5 Twitter Tricks To Promote Your Practice Online

Do you have a Twitter account for your practice but you're not sure how to get more followers? Do you feel like your tweeting into thin air and no one is "listening"? Here are a few tricks I've learned that have help me grow my Twitter following and promote your private mental health practice online and build your professional identity.

1) Search and follow

Use the search box at the right top of your Twitter homepage to search your specialty areas and interests. Follow people who are tweeting helpful and relevant info relating to your practice areas and let them know that you like what they're sharing online.

2) Make it easy for others to find you

Hashtags "#" are a great way to make it easy for others who are searching for certain topics. If you're tweeting a blog post about depression, add #depression to your tweet. While we're talking hashtags, I have a favor to ask you...will you use #practicetoolbox when sharing this article?

3) Mention others frequently

Talk directly to different Twitter users by including  "@" sign and someone's twitter handle in your tweet. Retweet great tweets and thank people who retweet you  i.e. "TY for RT @julie_hanks!" People want to talk to people, not agencies or businesses.

4) Learn from effective Twitter users

Use Twitter lists to organize key influencers that you follow.  Watch and learn from people who have large numbers of active Twitter followers and who tweet helpful information that's relevant to your area of interest. Learn from those "tweeps" that you admire and model what they are doing.

5) Drive traffic to your website

While it's great to tweet helpful information that others are producing, remember that your goal is to drive traffic to your website. You have a website right? An active blog on your site gives you content to tweet and link back to your site. You can also tweet links to different pages on your sit.

photo credit: harry-m

Want to connect with other private mental health practitioners on Twitter? Join my private practice Twitter list here.

Are You Ready For The Mobile Marketing Explosion?

Ok, private practice therapists, you can't ignore the mobile marketing revolution any longer. I predict that private practitioners who don't embrace mobile technology will have a difficulty building and maintaining a thriving in the coming years. Look at these statistics about the astronomical growth of mobile usage predicted over the next few years.

• There will be nearly 1 mobile device per capita by the year 2015. That suggests that by 2015 there will be approximately 7.2 billion mobile devices.
• Global mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015.
• There will be 788 million mobile-only Internet users by 2015. (source: Cisco.com)

Here are 4 ways to get your practice ready for the mobile revolution: 

1) Visit your practice website on a variety of mobile devices

Have you visited your practice website on a variety or smartphones, iPad, etc. to see if your website is as effective on mobile devices as it is on a computer screen? With more and more people going "mobile only,"  make sure that your website translates well on smaller mobile screens.

2) List your practice on Google Places

According to Google, "97% of consumers search for local businesses online." If you haven't already, get your private practice listed on Google places where potential clients can easily find you on mobile devices. Also, search your specialty, city and state to see which private practitioners are already listed.

3) List your therapy practice on Yelp

If you're not familiar with Yelp, it's a popular service and mobile app that uses an individual's current location to find nearby businesses and services.  Like Google Places, signing up for a Yelp listing is quick and easy, so there's no excuse not to have your practice listed there.

4) Get mobile marketing training

Check out this fantastic technology resource, Therapy Marketing Geeks, run by two therapists, Clinton Power and Jeff Fisher.  They offer a training called Mobile Marketing For Therapists in addition to other great articles, tech recommendations, and webinars designed to help therapists embrace technology and use it to build a successful private practice.

So...is your practice ready for the mobile explosion? If not, I challenge you to do at least one of these four suggestions by the end of this week.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Using Twitter To Grow Your Therapy Practice

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a popular social media platform where users can send short updates that are up to 140 characters long.  Twitter is basically the equivalent of a Facebook status update newsfeed. If you have no idea what a "newsfeed" or "status update" is, then you may want to stop reading here and start by setting up a Facebook account.

Facebook is THE social network site and is the most effective way to build your practice through social media because of it's high number of daily users. Here's an article on how to set up a Facebook Page for your practice.  If you want to know how to use Twitter, here are a few suggestions on how to effectively tweet to build your practice.

How can Twitter help you build your practice?

Twitter, like all social media platforms, is a forum for conversation and connecting with other people online. It is also a great way to spread the word about your practice, to educate the public about issues you care about, and to share your areas of expertise. The point of social networking sites like Twitter is...uh...the social networking. If your Twitter followers find value in your tweets they will share them by retweeting your information their Twitter followers. Over time you can grow a network of people who are sharing your tweets which helps you get the word out about your private therapy practice.

Ways to Build Your Therapy Practice Through Twitter

1) Follow local businesses and professionals

Following potential referral sources on Twitter can help you build referral sources.  If you specialize in helping clients with chronic pain, then you may want to search for pain clinics, chiropractors, and other health professionals in your geographic area and start a conversation with them about your services.

