Grow Your Private Therapy Practice with Facebook

There’s little doubt that having a presence on Facebook will grant you more exposure and help you build a greater sense of community with your followers. However, it can be tricky to navigate Facebook as a private therapy practice. Not only do you have to be extra mindful of privacy concerns, you also need to be strategic on how you use Facebook to grow your business. Ultimately, your goal is to build a reputation as a trustworthy therapist who brings value and clarity to your clients and the community at large. The good news is that Facebook can help you in those pursuits. You don’t need to have an online therapy practice to leverage the benefits of Facebook. Even if you work completely offline, curating and maintaining an online presence will help you garner more awareness for your practice. That’s because your current and prospective clients probably use the Internet in general and Facebook specifically. Let’s talk about how to use Facebook to effectively generate more leads.

Create a Business Page on Facebook

There’s you: the friend, the sibling, the former classmate, and the colleague. Then, there’s you: the professional therapist who’s here to serve the community. Your friends care about what you did in Cancun, your clients only care about what you can do for them. That’s one of the reasons why you need a business page. You need to clearly separate the personal from the professional. Go here to create your business page on Facebook.

Optimize Your Profile

Image Courtesy of A Private & Independent Counselling Service Social media is all about making connections. But don’t overlook the most important connection: your phone number, address, website link, and email address. You should give interested prospects all of the avenues to reach you, and you’ll do that by fully filling out your “About” section. But don’t just stop at the location details. Be sure to share your mission, your awards, the types of services you provide, and other details about your practice that a prospective client would possibly like to know. Aim to overshare instead of undershare.

Customize Your Cover Photo with Canva

Your cover photo is the first impression Facebook users who visit your page will make of your practice. Don’t just add a pretty image that doesn’t give any insight to who you are as a therapist. You should optimize your cover photo so that it effectively advertises you. Sound complicated? Don’t worry, it’s actually pretty simple. Here are two examples that I recommend for private therapy practices on Facebook: Share an image of your office with your prospective clients. By showing what your office actually looks like, it builds trust with your prospective client while at the same time, it minimizes any lingering apprehension about going to a therapist’s office. Here’s an example from Nadine Macaluso: Image Courtesy of Nadine Macaluso Use your cover image to explain what you specialize in, like Kali Munro does here: Image Courtesy of Kali Munro By advertising your areas of service right on the cover image, the visitor knows right away whether or not you’re the right fit for their need. And believe me, self-filtering is the best type of filtering. Creating your cover image is easy with the online editing tool, Canva. Canva is my favorite option for creating cover images. It’s incredibly easy to use, and within 10 minutes, you can produce a professional-looking cover image for your Facebook business page. And it’s free.

Create Engaging Posts

The last thing you’ll want to do on Facebook is post boring content that doesn’t appeal to your audience of prospective (and current) clients. Instead, think of your Facebook page as a resource hub. Populate it with content that educates and uplifts your audience. Here’s an example of the types of information you’ll want to include:

• Curated content from other sources
• Funny memes (it’s okay to laugh, we’re all human)
• Inspirational quotes
• News about your industry
• Answers to frequently asked questions
• Upcoming events
• Promotions and coupons
• Videos

Brand Your Images

In the above example, I love how Alan Robarge uses branded images to drive prospective clients back to his services. You should do something similar to this, too. Come up with a strong signature branding for your practice and use this design on your Facebook page (and beyond). Be sure to add your website address to these images. That way, it’s a lot easier for prospective clients to find you when seeing this image in a referral.

Don’t Miss Out on Reviews

The social proof component of Facebook is awesome. When clients feel comfortable leaving a review on your page (especially a positive one), it’s not only an honor, it’s also an effective marketing tool. Reviews will help a prospective client decide whether or not to try out your practice.

Join a Group

Use Facebook to network with other therapists. This is one of my favorite (albeit subtle) ways to grow your private practice through Facebook. Connect with other therapists in your town, in your area of practice, or who share other similarities. Why? Three main reasons: You can learn from each other. You can share ideas, ask questions, give answers, and improve your craft. You can commiserate. As a therapist, you may spend a lot of time alone without anyone who can empathize with your unique struggles. Not so in a Facebook group filled with other therapists who know your pain. You can network. This is especially in local groups. You can create a network that makes it easy to refer clients who aren’t the right fit for your practice to others, and they can do the same with you. Here’s a few Facebook groups to get you started:

• Therapists in Private Practice
• Selling the Couch
• Ethical Practice for Psychotherapists
• Beginning Counselor
• And, in the UK, Counsellors and Psychotherapists UK.

Use Paid Ads

Your organic reach on Facebook can only take you so far. In fact, you’ll only reach about 10% of your audience on a regular basis. That’s because Facebook has a complicated algorithm that favors paid posts over the content that you don’t pay to promote. Since you won’t get much exposure organically, you should definitely pay for promotion. The good news is, it doesn’t cost a lot to promote your practice to prospective clients. And even better news? Facebook allows you to get extremely targeted with who will see your ads. For example, you can target by location, age, gender, interest, or even behavior. Go here to create your first ad on Facebook.