Whitney Goodman on Using Instagram to Market Your Group Practice | GP 50

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Have you ever used or considered using Instagram to market your group practice? What are some common mistakes that group practice owners make with Instagram? How can you boost connection to followers, convert clients and reach a broader audience through this social media tool?

In this podcast episode, Alison Pidgeon speaks with Whitney Goodman about using Instagram to market your group practice.

Podcast Sponsor

While there may still be a lot of uncertainty about what this year will have in store, there’s one thing we know for sure – your services as a therapist have never been more essential, making it the perfect time to ensure that your private practice website attracts your best-fit clients and gets them to call you.

Whether you’re a seasoned clinician with a website in need of a refresh, or you’re fresh out of school needing your very first therapist website, Brighter Vision is the perfect solution. During the month of January, they’re running their biggest sale of the year!

From now, until the end of the month, they’re completely waiving all setup fees and only charging $39/month for your entire first year of a new website! Head on over to brightervision.com/joe to learn more.

Meet Whitney Goodman

Whitney Goodman is the radically honest psychotherapist behind the popular Instagram account @sitwithwhit and the owner of The Collaborative, a co-working space and community for therapists online and in Miami, FL.

Whitney is on a quest to make mental health information accessible and easy to understand. She rejects the idea that a therapist should be a blank slate and believes that authenticity and emotional expression are the keys to living a full life. Whitney allows her clients and followers to see her successes, humanity, and struggles and strives for authenticity in everything she does.

Visit her website. Connect on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

In This Podcast

Summary

  • How Instagram can grow your practice
  • What kinds of posts should you make?
  • Which mistakes do therapists often make with Instagram?
  • Tips for practice owners about Instagram

How Instagram can grow your practice

You can convert clients through Instagram. By providing simple, usable information to clients to get them attracted to your group practice, you can receive referrals and convert clients from these people that stumble across your account through their friends or followers.

Posting on Instagram can also help to direct potential clients towards your website, because they can get the feel of what your group practice is about through the content that you post, urging them to get into contact with you.

With group practice owners, my biggest recommendation is to create individual accounts for each of your therapists rather than having a group practice account. (Whitney Goodman)

This is because it is more difficult to gain traction for a brand name because personalization boosts followers, due to the fact that people create more human connections to other people instead of connecting with a ‘brand’.

What kinds of posts should you make?

  • Always post content that has some sort of purpose. It should be useful and inspirational.
  • The posts should have some personality. Think about how you can represent this content that is unique to your group practice or a therapist that works within your practice.

Showing your personality is not a self-disclosure in my opinion, so I think that there is a way you can talk about things, like ‘I have experienced anxiety and I have used these tools and they were really helpful’ instead of saying ‘I went to dinner with my husband at this restaurant’ (Whitney Goodman)

  • It is important to remember that Instagram is not therapy. Ask yourself, am I alright with the client knowing this? Am I comfortable with sharing this kind of information? If you tick these types of boxes, then it is up to your discretion to share.
  • Keep in mind to curate posts to attract the types of clients that you work with. You can individualize posts as much as you need to connect with your ideal clients.
  • Keep your calls to action posts discreet. Whitney recommends placing your call to action in the captain of your post.

Get people’s attention with the content in your post and then you can subtly direct them to your website in the caption so that your clients do not feel bombarded with advertising for your group practice.

Which mistakes do therapists often make with Instagram?

  • Using too many quotes from other people.
  • Reposting other peoples’ posts often.
  • Constant advertising about the practice and pushing clients to book appointments.

Tips for practice owners about Instagram

If you want to grow your account, Whitney recommends that people spend at least 30 minutes a day to create content, interact with comments, and reach out to other accounts for a collaboration.

Encourage your therapists to get involved in posting and using their own voices to create content, hereby boosting personalized content and creating variety. Also, encourage your therapists to help each other such as referring each other to their followers or doing Instagram lives together in order to boost their popularity and connection to more potential clients.

Access Whitney’s online store here!

