The Twitter debate continues……..
We received another great comment on my attention grabbing post on Twitter. Tamara G. Suttle (AllThingsPrivatePractice.com) wrote:
“Hi, Kelly. Thanks for addressing this topic. Elizabeth and Juliet have it right here (in the comments section). I think you are confusing the tool with the necessary skills to use it.
Yes, therapists need to have a marketing strategy on and offline . . . but mental health professionals also need to know how to use the tools of social media if they are going to use them effectively.
If therapists have a tiny following or fail to develop a purpose, message, and strategy on Twitter, the tool is useless at best and damaging at worst. But, that is not about the usefulness of the tool; it’s about the user not knowing what s/he is doing. Using Twitter for personal use is not the same as using Twitter for marketing.
I do not recommend that mental health professionals use Twitter to reach potential clients. However, I recommend using it to extend your practice’ branding by targeting potential referral sources instead. By establishing your brand on Twitter as a resource for your niche, you are likely to drive more traffic to your website to learn about your services.”
I agree with most of what Tamara wrote but from the comments I have received I feel like I was not as clear as I could have been (not the first time) regarding Twitter for Therapists. First off, I have nothing against Twitter, it can be a valuable social media tool. What I wrote was “Given my research and usage in my opinion Twitter is not an effective marketing tool for psychotherapists.” I was not commenting on Twitter’s usefulness in any sense other than “its effectiveness for psychotherapist marketing”. In the same way I could say a hammer is not an effective tool for sawing a board in half. I am not saying hammers are bad or you need to learn how to use a hammer better in order to use it to saw a board in half. I am saying a hammer is a great tool for what it does but there are far better tools to saw that board in half so why not use them. I totally agree with Tamara that “mental health professionals also need to know how to use the tools of social media if they are going to use them effectively”. However my point is there are certain social media tools that are not an effective use of a therapists limited marketing time. On average it takes me 2 hours a week (maybe I am slow) to manage one of my Twitter accounts. What this involves is finding relevant accounts to follow, following back relevant account, posting 5-7 tweets a day, retweets and replies. About once every couple weeks about a hour of housecleaning to do things like find and unfollow inactive accounts. I have been working on my Twitter workflow for the past year to both reduce the time required to manage the account and quantify its effectiveness. I now utilize the following programs, Hootsuite (scheduling), Sprout Social (analytics), Strawberry Jam (trends), Buffer (scheduling), Reeder (google reader client) Google reader (RSS Feeds) and Social Bro (analytics and account management). So (yes there is a point to all this) I believe there are a lot of other marketing tasks that would have a higher ROI for the therapist than Twitter. Once all the higher ROI marketing activities have been complete and if there is time left over than I would recommend Twitter. My feeling is for most therapists they would never run out of those other marketing tasks (given their limited time). I read an article today that was along the same lines as my point. They said “If your website stinks, Social Media really isn’t going to be all that effective.. until you fix your website!” So that a great starting point, a great return on investment would be a well designed, SEO optimized website with good content. That is a must before even considering Twitter and would require most of the limited marketing time a therapist had. Anyway enough on that topic. Please feel free to comment I am always interested to hear more feedback on Twitter!
Tags: Kelly Ross, marketing, social media, therapist marketing, web design
Hi, Kelly, and thanks for letting me know that you had brought the discussion forward into this current post. I appreciate you expanding on your thoughts about Twitter’s role in marketing for therapists and think, like you, that we agree on much more than we disagree.
I do spend about 15 minutes / day on Twitter and the return on investment to be useful. Perhaps, more important than the time I spend Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+ and Facebook though is the time that I spend on my website.
You are absolutely on target when you talk about prioritizing your strategy for getting clients. Having a great website has to be the first, the last, and the overarching consideration. Although there are many good, fun, and useful things about the different social media tools, from a marketing perspective a therapist needs to focus on driving traffic back “home” . . . to his / her website. And, of course, if home is just a disheveled shack (rather than a destination), then driving folks back “home” might be fatal!
If you can’t maintain your website, then you have no business – at least from a marketing standpoint – of implementing the use of social media. I tell my clients . . . if you are just putting up a new website, don’t tell everyone about it until you’ve had a chance to curate or create some great information for them to see. And, by “great,” I mean interesting, inspiring, and above all, search engine friendly content. If folks get there before the table is set, they don’t see much reason to come again – and, of course, neither do those search engines!
Thanks