Don't limit who you follow to only mental health or other psychotherapists. Referrals can come from any kind of social networking relationship. Let your definition of an ideal client help guide who you follow on Twitter so you can attract the kind of client you want to work with. Twitter can also be used a search engine to find other businesses or people in your area and see what they talking about.

2) Don't just tweet, have conversations

Don't just send out information or tweets into the social network universe. Take a few minutes each day to respond to others who mention you or who retweet your tweets. "Mention" other users by using the "@" sign followed by their twitter handle and it will show up on their Twitter page. This builds rapport and relationships. For example, my user name is @julie_hanks. If someone posts a tweet and mentions me, I will be notified of it and it gives me a chance to respond to them.  I've found Twitter to be a source of professional support too, meeting therapists all over the world and sharing ideas. I've found some therapists in private practice featured in recent articles on Twitter.

3) Tweet links to your practice website

Increase traffic to your therapy website by tweeting links to your website. If you have a website blog, you can automate your site to tweet every new blog post. Here's a screenshot of my Twitter page. The yellow text are links that mostly go to on of my websites or blogs to increase visitors and provide helpful information.

4) Use hashtags to attract followers interested in your expertise

A hashtag is a "#" followed by a topic. For example, if you're specialty area is parenting, you can use #parenting on tweets about anything related to parenting to make it easier for others interesting in parenting to find you. When you click on a hashtag it will bring up other tweets mentioning the same topic. Hashtags make it easy to find, follow, and converse with others who have similar interest or expertise.

Do you use Twitter as a mental health professional? What are your suggestions for using Twitter to build your practice?

5 Free Ways to Market Your Therapy Practice

Thanks to technology, there are many free ways to effectively market your private therapy practice. Since these free strategies do take time to implement, I suggest focusing on the ones that sound interesting, fun, fulfilling, and a little challenging so you get something back personally from your time investment. It can take some time until you actually see the benefits of your marketing in terms of clients coming to your practice. Part of effective marketing is simply raising awareness of your practice and your specialties, which will bring in clients over time.

After nearly 10 years in private practice, I've found that the most effective strategies for building your practice use what we already know as therapists about building relationships: building rapport, using your authentic self, starting where the "client" is, to name a few, and translating those skills into a new formats that reaches larger audiences.

Here are 5 ways to draw clients to your therapy practice:

1) Speak to your ideal clients

Once you've identified who you'd like to see in your private practice, ask yourself, "Where are my ideal clients gathering?" or "Where are groups who work with my ideal clients already gathering?" If your ideal clients are families with a young children with behavior problems, then you may want to focus on speaking to groups of parents or teachers in the schools, for example.  Or if you're wanting to focus on working with couples in crisis, then speaking to clergy who regularly meet with distressed couples, or speaking to local religious groups on marriage issues might be something to consider.

2) Blog on your niche

If you have a blog on your website, write weekly articles that speak to your ideals clients. Blog posts are generally 300-500 words, so keep it simple. Blogging once a week is enough to keep it fresh. If you don't have a website, or don't have a blog on your website, I suggest that you look into it. Blogs allow tagging and categories which make it search engine friendly to people who are searching for the information you're offering. Here's an example of blog integrated into a therapist site from my own private practice.

3) Target local social media

Social media is global but your practice is local. Talk with other local businesses and therapists on Twitter and Facebook by using the search boxes to find other pages in your city. For example, if your specialty is working with adults living with chronic pain or illness you may want to follow on Twitter or "like" the Facebook pages of local hospitals, newspapers, rehabilitation centers, chiropractors, and other related businesses and services.  The goal of social media is to communicate and interact, not just to inform, so share other local resources on your social media pages. Tag them on Facebook posts or mention them on Twitter status updates. Reciprocity is the key to effectively using social media to build your therapy practice.

4) Interview on local radio

Did you know that radio stations provide a certain number of public service hours each week?  Producers are often looking for helpful topics and interesting people to interview that will benefit their listeners. Call or email the top local radio stations in your area, ask for the producer of their public service show, and offer a couple of topics that are related to your basic message.

5) Write for local newspaper or magazine articles

Which magazines or newspapers are your potential clients reading on a regular basis? Do some research on the demographic of the periodical and contact the editor to offer your writing services. Always lead with information on how your article/column/expertise will serve their readers, not how you hope to get hundreds of clients by writing for them.  Since most news outlets and local magazines have websites, offering to blog for their site is a great idea, too. Fresh content is a valuable asset to websites so pitch with passion your area of expertise as a blog.

I'd love to hear back from you on how you implement any of these free marketing ideas. Please comment below and feel free to post links of your blog, news interviews, articles, etc. that might spring from reading this post.

photo credit: orensbruli (Esteban Martinena)