Useful Links:

Meet Alison Pidgeon

A portrait of Alison Pidgeon is shown. She discusses ways to grow your group practice on this week's episode of Practice of the Practice. Alison is a serial entrepreneur with four businesses, one of which is a 15 clinician group practice. She’s also a mom to three boys, wife, coffee drinker, and loves to travel. She started her practice in 2015 and, four years later, has two locations. With a specialization in women’s issues, the practices have made a positive impact on the community by offering different types of specialties not being offered anywhere else in the area.

Alison has been working with Practice of the Practice since 2016. She has helped over 70 therapist entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses, through mastermind groups and individual consulting.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

[ALISON]:
Well, we did it. 2020 has finally come to an end. And we have made it out on the other side. And while there still might be a lot of uncertainty about what this year will have in store, there’s one thing we know for sure, your services as a therapist have never been more essential, making it the perfect time to ensure your private practice website attracts your best fit clients and gets them to call you. Whether you’re a seasoned clinician with a website in need of a refresh, or you’re fresh out of school needing your very first therapist website, Brighter Vision is the perfect solution. And during the entire month of January, they’re running their biggest sale of the year. From now until the end of the month, they’re completely waiving all setup fees, and only charging $39 a month for the entire first year of a new website. That’s a savings of $240 for your first year of website service with Brighter Vision. All you have to do is go to brightervision.com/joe to learn more and take advantage of this great deal. That’s brightervision.com/joe.

Grow a group practice as part of the practice of the practice Podcast Network, a network of podcast seeking to help you grow your group practice to hear other podcasts like the imperfect, thriving podcast bomb mom, podcast, beta male revolution, or empowered and unapologetic go to practice of the practice.com slash network.

Welcome to the Grow a Group Practice podcast. I’m Alison Pidgeon, your host, I hope you’re having a great January so far. I will give you a quick update about my own practice. So I decided to bring on a chief operating officer and she started this week. And so I’m very excited to be handing off projects to her so that we can continue growing and providing better services and I’m not necessarily the one doing all of that. So I’ll keep you up to date on how that’s going. Whitney Owens and I who run a membership community called Group Practice Boss that we started back in October, we’re having so much fun working with the members in that group and helping them delegate and meet their goals. And it’s just so cool to see you know, sort of the light bulb go on for people and how to make their practices better, and how to allow them to live the life that they want to live outside of their business. So if that is something that interests you, you can get on the waiting list for the next time we open that up. It’s practiceofthepractice.com/gpbdoor. So GPB is Group Practice Boss.

And today I’m excited to introduce to you Whitney Goodman. She calls herself a radically honest psychotherapist, and she has a popular Instagram account called @SitWithWhit and she’s the owner of The Collaborative, a co-working space and community for therapists online and in Miami, Florida. Whitney is on a quest to make mental health information accessible and easy to understand. She rejects the idea that a therapist should be a blank slate and believes that authenticity and emotional expression are the keys to living a full life. Whitney allows her clients and followers to see her successes, humanity and struggles and strives for authenticity in everything she does. So I was just really attracted to Whitney, what she stands for. We talk about her co-working space and how exactly that’s set up and how that works for her and what she provides for the therapists in the co-working space. And then of course, she gives lots of great tips about how to use Instagram, and specifically how to use Instagram to convert clients. So definitely an episode chock full of great gems from Whitney Goodman.

________________________________________

[ALISON]:
Whitney, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here.

[WHITNEY]:
Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you today because I know you have a few kind of different things going on with your group practice. And I also wanted to talk to you about Instagram because I know that’s something that lots of therapists have questions about and you have become the expert on Instagram for therapists. So maybe we could start with talking about your practice. I know you said the structure of it is a little bit different than a traditional group practice. So can you kind of give us the overview?

[WHITNEY]:
Totally. So when my practice was growing, I started out on my own as a solo practice owner. And I really needed to bring some people on because I was growing pretty quickly. But I didn’t want to have a traditional group practice setup just because I wasn’t really interested in managing like the clinical work of other people and it wasn’t in line with my interest. So I decided to do this hybrid model. And we have different levels of memberships. So at The Collaborative, which is the name of the shared workspace, you can just rent office space and have no affiliation with us as a practice, a lot of those people are like second locations, things like that.

