If you’re a healing professional or therapist wondering if you should use social media to build your practice, the answer is, “it depends”. Like most things in marketing, there’s no hard and fast answer to this question.
However, below are 4 questions you can ask yourself to help determine whether social media is something you should be using in your therapy or holistic health business.
1. Are people in your target audience using social media?
If your target audience is not using social media, there is not much point in using it as a marketing tool—however, it may still be useful in helping you keep up to date on what is happening in your field or niche area, and to meet and build relationships with colleagues. You can encounter some great people on social media, and you never know what business opportunities might present themselves due to the connections you make with them.
To find out if your potential clients hang out on specific social media channels, you’ll have to do some research. While many potential counseling and healing clients have a Facebook account, they may not be active on other social media platforms.
2. Are you blogging or creating other content online?
If you are already marketing online through blogging and email marketing, social media is an excellent place to share your content. It can help increase your exposure, expand your social media audience, and build your email list. Over time, as you continue to stay in front of potential therapy clients by sending them to your website to view your content and present offers to them, some of them will become clients or customers.
If you’re not writing articles or creating other types of content (videos, podcasts, etc.) and marketing via email, it’s more difficult—but not impossible—to attract clients. Why? Because without creating your own content, you won’t have a reason to send people to your website, and you won’t have an email list for people to sign up for so you can keep in touch with them.
However, if you are active on social media, engage with your followers, share tips and other people’s content that is relevant to your audience, you can still increase your exposure and build relationships with people. Eventually, some of these people may visit your website so see what you have to offer.
3. Are you prepared to post consistently on social media?
When it comes to any kind of marketing, consistency is key to success. Sporadic marketing doesn’t work very well. If you’re prepared to engage in social media marketing on a regular basis, ideally posting 1-3 times per day, you’ll find it will bring you better results. If you can’t manage to post that often, post once a day. Remember though, only a small segment of your total audience will see your posts. This is why it’s wise to post as frequently as you can.
4. What results do you expect from social media marketing?
If you expect that you can simply share posts on social media and that clients are going to come running to you, you’re in for a big surprise. As I stated above, you CAN attract clients using social media, however, the best results will come if you utilize social media as part of a larger marketing strategy to grow your therapy or holistic practice.
The keyword here is “strategy”. There will be a learning curve. You’ll need to understand the ins and outs of marketing online and the importance of building relationships with potential clients and staying in touch with them over time.
Whether you choose to use social media or not, it is a huge part of the online marketing world, which makes it hard to ignore.
