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

Content Creation Opportunities For Shrinks

Writing articles for high-traffic websites can help you grow online presence and your practice.

Content creation is crucial for building an online presence, particularly on your own professional blog on your private practice website. In addition to creating content for your own small website, you may want to start strategically writing for other websites, too. Seek out higher-traffic sites to write for

If the thought overwhelms you, don't stop reading quite yet. Some of the benefits of writing or blogging on other sites as part of your private practice marketing strategy are:

• Getting more back links to your own site which increases traffic and boosts SEO
• Increase name/brand recognition
• More credibility as a trusted expert
• Opportunity to educate and build awareness of important issues
• And best of all, you can re-purpose the content and post it on your own website

All of these benefits will help bring more visitors to your website, which will, over time, mean more clients for your practice. It's important to write on topics directed to your ideal client. Write  on your areas of passion and expertise in order to bring in clients that are a good fit for your practice. Writing articles for other websites does take some commitment, but in my experience, it has been well worth the effort.

Consider pitching articles or blogs to these sites:

About.com

About.com has different levels of paid contributors: guides, topic writers, and video producers.

Psych Central

If you're ready to make a regular commitment to create and write regularly for your own blog, pitch your passion here. you can also submit individual articles to PsychCentral's World Of Psychology blog.

Sharecare.com

Sharecare is a health social media site owned by Dr. Oz. You can sign up as an expert and answer questions on a variety of health and mental health questions. Here's my Sharecare page.

Your local news website

Every newspaper and TV news station have websites and I've yet to come across one that doesn't have additional bloggers contributing. Here's an example from my articles on a local Utah news website

Examiner.com

The Examiner accepts bloggers based on specific topics and locations. See if they are looking for bloggers in your area of expertise.

Professional organization websites

Check with your professional organization to see if they have a blog and accept articles from licensed professionals. The American Counseling Association has a blog with contributors.

GoodTherapy.org

This professional therapist listing site also allows therapists to become "topic experts" on their site and publish blog articles.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all of the writing opportunities for therapists on the web. My hope was to get you thinking about how to build your online presence and create content that you own and can reuse on your own site.

Do you contribute articles or other content to larger websites? I'd love to hear about your experience. Have you noticed an increase in traffic to your site? What benefits have you experienced writing for big websites?

I've just launched the 2013 Therapist Blog Challenge. Join us!

Therapist Media Cheat Sheet: Building Your Practice Through TV Interviews

If you got an email today from a local news station asking to interview you as an expert on camera about one of your specialty areas for a news story, how would you respond? Surprisingly, many therapists let the opportunity to speak on camera for a large audience pass them by because of their own anxieties and insecurities about being on camera. Landing interviews on local news and talk shows allows thousands of people "get to know you," hear about your areas of expertise, and become aware of your private practice.

In my experience, the most effective marketing and public relations opportunities for my private practice are the ones I don't have to pay for, where someone else is featuring me as an expert, where I can reach thousands and thousands of people in one shot with accurate information, and where I can let them know that I am in private practice. Several years ago I decided I wanted to not just accept invitations to interview on TV but to actively seek them out and gain media experience. Over the past few years I've become a regular contributor on Utahs #1 women's lifestyle show KSL TV's Studio 5, as well as being interviewed frequently for various news stories. Here are a few things I've learned in the process to help you land local TV interviews in your area in order to educate your community and to draw potential clients to your private practice.

1) Know what's 'newsworthy'

When pitching stories or interview topics to local TV stations it's crucial to know what they're looking for. The fact that you're going into private practice specializing in family therapy isn't newsworthy, but news and other TV shows might be interested in getting your thoughts on a new study showing how cultivating self-compassion helps individuals manage divorce. Last week I was invited to share my thoughts on KSL TV evening news on the topic of interest to families - "Can a playground be too safe?" This story was prompted by a recent story published in the New York Times.

MediaCollege.com defines a story as newsworthy if it has the following characteristics:

Timing - News is all about stories that are current and new. Significance - Something that affects large numbers of people. Proximity - An event happening close to home. Prominence - Involves someone famous or well-known. Human Interest - Appeals to emotion, novel, off-beat, interesting.

• Watch national news headlines. Pitch a local spin on those stories to local TV producers.
• Suggest seasonal topics. Pitch interviews around managing holiday stress, or Halloween safety tips for children in October.
• New research is "news." Keep an eye out for interesting research that's relevant to your practice and offer to interview.

2) Know how to write a press release

When pitching to media you need to speak their language, which means learning how to write a press release.

• A press release needs to be in a specific press release format. Here's an excellent example at EReleases.com.
• Read other releases. Here's a release I helped one of my therapists at Wasatch Family Therapy, LLC write last week based on her dissertation research, Mean Girls Get Married: Teens Don't Always Grow Out of Mean Girl Behavior and End Up Using Emotional Manipulation On Spouse.
• Don't send attachments. When you email it to local news and TV producers cut and paste it in the body of the email, and do not send as an attachment.

3) Know how to make their job easier

TV reporters, producers, and journalists are extremely busy and always on a deadline. They don't have time to calm your anxiety or to walk you through the interview process.

• Respond ASAP to interview requests. If you get contacted by your local media respond immediately or the opportunity will pass you by. Decide ahead that you'll say "yes."
• Send only relevant information. Highlight the most important information you'd like to talk about and a brief line or two about you and your practice or your basic message (remember my elevator speech posts?). Through a brief stint as a producer and host of a local lifestyle TV show I learned what makes a good and a difficult interviewee. One of the hardest parts of screening potential guests was skimming through too much information hunting for the relevant points.
• Limit your correspondence. Respect the reporter, journalist or producers time. Though getting a TV interview might be a big deal for us, as the therapist, it's just one of many details they are trying to juggle.
• Do your homework. Understand the demographic for a given newscast or TV show so you can pitch relevant and helpful topics.

In upcoming articles I'll give tips on how to look and sound good on camera, how to maximize your TV interviews to draw potential clients to your practice, and tips to turn a one time TV appearance into a regular gig.

Have you been on local TV? I'd love to hear about your experience. How did it go? What do you wish you'd known beforehand? If you have any questions for me feel free to comment below or ask me on Twitter @Julie_Hanks or contact me directly here.