OK, I’ve talked to a lot of therapists this month about how to clean up their marketing and how to use social media to strategically grow their businesses. More often than not, they admit that they are relying on their experiences with Facebook (mostly personal pages rather than business pages) to speak about their social media strategies. It’s not surprising to me that they have been less than satisfied with the results and are reluctant to put more time and energy into networking online.
With so many of my colleagues making the same mistake, I thought I should take a moment to let you know that out of all the social media tools that I use – Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and (reluctantly) Facebook – it is Pinterest (not Facebook) that refers the most traffic to my website. And, that’s just one of the ways Pinterest works for me! Here are ten more reasons I used Pinterest to support both my psychotherapy and consulting practice . . . .
- Eye Candy. Pinterest is visually stimulating and it’s fun! It’s like looking at a beautiful online magazine that allows you to be the publisher. When I take time to spend time on Pinterest, it’s pure pleasure rather than a marketing “task” that I have to squeeze into my schedule.
- Transparency. Pinterest allows me to show clients what I’m thinking about. That transparency helps potential clients determine if I am a good “fit” for them. I’m not shy about creating pin board that address my clinical interests and my
- Authenticity. Every therapist knows that authenticity is key to helping a potential client (or referral source) understand if and how you can be of help to him / her. Pinterest allows me to pin things that I am interested genuinely interested in – with a nod to my clinical work (like Psychiatric Care – Then and Now and Suicide | Self Harm), my consulting work with you guys (like Money Matters in Private Practice and Writers, Writing, Etc.) as well as a peek into my personal life, too ( like Just Beautiful! and Needlework) !
- Engagement. By organizing my pin boards around my personal and professional concerns, Pinterest can function like a virtual coffee shop where it’s easy to start and join conversations that relate to my particular interests.
- Brainstorming. Pinterest is where I go to first to begin curating information on a new topic. It’s my visual / online brain dump!
- Networking. It’s easy to begin conversations with total strangers and reconnect with colleagues and friend around the world when Pinterest let’s me “pin” my interests in such a visible space.
- Resource Development. Pinterest is also an easy way for me to connect with others when I am interested in collaborating with others to collect resources (see Mindfulness & Meditation).
- Advocacy. I love using Pinterest to challenge policies and practices that hurt people. So I use Pinterest to take a very public stand and advocate for issues and causes that I believe make the world a better place. (see Domestic Violence )
- Acknowledgement. Pinterest is also where I house my wish list for Possible Keynote Speakers and list My Favorite Artists.
- Building Credibility. Pinterest also helps me build my credibility by allowing me to pin information and inspiration that reinforces who I am and what services I can offer.
Pinterest is consistently the biggest social media referrer of traffic to my website (almost 70%!). I’m hoping I’ve given you at least a few reasons to consider how Pinterest might augment your own marketing plan. I’ve signed up to join Beth Hayden’s new class, The Pinfluence Academy, and thought you might want to join me in it, too! Hope to see you there!
Thanks Tamara for giving some air time to this issue. Great post!
Jenny, are you on Pinterest? I can’t remember if I’m following your pins or not.
Thanks for sharing this blog! I am on Pinterest and enjoy posting there. The difficulty for me is that it is very rarely, according to google analytics, that any traffic is coming from these sites. I continue to be active on Facebook, Twitter, Linkin, and Pinterest. Though have to admit that Google+ continues to intimidate me. Do you have any suggestions on how to get more followers? I am afraid I am a little in the dark here. Interestingly enough my practice is not suffering and I am almost completely full. So I am wondering if people are going to these sites and finding me but I just have no way of tracking it. It is good to know that my main focus should be on Pinterest, I actually enjoy that one the most as well and will continue to put my energy there!
Hey, Lyndsey! Can you share the URL for your Pinterest page? I would like to see what’s going on.
Tamara, here is my URL:http://pinterest.com/relational/
Lyndsey! So happy to find your pin boards! I’m following you now! Thanks!
I’m in total agreement! I love, love, love what Pinterest is doing for my business. It drives a lot of traffic to my website and it brings therapists to my play therapy workshops. It’s also a great way for me to be able to categorize my resources and be able to find them simply by glancing at the photo. Much easier than accessing them via my computer files. I hit 6000 followers this past week. http://pinterest.com/pamdyson/
Pam, thanks so much for dropping in and pointing out how easy it is to organize and then scan the visual cues to find resources! Congrats to you on hitting 6000 followers! I’m always using your pin boards as one example how therapists can use them for business purposes. Thanks so much for sharing the URL to your pin boards here!
