Can I Feature Your Private Practice? Content Creation Opportunities on Toolbox

Talk to thousands about your practice by submitting content for Private Practice Toolbox.

I've written a lot about the importance of content creation in building a professional online presence, creating value for website visitors and social media followers, and establishing yourself as an expert in your specialty area.

Incoming links to your practice website boost SEO, boost traffic, and establish credibility. It's always better to create content for larger websites. Well, here's your chance to shine. I want to feature you on THIS blog in 2013! Here are 4 ways you can be featured:

1) Pitch a guest blog 

I'm always looking for guest posts from qualified individuals from a variety of fields who can share insights about how to run, manage, market, and thrive in private practice. I recently started working on my PhD and I'm not able to blog as often as I used to. I'm open to posts from professionals outside the mental health field as well. Attorneys, accountants, SEO experts, marketing, website design, interior design...If your expertise can help private mental health practitioners build successful businesses, pitch away!

2) Be featured in my"Adventures in Private Practice" series

Answer the following questions and submit them with a photo, a brief summary of your practice and a link to your website here.

• Tell me a little about your practice…
• Why did you decide to open a private practice?
• Clients that therapists find to be the most “difficult” are sometimes the ones who can teach them the most. What have you learned from your toughest clients?
• What’s your biggest pet peeve about private practice?
• How did you discover or develop your practice “niche”?
• What resource (book, website, person) helped you the most when setting up your private practice?
• What has surprised you most about being in private practice?
• Has your private practice helped you grow professionally? How so…
• Has it helped you grow personally, too? How so…
• Being a therapist can be emotionally exhausting. What do you do to care for your own emotional and psychological health?
• How do you cope with the inevitable stressors involved with being your own boss?
• What personal strengths have helped you succeed in private practice?

3) Be Featured in a "A Day In The Life" Series 

How do private practitioners spend their time? What does it take to create a thriving practice? Track your private practice activities for one day. Submit a word doc, photo, practice summary, and link to your practice here.

4) Be feature in my "Virtual Office Tour" series

Submit a video tour of your office space and I'll feature it on this blog! Submit you information here. Peek inside other therapist's offices.

Other ways to connect with private practice resources:

Join the Private Practice Toolbox Facebook Group

Join the Twitter conversation using hashtag #practicetoolbox (I'm @julie_hanks)

Join the 2013 Therapist Blog Challenge for help creating regular content on your private practice website.

Martin Fisch via Compfight

Boost Social Media Engagement Through Content Curation

I recently wrote a blog post encouraging therapists to start start creating content as a way to boost website SEO, create value, to create backlinks through social media sharing, and to develop your online practice presence. In my consultation and in online forums I've heard private practice therapists express feeling overwhelmed by creating content like blogging or producing videos on a regular basis. That's where content curation comes in.

Content curation means sharing (tweeting, posting, etc.) the very best resources that other people have produced. I suggest that you share 40% your own content posted on your practice website and share 60% curated content through your social networks. Curating adds value to your social media followers, solidifies your practice presence, builds credibility in your practice specialty area, and creates networks with other professionals through sharing their content with your social media followers.

Are you a content creator or content curator? Hopefully, you're doing both.

Pause Before Posting About Work On Personal Social Media Pages (part 1)

We all need to vent about a hard day at work, but clinicians should think twice before posting on personal social network pages.

Guest post by Kimberly Sandstrom, MFTI

Have you ever have a long day at the office and wanted to vent your frustration to someone? Me too! We are containers of all sorts of confidential information and sometimes our containers get full, or we get triggered by something that happened during the day. It’s hard to hold it all in at times—especially when it touches or triggers some reaction in us. Yet, we are called to an oath of confidentiality, and sensitivity to our client’s information. For most, venting to a trusted colleague or a relaxation activity can be enough. Yet, some therapists use their personal social media accounts to release stress about their clients. Can’t believe clinicians do this? Read on.

As therapists, we reach in, listen, validate our client’s pain and help them make sense of it so that they can reflect, respond, and repair the distance in their relationships. It can be emotionally draining work. And we need ways to work out our stress. But are personal social media accounts the place to do this? Probably not.

Yet, some therapists post things their clients did or said that made them laugh or made them upset.  Yes, you read that right. I’ve seen complaints about cancellations, clients not following treatment plans, and negligent parents. Then there are the posts intended to be funny—pictures of notes clients left for them (yes, I have seen this), pictures of children in the local paper they treat (this too!). Friends comment back “lol” or similar funny retorts, and then everyone gets a good laugh.

My heart drops whenever I read these posts.

What about all the people in their friendship circle who are in therapy or contemplating therapy? Do they wonder if their own therapist is posting something they said? I know I would.

We have such a wonderful opportunity to promote a positive image o

f ourselves and our therapeutic community and to cultivate confidence in the therapy process (see Julie Hanks' article on using social media in practice). We also have an opportunity to foster community with our public who often need courage just to pick up the phone and call us for support. Posting about clients negatively undermines these opportunities!

The good news is that therapists who post in a negative or comical fashion about their clients are definitely in the minority. And, given that I have seen some of these posts myself online from people I know, I take the view that their posts are not meant to be harmful but meant to release steam from a difficult day, or to draw others in as a way to cope with the “compassion fatigue” often experienced in this line of work. While the person posting does not intend harm, ultimately, in a round-about-way, they can elicit harm. How do we address this problem as we experience stress burnout and how do we address this with our therapeutic community?

