How to Change Your Perspective on Blogging & Increase Growth
As a mental health professional, you know the power of perception. For example, if you practice CBT with your clients you know how a thought leads to emotion which leads to behavior. Changing your thoughts and perceptions then leads to changed emotions and behaviors.
While we can’t control others’ perceptions of us, we can intentionally and authentically put our best foot forward. Blogging is by far the easiest, cheapest, and most proficient way to take control of your online presence and market your mental health services. If done correctly, blogging authentically represents you as a professional and your business/practice as legitimate.
When you meet a client for the first time you want them to say, “wow you are exactly how I thought you would be!”
You want them to like you, trust you, and hire you. And when you effectively use blogging as a way to market your private practice you’ll see readers convert into clients, and attract more ideal referrals.
What a Blog Can Do for You!
You want to get the most out of all the time you are putting into your mental health blog – or the money you are paying for a copywriter to write your blog.
So, what should your blog be doing for you? Your mental health blog should:
Increase your website’s legitimacy through utilizing effective SEO tactics
Create and strengthen networking relationships that lead to referrals
Establish a balance between motivational and informative posts
Create clear calls to action for your readers/ clients
Be a resource for potential clients, current clients, and their loved ones
Authentically portray you as a knowledgeable and trustworthy professional
Give your readers the information and assurance they need to reach out to you
Does your blog do all of these things? Or are you not utilizing blogging as a mental health marketing tool yet? It may be time to make some changes to your blogging habits – and start using blogging as a mental health marketing tactic.
Blogging to Showcase Your Reputability
Therapy changes lives. I know this first hand. That is why it’s my mission to fight the mental health stigma, and promote and create mental health resources. That is why I want you to start thinking of blogging differently.
Think of blogging as the sample piece of chocolate that you get outside of a candy shop. Except, while a piece of chocolate can brighten up someone’s day, your mental health blog has the potential to change someone’s life.
Posting a reputable mental health blog consistently is giving clients and potential clients a free resource. It is a sample of the knowledge they will gain by hiring you as a therapist or coach. So, if they like the information they are getting from the blog, they are more likely to take the next step and hire you.
Share Yourself & Give Hope
Not only does providing quality information increase your reputability in potential client’s eyes – blogging is also a chance to share yourself.
You are offering a service that helps people in their most vulnerable times. Potential clients may also struggle with a sense of hopelessness, and believing their lives can improve. Using your blog to motivate clients towards change, and empathizing with their struggles creates hope.
Sharing yourself also allows potential clients to get a sense of who you are before taking the initial step of reaching out to you.
This is huge! Imagine the strength it takes to go to a new therapist for the first time – or even schedule a free 15-minute initial call. It’s terrifying.
Providing a sense of who you are to potential clients will help ease their fears. Authentically representing yourself online is how you begin with a therapeutic relationship right off the bat.
When you do this well, you are making it easier for people to contact you because you are closing the gap between “online stranger” and “real therapist with a website and personality who I can trust and may be able to help me.” Your personality should shine through your online presence and this will encourage readers to convert into clients.
Blogging as a Resource for Existing Clients
On top of using your blog to generate conversion on your website, you can also use your mental health blog as a resource for your existing clients.
Being in therapy is hard work. And many times it involves learning new things and re-framing thinking patterns that are decades old. All while being in an emotionally vulnerable state. Not to mention some conditions like anxiety, depression, and stress actually affect memory.
Through therapy, you are changing people’s lives and introducing them to mind-blowing topics. You’re sharing new ways of living and thinking that are foreign to them. This means that sometimes you need to go over the same topic again, and again, and again. And that’s ok, that’s what you’re there for.
Having a blog about those mental health topics that you find yourself going over constantly with clients gives them an AMAZING resource to review between sessions. It also puts words to something they are struggling with, and then they can share that blog with their loved ones.
So, not only does mental health blogging help your clients directly – it can help them grow their support system outside of therapy. This is super useful because a lot of times clients don’t know how to communicate with loved ones all that’s going on. Or they want to give them trusted information about what they’re going through without having to word-by-word regurgitate a whole hour therapy session. Of course, many clients want to keep the topics of their sessions confidential, but some don’t – and a reputable mental health blog, from their therapist, can come in handy more often than you may realize.
Blogging to Increase SEO
Blogging is the easiest, cheapest, most authentic way to increase your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) and legitimacy.