Tamara,
Thanks for this information. I happen to love Pinterest and was surprised – and tickled – to hear that you use it for marketing purposes. I am going to follow suit. I am curious about utilizing this site as a tool to generate referrals.
One question: You don’t have reservations about clients having “a peek into your personal life”?
Best,
Julie Scher, LCSW
Hi, Julie! I don’t think I remember you dropping in here to chat before now so welcome to Private Practice from the Inside Out! Hey, I get this question often so i hope you don’t mind if I take it into a blog post so that more people will have the information to consider. I’ll drop back in here as soon as I finish the post to let you know when the post will go live.
Meanwhile, I hope to find you back here often chatting and challenging me, too!
Looking forward to more discussion, Tamara! Thanks. Julie
Hey Tamara! Here’s My pinterest page! http://pinterest.com/jillplaytherapy/
I am with you on the facebook issue. While I use it a lot for personal stuff, , my site was blocked and marked as spam for NO REASON at least no explanation given to me that i could try and fix. I spent over a year trying to figure out how to fix it including running malware scans on my site, signing up for sitelock,a and trying to communicate with facebook (NO HELP THERE AT ALL), my web host which couldn’t do anything about it, and gave up. So now I focus on other things, like pinterest, twitter and started using google +. I am new to Google + and am still getting used to it. Don’t use linkedin as much.
I did find a way around the facebook thing though, If I pin my posts on pinterest, I can post the pins on facebook no problem and traffic at least goes to my pinterest page hehe.
Jill, what a nightmare! As with other referral sources, it is always wise to use multiple social media tools. Placing all of your eggs in just one or two baskets can be the demise of even the strongest of practices. Diversify, diversify, diversify! I’m glad you have found other ways to share your information and resources!
Thanks for sharing your pin boards with us! I hope it brings you lots of traffic!
The funny thing is, my other site, http://www.jillosbornelpc.com is not blocked from facebook, so I can post from there and also there is a link there to my play therapy site, http://www.jillosborne.org
Hi Tamara!
I love Pinterest too! I definitely use it for business and personal. I have my most important posts closer to the top, since I too use it to market my counseling and business services. http://pinterest.com/camillemcdaniel/ Did you know you they even have an application where you can schedule your pins?
Tamara, the tool used to schedule your pins is called Pinster, http://www.pinster.me/. I just found this not too long ago. It allows you to schedule pins on Pinterest and track and measure results. They have free and paid options.
You may also like this Pinterest application http://www.shareasimage.com/
Happy Pinning!
Thanks so much, Camille! I’ll check them out! So appreciate your generosity in sharing your resources!
Hi Camille,
What does “scheduling pins” actually mean? I’m still getting up to speed with all of this.
Also – for Tamara and the rest of you. I gave my professional Pinterest site the same name as my business which is pretty straight forward: Julie Scher Therapy. I’m wondering if ya’ll think it’s necessary to keep these things consistent or if I might give my Pinterest site a different name??
BTW – here is the link to my Pinterest site: http://pinterest.com/jstherapy/boards/
Best,
Julie
Hi Julie,
Let’s say you don’t have lots of free time to post various interesting pins to your Pinterest boards throughout the week. You can pre-schedule these pins to post automatically to whatever board on your page on whatever day and time you want. It’s like set it and forget it. 🙂 I do the same for my other social media platforms but I use a different social media management tool.
Thanks, Camille, for staying engaged and responding to Julie’s question! Have I mentioned that I just love this online community! You guys ROCK!
Well if I can remember to click the little check box to receive notification when I first post then I’m good to go! Otherwise I forget :-/ Tamara you have put alot of years into building a solid, quality filled, online community and that’s why it works and that’s why it will continue to work!
Whoops! Thanks to both of you! I thought I had responded weeks ago!
Julie, those are great questions. I would absolutely be rigidly consistent with your name across all platforms. It builds name recognition and, at least where Google search is concerned, it also builds your online authority. Thanks for sharing your pin boards!
Hi, Julie! Just realized that you don’t have a gravatar set up yet. If you would like to have a little image of you pop up when you comment here or elsewhere, here are instructions to make that happen. Not to worry – it’s really easy. And, that will help us all build a stronger community here.
For those not comfortable with others seeing your more personal pin boards you can create secret boards that are only visible to you and to anyone you invite to it.
Oh, Pam! Yes! Thank you for mentioning this! I haven’t created any secret boards and so had completely forgotten that they even exist! Excellent!