Next time, I will provide tips on how to create self-awareness of our personal postings about our work, promote a positive image of therapy, and how to approach colleagues who may not be aware of how their posts about clients impact our wonderful therapeutic community.

Kimberly Sandstrom is a Marriage & Family Therapist Intern and Relationship Educator, Supervised by Kathryn de Bruin, LMFT, working in private practice in San Diego, CA. Married for 24 years, she and her husband are raising three daughters, two of whom are now adults.  She works with couples, and families to create emotionally safe and enduring connections in their most cherished relationships.

5 Elements Of An Effective Practice Website

An effective website is key to building a thriving private practice in the digital age.

According to Pew Research, 80% of internet users look online for health information, making it the third most popular online pursuit following email and using a search engine. Additionally, 44% of internet users look online for information about doctors or other health professionals.

Since the majority of people are looking for your services online, your website is the heart of your professional web presence. All other online efforts should focus primarily on directing potential clients to your website where they will get to know who you are and how you can help them. Your website is your first impression, your "billboard", and your best chance to build trust with potential clients. I suggest these 5 C's when building your private practice website.

The 5 C's of an effective website:

1) Clean design

Overall design feel should look uncluttered and cohesive. Here's an example of a clean looking practice website from The Healing Group. When designing your site focus on the following:

• Use only 1-2 type fonts
• Select a cohesive color scheme
• Avoid DIY look
• Visually appealing to your ideal client

2) Clear Navigation

Is your site navigation user friendly? Can visitors quickly find what they are looking for? When I redesigned my practice website I selected the order of navigation buttons based on the Google Analytics statistics pages views. Then I put the navigation buttons in order according to what the site's previous visitors were looking for. Here were the top 5

• Home
• Meet Therapists
• Services
• Appointments
• About Us

3) Compelling copy

Does the text on your website pages accurately describe your practice  and your services? Does the copy engage your visitors and give them a feel for who you are? Here are a few tips to write more compelling copy:

• Speak in first person
• Answer your potential client’s pain
• Highlight the benefits of your services
• Conversational writing style is the new "professional"
• Use keywords throughout your text on website pages. Keywords are  words or phrases that describe your services that ideal clients would likely type into a search to find the services you provide.

4) Contact Information

One of the biggest mistakes therapists make is making potential clients work too hard to find contact information. Here are some suggestions to make sure that potential clients can easily contact you. Keep in mind that the primary  goal of a website is to get potential clients to become your clients. Make sure that you include your contact information and your location on every page.

5) Consistent Content

It's important to give visitors a reason to come back to your website on a regular basis. Creating valuable content makes your site a valuable resource, increases traffic, and helps build your clientele. Here are some examples of types of content that I create regularly on my private practice website:

• Blog Articles
• Videos
• Audio (mp3s, podcasts)
• Social/Visual (graphics, pictures)
• Newsletter

Take a look at your practice website. If you have incorporated these 5 elements then you're in good shape! If not, look at where you can improve. Maybe you can add "Spruce up my private practice website" to your New Year's Resolution list.

Feel free to post your practice website link in the comments below and ask for feedback from colleagues. I encourage you to give feedback to other practitioners on their practice websites.

5 Keys To Writing Killer Blog Post Titles

Is your great blog content hiding behind boring or predictable titles?

Next time you're browsing the web, notice the articles that catch your eye and pique your interest. What is it about them that interests you enough to click through and look at the content? Often, all that you have to go by is the article title.

Titles matter.

I was just reminded of the importance of blog post titles over the weekend when I posted an article on PsychCentral's World Of Psychology Blog. The article was titled "8 Surefire Ways To Emotionally Screw Up Your Kid." Within 24 hours the post had been shared over 1000 times on Facebook and had been retweeted 100 times on Twitter.

What was it about this post that made it popular and sharable? It all started with the totally unexpected title that piqued people's interest.

5 Key Questions When Titling Posts

1) Does it make you go "huh?"

Is there some kind of twist you can give the title that piques readers interest? For my "8 Surefire Ways" post I wanted to give it a different approach. There are millions of how-to parenting posts on the Internet, so I wanted to do something unexpected while still being helpful.

2) Is your title relevant to the content?

You don't want to g0 with a catchy title that has nothing to do with the content. Your post title should accurately reflect the article content or you risk losing your reader's trust and decreasing your traffic. One of the favorite titles of a recent blog post was 20 Ways Shrinks Stay Sane, where I interviewed therapists around the globe on how they take care of their own emotional health. It was clever and reflected accurately what the post content had in store for readers.

3) Can you say it in fewer words?

If you can title a post with fewer words, then do it. If titles are too long they make it more difficult to share through social media. I titled a recent blog post What The Heck Is Social Collaboration? A less effective title would have been Why Therapists Need To Know About Social Collaboration: What It Is And How To Use It.

4) Does the title include keywords?

Whenever possible, use keywords in the title of your blog post so people searching for your topic can easily find your content. For example, this post is titled 5 Keys To Writing Killer Blog Post Titles. The keywords are blog, post, and titles.

5) Is it in layman's terms?

When writing for the general public, avoid psychobabble, and write titles in language that is understandable to everyone. For example, one of my colleagues wrote a blog post called Mean Girls in Marriage. That title is more approachable than using Relational Aggression In Female Partners After Marriage.

Coming up with great blog post titles is an art that takes practice. It helps me to brainstorm with colleagues or family members to see which titles work best. Do you need feedback on a blog post title that you're working on? Feel free to post it in the comment below and I'll give you my feedback!