And then we also have an online and a local membership, where people pay a membership fee to get access to a lot of the perks that you’re going to find in a group practice. So they get a page on our website, access to referrals, we help market them on social media, we give them marketing prompts every week to complete and they also get access to a Facebook group with all the other members. So it creates the feel of a group practice without that traditional, like fee split model. They’re just paying a monthly fee to get access to those perks and the practitioner owns their practice, they can leave at any time, their clients and their clinical work are completely their own.

[ALISON]:
Wow, yeah, that’s really interesting. I haven’t heard of a model setup like that before. Do you mind me asking, like, how does it look from, like, the financial perspective in terms of like, what they pay versus like what you’re bringing in?

[WHITNEY]:
Sure. So what I noticed, at least in Miami was that, where I’m located, there was a huge amount of turnover with therapists that were joining these fee split practices. And they were joining and then they were realizing like, gosh, I’m giving away so much of my income to the practice owner. And I could kind of like do this on my own once they got established. So I noticed that these therapists were just leaving constantly, and I really didn’t want to get stuck in that type of environment either. So this is a lot more advantageous for the therapist. They can make their income potential much greater with my model, typically, than it is in a 60/40 or 70/30 split. On my end, it’s definitely much more of a volume business, right? Like I need to have more therapists, and different types of therapists, I have people that just rent the office space that contributes to my income, as well as these members. And that kind of gives me different streams of revenue.

[ALISON]:
So how many of the members just rent space versus also opt in to the…?

[WHITNEY]:
It’s about 50/50, we have about, COVID, of course, given a huge hit to the office rentals. But we have about 35 people who solely rent space. And then on our website, you’ll see we have like around 30-33 maybe therapist members who are getting those marketing services and are actually part of the practice.

[ALISON]:
Okay, nice. And so does it feel like a lot less management for you? Because you’re not technically running a group practice? Like, what are, I guess, what are the advantages or disadvantages for you?

[WHITNEY]:
Absolutely, I have a lot less management responsibility. You know, my, my social media manager is the one that does all the marketing for the providers. So I’m really not involved in that. I’m mostly just running the overall vision of the practice, making connections in the community, you know, doing things like this. But as far as being involved in, like, the clinical outcomes of each of the therapists, or how many clients they’re seeing, I am not involved in any of that.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, that’s great. So like you’re really streamlining what you’re doing and like not having to deal with all of the pieces that you typically have to manage with running a group practice, like the administrative piece and the this and the that.

[WHITNEY]:
Exactly. And it attracts, my type of model is going to attract a different type of therapist than a traditional group practice. So I find that it’s like a different personality. It’s somebody that wants more independence, I’ve had a lot of therapists come to me looking for that traditional group model, and it’s not a good fit because they want more of that management and more of like an employer-employee type of relationship.

[ALISON]:
So what is the fee to opt in to the membership community that you have set up?

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, we have different levels. So for somebody who’s local that just wants local in person referrals, that’s $50 a month. And so that person would be paying for the office space when they used it as well. But the overhead for the membership is $50. And then we have a local and online membership that’s $150 a month. Then that person gets access to both local referrals and online referrals. And we also have just the online membership for somebody who wants only online therapy referrals. And that is going to be $150 a month. So we have a couple of different options to join.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, I think that’s super reasonable considering.

[WHITNEY]:
It is.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, it sounds like you’re doing like the majority of their marketing for them.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, we definitely, we give them a leg up. So there’s some buy in that, like, I’ve had therapists that just have not completed any of the marketing prompts. They’re not really engaged. And those are the therapists that typically don’t get the best outcomes from our model, because they’re just not putting in the legwork. But if you like, participate in the marketing and get engaged, it can be really fruitful for the therapist.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, that’s awesome. So what if somebody wanted to start kind of a similar type model? Do you have any advice for them?

[WHITNEY]:
I think right now, it’s like, wait it out and see where therapy is going with COVID. I know, we’re like so much still online in Miami, but that’s kind of what I’m trying to navigate. Other than that, I just think like, get creative. I feel like the typical group practice model has like, been the norm for so long. And it’s okay for people to think about, like, what kind of practice do I want to have? What relationship do I want to have with the clinicians in my office and just make it your own.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, I think you know, what’s so cool about our industry and just technology and things seem to be changing so fast. I think that’s very true. Like, we can still be creative and how we’re, like supporting therapists and providing services and, yeah.

