What The Heck Is Social Collaboration?

New trends in PR encourage online collaboration. Embracing new platforms can help therapists build professional presence and grow their private practice.

I recently attended an amazing conference in Park City, Utah called "Evo '12" The Evolution of Women in Social Media Conference. What's a shrink doing at a social media conference? In addition to being a therapist, I am a self-professed social media junkie and tech geek. So there.

A conference highlight was a workshop called "The Evolution of PR: A Culture of Collaboration, Connection and Community" taught by PR guru Sarah Evans and search technology innovator Jennifer Gosse. Both presenters work with a new social collaboration platform called Tracky (which you'll be hearing more about in an upcoming posts as I get more familiar with it). There was so much good technology and PR information that I couldn't take it all in or write it all down. I didn't want to miss anything so, I turned to social collaboration.

What is social collaboration?

At this point you may be asking "what is social collaboration?" Social collaboration involves processes that allow people to interact, work together, problem solve and exchange information online.

How can social collaboration help private practitioners?

In short, online social collaboration is a way to raise the visibility of your practice by producing more content through compiling and curating information. It's a way to engage your online social media followers, and also a method of gathering and sharing information with other like-minded professionals. Another use for therapists is in collaborating on notes from conferences and workshops as you'll see later on in this post.

An example of social collaboration: Storify

Storify is an easy to use online platform that allows anyone to tell a story through curating online articles, links, photos, and social media posts.

After attending the PR workshop my head was buzzing with new tips and tools. Why not try out social collaboration to document and share the stuff buzzing in my head? I logged in to Storify.  In about 15 minutes I had curated my favorite tweets, posts, photos, tips, tricks, and notes from many social media platforms posted by workshop participants and published a story on Storify.

I've embedded the story below so you can get a feel for what a rich experience social collaboration can be. Also, in addition to noticing the collaborative format of Storify, check out the content and the creators I've included. Notice that throughout this story I'm also sharing  the names and profiles of many who attended the workshop - social collaboration also means free PR.

[View the story "Evolution of PR: Building A Collaborative Culture " on Storify] How cool is that? Did you also notice that every element within the Storify article is easily sharable on social media? And you can post a comment right in the story. Try it out. That's the fun of social collaboration - synergy of ideas and energy. I love it.

Here are some possible ways you can use Storify in your practice:

• Create stories relating to new research in your specialty areas
• Curate current news topics that relate to your practice areas
• Collect favorite quotes
• Compile links for interviews you've participated in
• Embed Storify articles in blog posts on your practice site

The possibilities for shareable content creation are endless through social collaboration.

Later this week we'll do a social collaboration exercise together. You in? Be thinking about your favorite mobile apps for your practice so you can jump in and share your thoughts!

6 Ways To Put Your Practice On Autopilot

Whether you like it or not, when you're in private practice you are a business person. A common complaint I hear from new private practitioners is "I had no idea how much time (and money) it takes to run a business!" I nod my head in agreement.

With no business background, I ventured into private practice nearly 10 years ago. Starting out as a solo practitioner, I have learned how to maximize my time. Over the years I learned the importance of automating as many business systems as possible in order to decreases stress, and free up mental and emotional energy for the things I'd rather be doing...like therapy.

Here are 6 suggestions for automating your business systems in private practice:

1) Automate social media posts

While actual human conversation is the point of social media, I do automate some of my posts, tweets and status updates. The two social media management platforms I use are Hootsuite and Socialoomph. I use both because they have different strengths. Hootsuite allows me to manage multiple social media accounts from it's dashboard and respond to them in one place. SocialOomph is great for posting recurring tweets and updates because you can set the frequency of the recurrence and alter the text slightly.

I also use SocialOomph to set up auto-responders to thank new Twitter followers. SocialOomph also sends me daily digest email of keywords I've chosen to follow on Twitter so I can see who's tweeting about relevant topics and I can find new and interesting people to follow.

2) Switch to electronic health records

This year my clinic switched to online health records. One of the benefits has been that clients can log in, fill out initial paperwork and submit it online. Best of all they can print their own statements to send in to their health insurance company to seek reimbursement, which saves my office a lot of time and money.

