Before we get into today’s episode I just wanted to let you know about a checklist I’ve created to take the overwhelm out of setting up in private practice. This is for you if you are new to private practice or if you still aren’t completely confident in your systems and processes. It is impossible to be creative and do more than therapy in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have the boring stuff like insurance, policies and data protection sorted. Tick of the boxes on the free checklist and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs. That will free up your mind for some creativity and business planning for 2021! Download it now the link is in the show notes.
Now on with the show!
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Social media strategy can be very overwhelming. There are actually a million things you could do to grow your audience on social media but I would argue that these three strategies are most likely to help you grow your group in the shortest amount of time possible. It is important to remember that a group will only thrive if it continues to grow and you provide it with consistent value. So, like everything, you need to think about your vision for your business and your ideal client for the project you are working on right now. Then think about how you can solve a small problem for that client group through your group. That will give you some ideas for helpful content you can create for them. Once you know what value you are going to give to your group and you have that planned out you are ready to open the doors and try and get people in!
The top three strategies for psychologists and therapists growing a Facebook group
Essentially in order to fill your Facebook group, you need to find the people who would naturally want to be in it, wherever they are hanging out. If you are targeting a particular professional group you could do this by sending messages on LinkedIn letting them know what the group offers to them. I do that for DMTT and it works really well. If your group is not united by a profession or you don’t think they are active on LinkedIn you can also find them in Facebook groups.
Last week we talked about how to build authority using Facebook and one of the best strategies for this is developing a relationship with people who own groups that contain your ideal client group and offering some free training to their group. This gets you in front of plenty of your ideal people and gives them a chance to quickly get to know, like and trust you. This is also a great way to grow your Facebook group as at the end of your talk you can let them know that they can find you there.
The first step is to set up some calls with your ideal clients and find out where they spend their time on Facebook. Then you develop a relationship with the people running those communities and work out what you can offer to them.
There are lots of things you can provide free training on that people with relevant groups will be pleased to have in their communities. I have done talks on managing strong emotions for life coaching groups, the difference between “depression” and low mood is a topic I get asked to speak on quite a lot, I have gone into groups and done training repeatedly for communities run by...