[WHITNEY]:
Totally, it’s a lot about figuring out like, what do the therapists in your area need? What are they looking for? And like, what’s their biggest pain point? And I think that does vary sometimes city to city and state to state. So getting in touch with that, I think is really important and building the model from there.

[ALISON]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wanted to switch gears and ask you about Instagram, because I know, that’s something you’ve become quite the expert at. So the reason I kind of connected with you is because you gave a whole presentation at Killin’It Camp this year, about using Instagram. And so I was hoping you could kind of give us some of the highlights about you know, how you got started using Instagram and, and the types of content you post and, and that type of thing.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, I got started on Instagram, like two and a half years ago, I think. And it really was just something I was going to do as a free marketing avenue for my private practice. When I started it, I actually was really discouraged by a lot of therapists to get on there. They’re like, oh, that’s crazy. It’s gonna be weird, you know, don’t do it. But I just was like, I’m gonna try. And that ended up being like the decision that has made my career so I cannot speak more highly about being on social media. But it’s grown into something that now I think there are tons of therapists on social media, it’s a great avenue to kind of create different offshoots in your career if you want to do more than private practice. And that’s really what I’ve been using it for, as of late.

[ALISON]:
Awesome. So if somebody owns a group practice and wants to get started using Instagram, in the hopes of maybe, and I don’t know if you feel like Instagram is a good platform to actually convert clients, or it’s more just like having other kind of social proof that you’re kind of with the times as a business, show sort of more content.

[WHITNEY]:
Right, you can definitely convert clients from Instagram, I see it happen all the time. It’s actually like our second biggest referral source at The Collaborative behind Google.

[ALISON]:
Oh, nice.

[WHITNEY]:
We get a lot of conversion. With group practice owners, my biggest recommendation is to create individual accounts for each of your therapists rather than having a group practice account. It’s a lot harder to get traction for a brand name. And you’ll notice if you follow any influencers on Instagram, like in fashion or whatever, they tend to have a lot more selling power and notoriety and followers than even like the actual brand. And there’s a reason why like Nike and all these companies use these influencers, because people have a human connection with them. And so with a group practice, like if I did like The Collaborative Counseling Center, people don’t really wanna follow a counseling center, like it doesn’t, it doesn’t have a personality. And so I recommend, like having each of your therapists create their own account. And they can all write in their bio, like we work all at this location, you could even create just like a boiler account for your practice so that it exists online. But starting to grow that way, I find is the best for converting clients. And then later, if you wanted to build an account just for your practice, which is something I’m doing now, you can take that road after you’ve got some more following.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, I’m really glad you made that point, because we made an Instagram account for the practice as a whole and I really haven’t seen it convert clients. And so maybe that’s where we’re going wrong is like, we try to feature like the different therapists, like one week, we’ll feature one therapist and post a bunch of content about them specifically, but maybe that’s part of our issue is that we should be making individual accounts for each therapist.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, I found so much more success with that, especially because people are going to want to follow the therapist that they connect with most. And sometimes people will see like, oh, there’s this therapist, it has nothing to do with me, like I’m gonna unfollow this account, because it’s just not resonating with me versus having someone that’s really targeted towards you most of the time.

[ALISON]:
Do you have a sense of the flow of potential clients in terms of like, do they find the website first and then they go to Instagram? Or do they find the Instagram account first and then go to the website? Or like, how does that process happen? Do you have any awareness?

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, I think there’s two ways that it’s happening, a lot of it is happening through Instagram and then the client is directly reaching out because of seeing a post or something like that. The other way that it’s happening is like people who are going and searching for therapists deliberately like googling, then they’re going to Instagram to learn more about the therapist. And so I will get like, I got a call yesterday from somebody, oh, I follow you on Instagram, this post prompted me to check out your website, I think it just gives clinicians a lot more credibility now, it also allows the client or potential client to learn so much more about your style. And they’re, they’re really set on booking with you by the time they call you, because they have such a feel for how you work.