3) Try an online scheduler

While I don't use an online scheduler, I know that many therapists do. Clients can book, cancel, reschedule their sessions online. Many programs also send automated appointment reminder emails to clients so they don't forget about their therapy appointment.

4) Schedule blog posts

If you have a blog on your practice website (which I certainly hope you do by now), set aside some time each week, or each month to crank out several posts and have them waiting in the queue. In the Wordpress platform that I use I can schedule the exact date and time that the post will publish. I have a least one post scheduled per week for the next four months on my practice website.

Another helpful tool is to set an editorial calendar for your blog so you know what topics you want to cover each week throughout the year. You may want to schedule them around certain holidays or national mental health awareness days. With your calendar set you can plan ahead for your topics and get them in the queue and off your mind. (This post was scheduled ahead of time.)

5) Automate your newsletter

Several months ago I switched e-newsletter services to Aweber. One main reason is that you can set up automated newsletters based on your blog posts. Basically, I set up the template, set the number of blog posts I want sent in each newsletter, and when it gets to that number of new blog posts, it automatically sends an e-newsletter to subscribers with blog post summaries!

Another cool automation feature is that I have set it to automatically send it out on Twitter and post on Facebook, too. It has saved me and my office manager several hours per month formatting the monthly newsletter. If you sign up for my Private Practice Toolbox newsletter below you'll see first hand what I'm talking about.

6) Set up auto bill pay

Finally, instead of writing checks for rent, water cooler service, cleaning service, web hosting, or any other recurring expense, set up automatic bill pay so you can mentally take those expenses off of your "to do" list.

What have you done to automate business systems in your private practice? I'd love to hear your tips!

photo credit: williamcho

Simplify Your Social Media Life With HootSuite

I have wholeheartedly embraced social media to build my therapy practice and to educate the public on important emotional health and family relationship topics. Technology and social media have allowed me to grow my private practice free of managed care during difficult economic times. Facebook is the #2 referral source to my private practice website, topped only by Google. A common  challenge for private practice therapists is learning to effectively manage social networks in a way that maximizes their time and draws people to their practice.

People often ask how I stay on top of posting and interacting regularly on my social media networks. Just to give you an idea, I manage  3 Twitter accounts, 8 Facebook pages/profiles, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Ping.fm, 3 Ning accounts. One of my favorite social network management systems is HootSuite, a social media dashboard. Although I can't manage all of my accounts from HootSuite, I can manage the largest networks. I pay only $5.99 per month which includes the ability to add one "team member" to can access and manage my social network accounts.

Here's a list of social networks that you can manage from Hootsuite:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Foursquare
• Ping.fm
• WordPress
• MySpace
• Mixi

I'm hoping they'll add Facebook groups, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest very soon.

Here's my 5 minute tutorial walk through of HootSuite's basic functions so you can see the dashboard, functions, and how easy it is to use.

Here are some of the reasons I like HootSuite:

1) Save drafts

You can save drafts of updates, posts, links, etc. to post at a later time, or to repost which saves time.

2) Schedule posts

If you find an article link , quote, or other resource that you want to share on any or all of your social media networks, you can schedule a post in the future by setting the day and time. You can set aside a certain amount of time every week and schedule your posts for the week on all of your networks.

3) Interact directly from the dashboard

Not only can you post updates, photos, links, etc. for HootSuite, you can interact, comment, "like", retweet, and many other options on several networks from one place. You don't have to login to each site separately which saves time.

4) Selectively post to networks

You can send or schedule an update to specific social media pages and not to others. For example, one of my Facebook Pages is a "Music/Band" page for my performing and songwriting. I post more music related links, stories, etc. there and I don't post those on my  private practice Facebook page. You can select which updates to send to each social network depending on the interests of your audience on any specific account.

5) Add team members

HootSuite allows you to add team members to your accounts to help manage your social media. I recently added a team member to assist me. The dashboard shows which team member responded to certain social media posts so you can track the other member's interaction and avoid duplicating responses.

How do you manage your social media networks to build your therapy practice?