Joe Bavonese Social Networking For Therapist Virtual Conference Presentation Oct 2009

Social Networking for Therapists
A Presentation at the

Practice Building
Virtual Conference
October 2009

Uncommon Practices
Joe Bavonese, PhD
www.uncommon-practices.com
(800) 940-0185

About the Presenter
 Joe Bavonese is a Licensed Psychologist in
Michigan who runs a group psychotherapy
practice, as well as doing psychotherapy

 Joe and his business partner Mel Restum, PhD
began Uncommon Practices in 2005 to teach
private practitioners how to create their Ideal
Practices through the study and application of
Business and Marketing principles
Uncommon Practices www.uncommon-practices.com 800 940 0185 2

About the Presenter
 Joe‟s business specialty is Internet Marketing; his
therapy practice gets over 40 referrals a month
from online sources

 Joe has been using Social Media to generate
referrals to his practice since 2007


Social Networking
 Strong emphasis in being part of an online community
 Uses member input (opinions, photos, videos, etc) as basis
for most or all of content
 Software applications are hosted inside the community
 Sharing of resources and access to many people (called
„friends‟ or „contacts‟)
 Best examples:
 www.facebook.com - social profiles; now wider ranges of ages
 www.linkedin.com - business networking
 www.twitter.com – 140 character “tweets”
 www.youtube.com - user generated videos


Social Networking Sites
 Social Networking sites have experienced tremendous
growth in the past year (May 2008 to May 2009):

Facebook Visits up 97%

Twitter Visits up 2681%

LinkedIn Visits up 90%


Comparison of the Big Three:
Millions of Visitors Per Month
120

100

80

60

40

20

0
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn


Average Time in Minutes on Site Per Visit
25

20

15

10

5

0


Percent of Visitors Over 35 Years Old
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

Uncommon Practices www.uncommon-practices.com 8

Percent of Visitors With at Least Some College
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0


Percent of Visitors with Annual Household Income
Over $50,000
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0


How to Use Each Service
 For All Social Networking Sites:
 If you do nothing else, create a free profile – and stock
it with as many high-search keywords as you can. Also,
post your website on each profile – this will serve as
valuable inbound links to your site, and will help your
Google Page Rank

 The best way to learn how to use each site is to go on
the site and observe, listen and watch what goes on

 For any Social Networking site, slowly begin to invite
people to join your Friend List (Facebook), Contact List
(LinkedIn) or Follow you (Twitter)

Specific Tips for Facebook
 Facebook is an online social club of everyone in your past
or present life that you‟ve had positive experiences with

 Decide if you want a personal profile; a business profile or
both
 Facebook has a serious boundary problem. Assume
most of what you post on it will be seen by people you
don‟t want to see it

 You should carefully review the Privacy Settings (see
next page) before your post anything on Facebook


 Privacy Settings (click on Settings at the top):


 You should segment your Friend list – since you may want
to post different things to each group (click on Create New
List on left)


 If someone wants to be on your Friend list, and you don‟t
want them to be, simply click on Ignore

 When you ignore someone, their friend request will be
removed from your list of friendships to confirm, and they
will not be notified.

 Facebook asks “What‟s on your mind?” for status updates

 There are two direct ways to promote your practice on
Facebook
 Fan Pages
 Pay Per Click ads


 Fan Pages and Pay Per Click ads Are Both Created by
Clicking on “Advertising” at the Bottom of the Home
Page

 Which takes you to this:


 Click on “Pages” and you can create an entire business
profile, which can serve as an auxillary website, complete
with

 Listings of Upcoming Events

 Photos

 Information about your Services

 Contact Information

 Updates on New Staff and Programs


 Click on “Create an Ad” and you can create a very highly
targeted pay per click ad


 Click on “Create an Ad” and you can create a very highly
targeted pay per click ad – by city, age, gender, education &
marital
status:


 Facebook has all this data in their profiles, and will give
you an estimate of how many people fit the target for your
ad:


