You’re not alone if the thought of creating and managing a social media account fills you with dread. But nowadays, having a presence online gives you a great way to connect with potential clients, and there are counsellors with social media pages who successfully attract bookings that way. I used to be someone who let my technical incompetence stop me, but I’ve learned that you don’t have to be great with tech to be great with social media.
Welcome to the Good Enough Counsellors podcast and this month’s edition of the social media toolkit. As usual, the first half of the episode is going to contain some tips on how, and then we’ll move on to the what. In other words, ideas for the month of October to help you reach potential clients.
Fearful You’re Not Technical Enough for Social Media?
First, I’d like to tell you a little story about what happened a few years ago when I tried to open my first business bank account. I set out full of optimism that this was the next step for my private practice, and then I got completely stuck at one of the stages. I’d made a mistake, and however much I tried I couldn’t put it right, and then I spent the rest of the afternoon in tears. The experience took me right back to being that little girl in front of a maths book, and just not being able to understand, and not being able to do the exercises. It really brought up my insecurities about not being good enough.
And although you may not have such an extreme reaction when tech doesn’t work, I’m sure you’re familiar with that sense of frustration when, try as you might, you can’t get it to do what you want, and you feel like throwing that blooming computer out of the window. And I think that the thought of getting your head around social media, things like producing arty memes, creating reels, if you even know what they are, using hashtags, and indeed the basics of setting up a social media business account in the first place, can really put you off using social media to try and reach clients.
The Advantages of Using Social Media to Reach Therapy Clients
Yet, with nearly 60% of the world’s population using social media, there’s a big audience of people out there. So today’s episode is all about overcoming your fears around not being techie enough, so that you can utilise this method of reaching people too.
Depending on how old you are, you may be like me, and the computer revolution has passed you by. I stopped working in an office back in 1995, just as Microsoft Windows was the new kid on the block. Yes. I really am that old. When I first started building up a following on Facebook, I didn’t have very many techy skills, and yet I’ve really used it to build my business.
Whatever your technical skills, I’d like to help you feel more confident so that you can use social media to reach potential clients. If you’ve just started listening to this podcast, you may also like to listen to episode 16 that explains why social media is a useful addition to your marketing efforts.
Getting Help with Social Media Technology
Let’s face your fears around tech and not being good enough to be able to run a social media page. The first thing to say is that there are a lot of social media business accounts out there. For example, there are over 50,000,000 YouTube channels, 60,000,000 Facebook business pages, and 200,000,000 Instagram business accounts.
So there are literally millions of people who have faced having to set up and learn how to use social media. Believe me, you are not the only person out of all those millions who may have a question or have got stuck somewhere. As you may be aware, I have a husband who is annoyingly right most of the time, and he’ll often say to me Google is your friend. If you find you’re stuck with something, rather than throwing your computer out of the window, alternatively at your annoying partner, Google it, and there will be a YouTube video that will tell you how to do it. I mean, solving whatever problem you’ve got, not throwing your computer at someone.
And the thing is, you can pause the YouTube video as you go, and flip between your social media page and a YouTube video, so you can actually do it step by step. As you can probably tell, this is something that I do on a regular basis. If you’re like me, you probably just about know how to copy and paste something. And in the past, I have had my husband and my kids standing over me telling me how to use the shortcut keys. So I’ve been on quite a learning curve over the past few years to produce what I do on social media.
A client said to me the other day that I’m quite slick, but believe me, that has taken time to produce that appearance and it’s not really true. I think this is where comparison can really undermine your confidence. If you look at where I am now, you’re not seeing where I was back in 2017 when I started with my first coach and began to use social media in earnest. There’s that saying isn’t there, don’t compare your day 1 with someone else’s day 100, because it does take time to develop the technical skills. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t start, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t create something meaningful.
Simple Ways to Create Social Media Posts
You may look and see other people creating wonderful graphics with meaningful quotes or pretty drawings and think, I’ll never be able to do that, and that may be the case, although there is help which I’ll describe in a moment. However, if you have a smartphone, you’re probably capable of taking photos, and your own photos can be a really effective way to connect with people. They like them because they’re very personal to you. You can talk about why they’re meaningful and use them to illustrate a truth about therapy or mental health. Often, the simplest things are the best.
I’ll always get engagement on my page when I simply share a video with no voice over of my local beach. It’s a mindful moment for my followers, and they always comment. And all I have to do is get my phone out and press live for a few moments when I’m out on my walk. It’s all very well having pretty graphics, but beware of style over substance. It’s the message that is really important, and your technical skills don’t need to be great to be able to communicate what’s on your heart.
If you can, be confident enough to use your voice. People will listen, whatever your post looks like. Many therapists also use other people’s artwork with a credit to the original creator. As long as you credit the original page, and usually creators will include their name in the graphic, it’s generally considered acceptable to do so, but please don’t pass off their words as your own because that breaches copyright.