[ALISON]:
Mmm, so what would be the various types of posts that you think would be good to put up on a regular basis on Instagram to allow the client to sort of get to know the therapist better?

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, I think it’s important that the content always has some sort of purpose, right. So it should be either useful, inspirational, citing mental health stigma, having some type of utility for the potential viewer. And then it’s important that it has your personality, I always say that our training as clinicians is like, directly in conflict with what you need to be successful on social media. You cannot write like a research paper. Nobody wants to read that. And so really trying to think about, like, how can I present this content in a way that is unique to me, that shows my personality that shows who I am, and that isn’t trying to sound like somebody else? Because that’s how people really form a connection with you. And I’m sure you’ve heard the same type of messaging about like writing your website bio or your Psychology Today profile. I think it’s consistent with that.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, and I think that’s always such a fine line for therapists, because we, you know, are obviously, in our profession, very careful about self disclosure in the therapy room, and so I think that that’s a big stumbling block for therapists is like, how do you obviously let your personality shine through and how you work as a therapist, but then it’s like, where is that line where it’s like you’re sharing too much? I don’t know if you have any advice, or you’ve thought that at all.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah. I find people get like, really unnecessarily caught up on this a little bit because showing your personality is not is not really a self disclosure, in my opinion. So I think there’s a way that you can talk about things like I’ve experienced anxiety, and I’ve used these tools, and they’re really helpful versus saying, like, I went to South Beach and I had dinner with my husband at this restaurant and like, talking about things that aren’t really pertinent. It’s also important to remember that Instagram isn’t therapy. So sometimes the things I say on Instagram, I’m okay with a client hearing, but I would never say them in a session because it just wouldn’t be appropriate. It wouldn’t fit, you know, with the type of dynamic. So I think asking yourself always like, am I okay with a client knowing this? Am I okay with this being public information? What would I do if any of the clients I’m seeing now read this? And if those boxes are all okay for you, I think it’s okay to share.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, the thing that I always thought about was like, you know, would I feel comfortable sharing this with a stranger at a cocktail party? And if the answer was yes, then it probably was okay to post about myself, like in a more public way through the, you know, website or social media associated with me as a professional.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah. And I think it depends on like, so many factors, right, like theoretical orientation, what type of clients do you work with? You know, what is the status of your practice? Overall, there are certain types of clients that we might want to be more careful with how we present ourselves online versus others. And it’s so individualized.

[ALISON]:
Yeah. So do you have any kind of recommendation about the percentage of posts that are just truly like, valuable content or just getting to know you as a therapist versus some percentage of the content that’s more like a direct, like, sales pitch, so to speak, like, you know, you’re, you’re coming out and saying, hey, if you want to make an appointment, call this number or whatever?

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, I think the calls to action like that should really be sort of discreet in a way. I like to do most of those in captions. So I might write a caption about something and at the end, say, like, hey, if this really resonates with you, I have a workbook that you can check out here, or I offer therapy for this type of issue. I see a lot of therapists putting like a post up that is just a text post that says, like, call me to book a session. And that’s too deliberate. I think you need to like, get people in with the content, and then say, like, you know, if this is something that interests you, here’s another offering, and they can reach out.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, I’m glad that you put it that way. Because I think when you have that, like direct sales pitch, type language, like it really turns people off, or if you do that too often, then people just feel like they’re being sold to and then they stop following you.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, it’s awkward. It’s like really in your face. And therapy’s kind of a delicate thing. You can do that more when you’re selling like courses and workbooks and stuff. But with actual therapy sessions, I find you have to be a little bit more discreet about it, or creative.

[ALISON]:
Aha, yeah, so that kind of leads into my next question, which is like, when you see other therapists using Instagram, what are like the biggest mistakes you see them making?

[WHITNEY]:
Oh, gosh. So definitely using too many quotes by other people. So people will like, quote, Brene Brown, and just like, there’s pages like a Brene Brown fan page. And it’s great, but there’s no reason for anybody to follow you because you’re just posting stuff from other people. So making sure that it’s unique. I see a lot of people also just like screenshotting other people’s posts, and just putting them up on their own page, like, not even cropped. That’s a big one. People do that with my stuff and I’m like, thanks for the free marketing, but you should be putting up your own stuff. And then also, just like we talked about that really like in your face, like call me for a session in all caps, like I’m accepting new clients, very in your face type of marketing, I would say are the biggest mistakes.