Marketing for mental health professionals and SEO can be sort of intimidating. But think of it this way – SEO is just Google’s way of getting the information people want to know to them the best way possible. Google aims to get the highest quality information to searchers as quickly as possible. That’s it.
So, it’s not about tricks and tips and “cheating the system”. It’s about providing high-quality information and resources for others. And yes, there are tactics to make writing more Google-friendly, but at the heart of SEO is the creation of quality content.
So, what are some of the ways that Google judges content to see if it’s quality or not? Well, if you have a quality mental health blog on your website that accurately answers a question and provides valuable, trusted information that people want to know – then people are going to stay on your webpage and read your blog. This is called “linger time” and it’s one way Google sees if you’re providing quality content. Because if it’s good people will stick around.
If you’ve done any SEO research you have probably also heard the term “keywords.” Keywords and phrases are the things that people are searching for when they hop on Google. They are the questions that your readers want answered. So, when you have a mental health blog you have a platform to answer your audience’s questions and hit more, and better keywords. The key is to cut the fluff and produce quality content that your readers actually care about.
Networking & Referral Generating Through Blogging
Mental health blogging is an excellent way to generate connections within your field. You can use blogging to initiate and strengthen professional relationships, and in doing so, generate more referrals. It is an amazing way for therapists to market their mental health services.
A great place to start is by identifying your peripheral professions and services. These are businesses, companies, services, etc. who are not in direct competition with you – but who do serve the same clientele as you. You can generate referrals by providing them with quality information that they can pass on to their clientele, and by creating information that will help them better serve their clients.
SHARE WITH THE COMMUNITY
You can do this by reaching out to the community and showing them the valuable, free, information you are offering on your website.
For example, if you work with mothers struggling with postpartum depression you could write a blog about postpartum depression, and post it on your mental health blog. Then reach out to a local mommy-and-me class and show them the article. If they liked it then they are likely to share that link/article with their clientele.
This will help in a couple of ways. First, it gets more organic viewers on your site. Also, if that mommy-and-me business posts a link to your article on their website, that’s called a “backlink” and that increases your SEO.
Also, you are helping that business owner provide a higher quality experience to their customers. And as you strengthen those relationships, you are generating referrals through reciprocity.
GUEST POSTING
You can also network and generate referrals by providing guest posts on others’ sites.
So, keeping with the mommy-and-me example, let’s say that that business also has a blog. You could ask to provide a guest post that they will feature on their blog. Then all the moms familiar with that company and their blog will also be exposed to you and your practice.
In this example, you’re giving the readers valuable information and resources. And not only that, you are reaching them in a setting that they already trust (the mommy-and-me blog that they read every week). Also in this situation, you can ask for a backlink to your site, which will increase your website’s legitimacy and SEO.
BLOGGING FOR PERIPHERAL PROFESSIONS
Another way to serve your community through blogging is by writing blogs (and posting them on your site) not with your ideal client in mind – but with peripheral professions in mind.
So, if you’re a therapist working with mommas suffering from postpartum depression, you could post a blog titled, “How to Recognize Postpartum Depression & How to Help.” It will be focused on the signs and symptoms of postpartum depression, and how to start a conversation about it with someone who may be experiencing it. Then you could provide that blog to mommy-and-me instructors, church and women’s ministries devoted to helping new moms, local midwives and pediatrician offices, etc.
This will increase these peripheral professional business owners’ trust in you. And your relationships with them will grow stronger as you give them quality information and resources. This will lead to more referrals and traffic to your website.
BECOME THEIR “GO-TO”
As you market your mental health services, and participate in the community, your ideal clients and professionals in related fields/ businesses will notice. They’ll see you as their go-to therapist because you have gained their trust and respect.
This will generate referrals and grow your practice. All by ethically providing quality information to the population of people that you are passionate about caring for.
A professional mental health copywriter will help you find the balance of all these mental health marketing/blogging strategies. That way you will attract your ideal clients and your ideal referrals.
How I Can Help
Hopefully, by now you can see how much good comes from blogging and you are motivated to start using this valuable mental health marketing tactic.
I hope you also see the potential for error, and wasted time. If not done well, blogging (like all other copy on your website, and in your business) will deter potential clients.
I fully believe that your online presence is crucial to gaining and maintaining your ideal clients. And I want to help you impact the lives of others, grow your influence, and grow your practice. As a professional mental health copywriter, I can do just that.
Reach out, and let’s start helping people together.