Specific Tips for Twitter
 Twitter is a micro-blogging site where you post 140
characters or less, in all text
 You can signup for free, creating a username up to 15
characters


 Once you have a username, Twitter presents you with this:

 In the white rectangle, you type in text only, 140
characters or less

 At times you have to be creative with shortcuts and
abbreviations due to the limitation of 140
characters

 You may want to grab several good Twitter names – they
may one day be as valuable as URLs

 Try to include high-search keywords in your Twitter
usernames, such as
 @coupletherapyny
 @anxietyhelpca
 @depressiontx

 Tweet 1-2 times a week with a link to your website:


 Twitter is the most flexible social media site, and so can be
used in a wide variety of ways: search; local events;
customer service; links to blogs or web pages;
informational updates about your services

 Twitter asks “What are you doing?”

 Twitter often puzzles new users, until you use the
SEARCH feature

 Twitter also excels at live news reporting – recent examples
include the Hudson River plane landing; Mumbai Terrorist
attacks; Iran election demonstrations

 On Twitter, you FOLLOW people. They don‟t have to
know you for you to follow them.

 Whenever someone you are following posts something, it
shows up in your Twitter feed

 Because Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters of text,
people often use a URL Shortener such as TinyURL or
Bitly to shorten a link to a blog post or a website page:


 Some posts are profound quotes:

 Others, well…


 To gain more followers, be sure to use:
 http://www.twellow.com
 Twellow gives you directories of Twitter users, by profession:


 Under Psychology, there are over 1800 profiles, including:


 If you find one you like, you click on FOLLOW – and
most of them time they will follow you back

 Your profile should include high search keywords, but
often they are more like this one:


 A similar site is http://wefollow.com :


 Using just these two sites, I‟ve gained over 1400 followers
– for free – in five months

 Now I can “tweet” my list to promote my services, for
free, to all these people


Specific Tips for LinkedIn
 LinkedIn is like being at a Business Conference

 Meet colleagues who share a common professional interest
 You add Contacts the way Facebook adds Friends –but
you have to demonstrate how you know them
 You type in Status Updates, up to 140 characters, just like
Twitter


 You can also join relevant Groups to drill down deeper
into your own interests

 You can start discussions; ask questions of experts; and
promote an Event within your group

 LinkedIn is best for business to business (B to B)
transactions

 A great place to promote products and services to other
professionals, such as Supervision or Clinical or Business
Training

 LinkedIn also has a very active job board

 As with any of these sites, complete a thorough profile
with lots of high search keywords embedded throughout


Social Media - YouTube
 Video on YouTube – this is right now (and
it‟s FREE!)

 Use on websites to dramatically increase emotional
engagement, vs all text
 Should be short, 1 – 3 minutes in length
 Provide valuable information in a down-to-earth, non-
academic manner of presentation
 Good for personal statements & testimonials


Social Media - YouTube
 YouTube has the 3rd Highest Traffic on the Internet

 – 100 Million Visitors per Month

 – YouTube is Owned by Google, and when you create a
video with the proper keyword tags, it will often show up
on Google very quickly – much more quickly than a new
web page will


In Summary
Social
Networking
connects you
with a vast
network of
relationships
that would
otherwise be
unavailable to
you


Social Networking ROCKS!

Social Networking
also gives you the
opportunity to
develop products
and services that
can be delivered all
over the country…
or all over the
world, for almost
no cost.


Social Networking
is an amazing tool
that makes it easier
than ever to share
your wisdom, to
touch more
people‟s lives, and
to fulfill your life
purpose.


Social Networking for Therapists
Additional Resources

Here‟s a link to a page of valuable
Social Networking resources for therapists:

http://www.uncommon-practices.com/socialnetworking.html


Joe Bavonese Social Networking For Therapist Virtual Conference Presentation Oct 2009

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Joe Bavonese Social Networking For Therapist Virtual Conference Presentation Oct 2009