[ALISON]:
Right. So for somebody who might not have a lot of time to like, because I think the ideal would be to make your own content, right? But if you maybe don’t have time to make a bunch of your own content, like what do you recommend, like in terms of is it okay to repost other people’s stuff? Or should you not, should you just like bite the bullet and like, hire somebody to make content for you? What do you recommend?

[WHITNEY]:
So I think Instagram, from what I’ve learned is really one of those platforms that if you’re going to do it halfway, it’s not really worth doing it, to be honest, like the return on investment just isn’t there. So I think if you’re like, I don’t have time to create my own content and really be on there and be engaging, it just might not be the right marketing strategy for you. And there’s a lot of other great marketing avenues out there that people can access that I think they can get more bang for their buck on.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, what would be some examples of those?

[WHITNEY]:
So even just like, I don’t know, like doing blogging to boost your SEO, it takes me a lot less time than Instagram, or like Google Ads, running different types of paid ads. I think with Instagram, it’s like you really got to show up and be there and be present and unique and original, in order to kind of cut through all the other noise that’s on there.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. And I think too definitely just the way that the platform is set up, it’s very geared towards, you know, images. And having things, I’m assuming that are aesthetically pleasing. So that’s the other part of it too, is I’m sure that a big piece of it is finding the right images to post.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, I use a software called Canva. It’s free, online. And that’s how I create all of my text posts. It’s pretty user friendly. So I usually recommend people start with that and use your branding. Like if you have certain colors on your website, or a logo or fonts, like keep it all consistent. And that’s a really easy way to have templates, like done for yourself already. And then you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, and I’m sure too, like, on some level, you can kind of recycle posts, right? Like, cuz probably not everybody has seen every single thing every single time. So you could probably use some things over and over.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah. If I have a post that did like, really well, like six months ago, I will put it up again, six months later or something for sure. Especially because you have a lot more different followers by that time.

[ALISON]:
Right. So what would you say is like an average amount of time that like a therapist would spend, like making content, posting things or responding to, you know, other people’s comments, what would be a reasonable amount of time, like per month or per week?

[WHITNEY]:
So typically, I spend about an hour a day like on Instagram, and that’s engagement, creating the content, putting it up, all of that. Some days, it’s more if I get like, sucked down the rabbit hole. But there’s a lot of different ways to structure your time around this. I know there are a lot of clinicians that will spend one day in the month creating their posts for the month all in one sitting. And they can do that, you know, in a full day and just have it done. And then there’s somebody like me that’s doing it more like on the fly. Like when I put up a post, it’s because I wrote it five minutes ago. So it really depends on what your style is. The actual engagement, I tell people, if you want to grow an account, you really need to commit at least 30 minutes a day at the beginning to liking, sharing, commenting and engaging on Instagram in order to see growth.

[ALISON]:
Uh huh. So that hour a day that you’re spending, I’m assuming is not just for you, but it’s also for the, I don’t want to call it a group practice, because I know it’s not that, but is that also for the practice as a whole? Or is that just for you?

[WHITNEY]:
It’s mainly just on my, I manage my @sitwithwhit account totally myself. For our account for The Collaborative, I create the content, but I do it, like I mentioned before, all in one sitting for that one. So I usually spend like five or six hours one day, and I load it all up into Trello. And then my office manager uploads everything every day. So I don’t, I only touch that account, like once a month.

[ALISON]:
Okay. Okay, nice. And then is there a software that you can use that will let you schedule posts out ahead of time for Instagram?

[WHITNEY]:
I personally haven’t used any, but I know that some people use Hootsuite, I use Trello to put all my posts in in order so that my office manager can upload them. And you can put the post and the caption together. So that’s a great software, but it doesn’t post for you.

[ALISON]:
Okay, so there are some options to do it in an automated way. Yeah.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah. And that’s a great resource as well, especially if you’re short on time,

[ALISON]:
Right. Yeah, so any other like tips or strategies for practice owners, especially if they own a group practice, if they want to use Instagram, or maybe they’ve started to use Instagram, but it’s just really not getting any traction? Any other thoughts for them?

