This content is provided by Brighter Vision, an affinity partner of AAMFT. This information is not necessarily the views of AAMFT and should not be interpreted as official policy.
Building a successful brand for your practice on social media can be one more bridge that connects you to your ideal clients. But it depends on one thing above all else – consistency. Social media unfortunately isn't something you can simply turn on and forget about. You must constantly maintain and update your social media presence, but if you’re consistently putting yourself out there and building your brand on social media, it is a great way to build a positive reputation, attract new clients, and connect with other therapists.
In this blog post, we are going to walk through how to build a social media strategy perfect for your private practice in just 4 easy steps.
Step 1: Decide What Kind of Content You Want to Post
With so many different ways to engage with your ideal client on social media, we've compiled some of favorites to get you started:
- Share links to posts from your website’s blog
- Promote your individual specialty services and include links to those pages on your website
- Raise awareness for a specific mental health day/week/month
- Create a printable freebie (such as a checklist) that your followers can download for free
- Share an inspirational or motivational quote
- Share one of your favorite books you often recommend to clients
- Give your followers a “behind the scenes” look at your practice and its employees
- Answer an FAQ about your industry or the specific services you provide
Step 2: Choose Your Platform & Post Frequency
It's hard to know which social media platforms are the best choice for your practice, especially when there are so many options these days. What we have found is that the majority of private practice owners see their best results from a combination of these 4 staple platforms:
Ultimately it is up to you which of these platforms you use and how many of them you choose to utilize. The best way to make this choice is by finding out which platforms your ideal client is already using and start posting to them first.
Depending on which platforms you choose to utilize, the recommended posting frequency will vary per platform as well as the suggested days of the week and times of day to post to gain maximum engagement. To learn more, check out this post from Brighter Vision’s blog: The Science of Social Media: When to Post for Maximum Engagement.
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Step 3: Get Organized with a Content Calendar
With incredibly full schedules, it’s nearly impossible to keep everything straight without a detailed calendar. It’s likely that you already have a calendar set-up for tracking your appointments and other in-office duties, but it’s also important and incredibly helpful to track your social media activity too, and when done effectively, it can save you a ton of time and effort in the long run!
Creating a content calendar that details when to post and what to post can help you stay on track as well as map out a consistent message that gives your social media pages a steady flow of cohesive content. It also helps make posting less of a stressful and last-minute task.
(Want to skip this step entirely? Check out Step 4 to learn how!)
Step 4: Scheduling Tools Help You Never Miss a Date
Another great way – that’s also super easy! – to schedule out all of your social media posts in advance is with an automation tool like Social Genie.
You’ve put in so much hard work to plan your social media content, and the last thing you want is to find out you’ve forgotten to keep up with your posting schedule or more likely get too busy to keep up with your posting. Fortunately, technology is just a tad more reliable than our own brains when it comes to following a schedule. It also tends to be a slightly better multi-tasker.
Taking advantage of scheduling tools like Social Genie allows you to create posts for multiple platforms and then schedule them out in advance, in seconds. You can schedule an entire year’s worth of social media posts in under 15 minutes.
Social Genie has a content library of over 1,000 pre-written posts from professional writers, all designed to attract your ideal client.
Whether you’re taking advantage of pre-written content or creating your own, all you need to do is insert the content into a pre-created campaign, choose the days each week you’d like to post, and let it go!
No Time to Create Your Own Social Media Strategy? No Problem!
Contact our friends at Brighter Vision for a 14-day free trial of Social Genie; the best social media management software with loads of pre-created content written specifically for therapists.
Brighter Vision is a preferred vendor of AAMFT, specializing in making marketing simple for private practices. Their all-inclusive website design service helps therapists grow their practices with a variety of marketing tools and resources. All members receive their entire first year of a new website with Brighter Vision for only $49/month plus no setup fees; that’s a savings of $220. To take advantage of this offer, please click here.