Using Canva to Create Social Media Posts
Now there is a piece of tech that many of us use for social media, and you can also use it for your website and any other graphics or videos you’d like to produce.
It’s called Canva, and that’s spelled c a n v a. And you can sign up and use it for free. There’s also a paid level, and it’s really useful and good value if you’re regularly producing social media posts. If you’ve seen any of my quote posts, the thumbnails for my videos, my Facebook page banners, and my podcast artwork, that’s all done on Canva. And as I said, I really don’t know how to do much more than copy paste.
I adapt Canva templates, and for my leaflets, I’ve also bought templates from Etsy. You can give your social media a house style by using similar looking templates and choosing some brand colors, all of which you can do on Canva. It really has made graphic design much more accessible to people like us. And within Therapy Growth Group, I’ve got some training both by a Canva expert and a basic session where myself and other people in the group shared how they use it. Many of us enjoy the creative side of Canva because it’s relaxing.
It’s something different to working with clients, and yet, it’s marketing too. Hopefully, what I’ve said has gone some way to reassure you that you too can use social media to reach clients.
Social Media Post Ideas for October 2024
So let’s now move on to think about what sort of posts you can share in October. October is a great month if you’ve got a niche. Let’s run through some of the awareness months and weeks you could focus on.
There’s awareness months for menopause, ADHD, and breast cancer. Awareness weeks include dyslexia from 7th October, baby loss from 9th, OCD week, and dyspraxia week from 13th, and asexual awareness and adoption weeks around 20th 21st. That’s quite a list. If you have a niche in one of those areas, you could make that your focus for the month. You may like to have a brain dump around all the possible questions that people might ask on those subjects.
Think about the sorts of things clients talk about and also what your experience of those issues might be. You can then use those ideas to begin to formulate posts. You can offer different types of posts around a particular subject. Let’s look at ADHD, for example. You could offer information posts such as typical symptoms of ADHD, myths around ADHD, and why more people are now being diagnosed with ADHD.
Use news items around ADHD. For example, shortage of medication or celebrities who share about their neurodivergence to make the subject topical. To include your followers in the discussion, you can also create posts that ask them to tell you something that’s easy for them to answer. It only needs to be loosely related to the subject and its main purpose is to get people talking so that you can chat with them. For example, to avoid losing my keys, I and then they have to fill in the blank.
You can also make ADHD very relatable by sharing personal experiences such as what it means to be diagnosed, especially the impact in later life. If you feel nervous about self disclosure, I do have more training in my coaching group, therapy growth group, on this subject. If you don’t have a niche in one of the areas mentioned, please don’t let that stop you. You could pick different themes or use the days that are associated with them, for example, dyslexia awareness day on October 8th, the global wave of light for baby loss on 15th, or menopause awareness day on 18th. Let’s also remember that October often marks the start of autumn.
Shorter days and cooler weather is often the time when people are settling down following the summer, and it’s far enough before the Christmas festive break for people to think that they have time to start therapy. Autumn is a season of change, and you can use that as a metaphor for therapeutic change. As people spend more time indoors, you can talk about how cozying up indoors is the perfect time for some self reflection, as well as talking about self care. And as the light begins to fade, it’s also relevant to speak of seasonal affective disorder. As it’s Halloween, at the end of the month, you could ask people about their memories, share your own, and invite people to post their photos of pumpkins or decorations.
People love to see a behind the scenes moment, So if you have a costume or decorations, do have fun sharing it. You could use Halloween to speak of the psychological aspects of popular horror movies or ask people if they’d even watch them or not. You may like to provide some background information as to what the festival is based on, and use it to talk about attitudes towards death and dying. Another idea is to talk about the monsters within. In other words, our internal struggles and how therapy can help.
Advice for Creating Posts
Remember, within Therapy Growth Group, I offer post ideas for every day of the month, which gives members the opportunity to pick a few for each week. Particularly, if you’re just starting out, it helps to set an achievable goal for your posting. Even 1 post a week is more than none, although I’d recommend 3 to 4. Mix up the types of posts. If you merely offer quote posts, you’re unlikely to build much of a following unless you’re very artistic and are able to summarise pithy ideas in just a few words.
What really works is offering some information for people who are just discovering you so that they can see you’re knowledgeable and trustworthy, topical posts that include your take on things that people may be talking about, posts that involve your followers by encouraging them to share their lives, and posts where you take the lead and share thoughts that they may not have come across. I hope these thoughts and ideas help you. Next month, in the social media toolkit, I’ll revisit the subject of you feeling good enough to post, particularly around the topic of whether or not you’re knowledgeable enough to be able to share something. What I’d like to finish on is a reminder that there’s people out there who are looking right now for therapists, but don’t know how to find them. Whether or not you think you’re good enough, they’ll be very glad if they come across you, if you’re sharing posts that are relevant to them.
The best way to learn is to get started, and I hope this episode inspires you to do so. Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community, 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. And in closing, I’d love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream.
I really believe you can do it.