Marketing 101: The Power of Blogging
Blogging is such a powerful tool. Why?
It’s free
It can generate hundreds and even thousands of visitors to your website who can then convert to clients
Be seen as an expert in a certain area
Allow clients to know you a bit (your writing style, voice, personality, expertise, experience, knowledge)
A way to diversify your income eventually once you want to do less therapy and perhaps sell a product or service outside of charging for services per hour (e.g. selling an e course, digital product, e book, workbook, etc.)
My Experience Blogging
A few of my blog posts account for over 3,000 of my monthly visits to my website. Prospective clients reach out to me consistently from out-of-state/the country for more information and referrals to other therapists since I can’t work with them due to licensing issues. Long term, this is an opportunity to create a product or service to help this population.
I also receive on average 2-3 new clients in state monthly from my blog posts.
One blog posts takes me about 3-4 hours to write. If I receive one new client a month and they work with me for 6 months bi-weekly at my full rate, I’ve made $2,040. For about 4 hours of unpaid work, I generate $2,040 a month if I get a new client every month.
Blogging has been one of my best marketing efforts long term because the post has already been written, yet I keep getting referrals monthly for good fit clients who I know I can help.
Questions To Ask Yourself
What do I enjoy reading and learning more about?
What am I really passionate about?
What sort of clients and symptoms/issues do I feel most invigorated working with?
What are my areas of expertise?
Sample Topics For Your Therapist Blog
Anxiety
Ways to manage anxiety and stress
Deep breathing skills for anxiety
How to stop panic attacks
Trauma
5 signs of childhood emotional neglect
What is traumed informed care?
Relationships
How to communicate more effectively with your partner
7 ways to increase intimacy in your relationship
How to find a couples therapist as a queer and gay person
Substance Use
How to help a family member or loved one with substance use
Signs of substance use and misuse
Blogging Tips For Therapists In Private Practice
Do keyword tool research
Find what people search online for, especially locally in Washington State
Are people looking for help with relationship issues? Trauma recovery? Substance use? Chronic illness?
Read more:
Focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
To get more organic (unpaid) traffic to your website, optimize SEO
Optimizing SEO can include: meta tags, using relevant keywords, improving page loading speed, internal linking, and increasing number of backlinks to your post.
Blog consistently
At least once or twice a month
Blog length
Try for at least 600-1,000 words
Have a list of topics you want to blog
Generate a list of topics on a document so you always have ideas
Think of a publishing schedule
Do you want to write and publish once a month?
With technology, you can write all your posts and then automatically set it to be published at a later date
Link to your social media accounts
Link to your Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. so when you publish your blog, it’ll automatically publish on your social media
If/when people share your posts, it reaches more people and has a larger possibility of going viral
Outsource
If you hate writing, hire someone else to do it for you
Patience
Blogging takes about 4-6 months to see results in terms of more visitors to your website due to SEO
Long term, the real success and results come in 1-2 years
Ask to be a guest blogger on someone else’s’ blog/website
Find another blogger/therapist and ask them if you can write for their blog as a guest
You’ll receive some exposure and visits from their website