I have three secret boards. I used two of them to collaborate with the lady that did the website banner for my personal growth site. It was really helpful because I could pin pictures of what I liked after are consultation and she could post ideas as well and give each other feedback. The other one is for some planning I’m doing for personal stuff that I wasn’t ready for others to see yet. You know people can figure out life events from your pins even if you don’t announce it, and there is I life event I haven’t told all my clients yet, and I would hate for them to find out from my pins if they were to come across it. They eventually will all know though. The only thing I don’t like about pinterest is that you cannot currently blog others from following you, so if you have a creep following your boards there is not much you can do about it. You can mark posts as inappropriate, I think, but not people.
Oh, Jill! I love the idea of using secret boards for personal planning. I can imagine setting up secret boards with individual clients to help them focus on more sensitive and private issues that they may not want to share with others – either boards for inspiration . . . possibly on weight management or physical health and also for information . . . possibly on things like couples communication or coming out.
Thanks, Jill, for sharing how you are using yours!
Hey, I keep meaning to ask . . . why aren’t you using a gravatar here?
yeah you can invite people to view your secret board. You can have up to three. Once you make a board public though, you can’t make it secret again.
Oh, that’s good to know! Thanks for the heads up!
Jill where did you get your spiritual gifts survey? This would be a great to put on Pinterest and for the clients in our practice.
Camille, the Spiritual Gifts Survey is a WordPress plugin, which is easy to install. Here is the plugin website. http://gifts.mynamedia.net/. It’s based on a spiritual gifts survey done at Saddleback church in CA I believe. It’s free. I thought it was cool I do sometimes get spam surveys though.
Thanks, Jill, for sharing this!
Thank you!
Hi Tamara, I’m in the beginning stages of opening a private practice in Denver and came to you through a comment you made on Brenda Bomgardner’s site. I was talking with some people just last week on the benefits of using pinterest as a marketing tool. Here’s my dilemma-I’ve been on pinterest myself since almost the beginning which means I have many personal boards already filled. Probably at least 12 boards with 50+ pics each. Basic stuff like baking, recipes, home, kids, etc. However, I’m not sure If I should just add respective counseling counseling boards (and my business information) and use this as my marketing piece or If I should be creating a separate business account for my business.
here’s the link to my boards if you care to take a peak- http://pinterest.com/blueskies4/boards/
There’s also the added issue that I’m a cookie decorator and several pins on my cookie board link back to my cookie blog-though I mostly put pictures and not tons of writing and I keep any names to a generic title or first initial. I’m just not sure if that’s something clients should have potential access to or not.
Hi, Sarah! Thanks for dropping in to check out Private Practice from the Inside Out! It’s so nice to meet you! I do love cookies(:) and know we have quite a few folks who are not in mental health who hang out here, too. Oh! I see, you are actually a cookie decorator and a therapist – right?! I’m thinking your clients should have something sweet to look forward to every time they come to your office! Yum!
I absolutely understand the decision to be made and would love to actually take time to answer this in a blog post. I hope you don’t mind the delay but it’s a question that I get often and I want to answer it thoughtfully.
I hope you will be back often to chat here. It’s a warm and resourceful community so make yourself at home! We’re happy to support you in building a strong and vibrant private practice!
thanks so much for responding! I look forward to hearing your response. I was just discussing this issue with my mother-in-law who is a counselor in Boulder and she’s curious to hear your thoughts as well! I plan to come back around here often, I’ve been reading through many of your blog posts and it has been so helpful! I’ll have to figure out how to add a gravatar and get that done.
thanks, Sarah
Sarah, I’m so glad you found your way to Private Practice from the Inside Out!
Here’s how you can set one up a gravatar for yourself. http://www.allthingsprivatepractice.com/how-a-tiny-picture-of-you-can-help-drive-traffic-to-your-website-or-blog/ It’s really easy! (It will then show up on lots of different websites when you comment.)
Sarah, here’s a link to a post that will tell you how to set up a gravatar. It’s easy and free.
Hi! this is Sarah Ramer who commented just above. I know its a month later, but I’ve been intending to figure out this gravatar thing, however, I was waiting until I could come back and make a comment using my business email and website instead of my personal one! Figured it made more sense that way. I’m off to see if I can get a picture up now!
Hi, Sarah! Just realized that you do not have a gravatar yet. Here are instructions (they are really easy to follow) to set one up so that you have a little image of you that pops up when you leave comments here or elsewhere. It helps us all start to feel like we know you a little better.
thanks for the article. i make my own images for my pinterest account and blog with http://www.pixteller.com – an online photo editor great for creating text images as quotes. it has a lot of features and also a lot of themes to reuse. i hope you can find it useful too.