business page
• Link to your website
• Choose good images (ideally professional) of you and your premises if you have them.
• Provide a clear description of who you are and what you do. Make it about the people you help and written FOR them. Think about what they need to know.
• Give clear contact details about how to contact you and book a session.
• BONUS points: Add a video of you talking about who you are and what you do!
• If you have a blog/podcast or similar then post links to these when you create them. This will not get seen by ANYONE other than people who look you up as FB does not give organic reach to business pages anymore but it means that a potential client who looks you up might find them. 

The authority builder

This is the approach for you if….

• You want to get known as “the go-to” in your area of specialism
• You want to develop an audience to sell an online course, book or workshop too (or anything similar that needs to reach a lot of people, remember only 1-2% of people buy so you may need a lot of people in your audience to sell something low ticket)
• You don’t have energy or time to build a community OR you don’t think your ICAs are likely to use FB that much.
• You are active on another platform (e.g. LinkedIn) and use that to have high-quality conversations with your ICA

How to do it

• Follow the steps for the shop front to start with - clearly directing to a platform you are more active on (ie LinkedIN)
• Create high-quality weekly cornerstone content, good blogs, good podcast episodes etc.
• Create weekly videos on your page around the topic of your cornerstone content
• Reach out to people with relevant communities on FB (FB is all about community now) and ask to guest speak/offer free classes on your topic. Point all those people back to your most active platform or website.
• You can use other peoples’ audiences in this way to grow your own online audience if you are complimentary e.g. I speak in lots of life coaching groups about how to deal with strong feelings of depression, anxiety etc.

The community king/queen

This is the approach for you if…

• You want to get known as “the go-to” in your area of specialism
• You want to develop an audience to sell an online course, book or workshop too (or anything similar that needs to reach a lot of people, remember only 1-2% of people buy so you may need a lot of people in your audience to sell something low ticket)
• Facebook is your only or your main social platform

How to do it

Follow all of the steps for the shop front and authority builder PLUS

• Create a Facebook group, FB really likes community and doesn’t like pages very much so all of your effort above what we have already established will be going into a group.
• Your group needs to give something TO the people that join it.
• Identify something your ICA’s struggle with (that relates to your specialism) and create a niche group that helps them solve that problem. The best groups are really specific to a particular client group struggling with a particular problem. My favourite group on Facebook is the Doing it for the Kids Community. It is specifically for self-employed parents. The group is used to disseminate a helpful, practical podcast from the people who run it each week AND it provides a space for solidarity and social support between people who share struggles. 
• Use the group to deliver them high-quality content that leads towards your paid offer (that cornerstone content we talk about!) and promote community.
• This is a huge amount of work to start with as in order to foster a good community you need to learn how to keep your group growing and fresh, how to start conversations and how to maximise the likelihood of your posts showing up in peoples’ feeds. We have a separate podcast episode coming up with Sam Hill, our community manager for Do More Than Therapy and Psychology Business School where we will share some tactics and strategy.

Remember you must be clear on why you are doing FB and then pick a strategy that fits with your overall vision for your business. Otherwise, it will just suck your time!

I don’t think I’ve done an episode about the different ways to use a specific platform before so I would really appreciate feedback from you about what you found helpful and what you would like to see more of on the podcast.

In fact, I am really trying to grow the podcast so, as a shameless request, if you have found this episode valuable please do leave us a five-star rating and review in your podcast app. It means the podcast will get shown to more people that need it.

rosie@drrosie.co.uk

***** 

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.

Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases.

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.

Download it now from https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/client-checklist