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, I think encouraging your therapists to get involved and be unique and original and have their own voice is a great way to increase marketing for the group practice overall. Also encouraging the therapists to help each other. So my therapists will like, share each other’s posts, tag each other, you can do Instagram Lives together, like there’s so many cool ways to collaborate that I think boosts the health of the practice overall and also helps the individual therapist grow.

[ALISON]:
Nice. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about the I know you have a store where you sell different, well, maybe I’ll let you explain it. What do you sell in your store?

[WHITNEY]:
Sure. So I had started one course like before the pandemic. And then once the pandemic hit, I was like, gosh, I really need to come up with another revenue source because my office wasn’t getting rented at all. So I started this online store. And every month since March, I’ve added a new thing each month to the store. So I do like, worksheets, courses, I record all my webinars and have them hosted on there. And that’s also where I have my Instagram for Therapists course. So if there’s anybody listening that wants to kind of dive into Instagram a little bit deeper, I do have a course on my store there. And you can access the store through my Instagram, which is @sitwithwhit.

[ALISON]:
Oh, nice. Yeah, that’s great. So how has that experience of like, you know, obviously, transitioning into more selling like, products? I don’t know if products is the right word. But yeah. How has that been for you? Because I know, there’s always questions that I get from therapists about like other streams of income, and what should I do, and you know, all that kind of stuff.

[WHITNEY]:
It’s been amazing. I love it. I am much more skilled, I think, sometimes as a content creator than I am like doing one on one therapy, I just enjoy it more. So I’ve really sort of been thriving in that environment. I think if you’re good at writing and putting together worksheets, and questions and stuff, it’s a really cool creative outlet and a great source of income, especially when you have a slow month or you know, when you’re going to take a vacation, you’re still making money through that source. And it’s not so much like the fee for service model.

[ALISON]:
Yeah, that’s cool. So did you already have a lot of that content already created? And it was just a matter of like putting it up on a platform? Or were you kind of taking feedback from other therapists that you were interacting with about what they wanted and then you made things? Or how did that work?

[WHITNEY]:
I use Instagram completely as a focus group. So if I saw that I had a post on like, I had a post on questions to ask if you’re thinking about breaking up with somebody, and that posted really well. So I ask a poll on Instagram, like, would you guys like a breakup workbook, would that be helpful? And if I get a lot of interest, I’m like, okay, I’m gonna make a breakup workbook. And then I really just kind of make it based on research I’ve read, other therapy resources, interactions I’ve had with clients. And then I put together these workbooks that are typically like 10 to 15 pages.

[ALISON]:
Nice. Yeah, I think that’s so, yeah, I think that’s so important that you like, sort of poll the audience first before you make something because I think so many therapists make something and then they try to sell it and then it’s, like, crickets.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah.

[ALISON]:
They assume that they know what people want. But like you, you don’t really until you ask.

[WHITNEY]:
Exactly. And what we think people want as therapists is usually so off base, I find, because something I think is going to be interesting, like, isn’t always interesting to the general public. Right?

[ALISON]:
Right. Yeah. So that’s cool. So tell us some, how do people find the shop? Do they get there through your Instagram? Or is there another URL for it?

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, the link is right in my Instagram bio. So it’s easiest to get to it from there. But it’s also sitwithwit.mykajabi.com. I host everything on kajabi, which is a platform for hosting like courses, workbooks and stuff, and I’ve had great success with them. So if anybody’s interested in checking that out too to possibly make their own, that’s a great place to look.

[ALISON]:
Okay, awesome. Yeah, so if people want to get ahold of you, is the best way to contact you through Instagram? I’m assuming that because you’re on their [unclear].

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, well, Instagram is linked to my website, my email, my web, everything is there. So if you go to Instagram @sitwithwhit, you’ll be able to find all the avenues to contact me.

[ALISON]:
Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Whitney. I really appreciate your time and I learned some new things about Instagram. So I appreciate your knowledge. And I think that this was a really valuable episode for our listeners. So, thank you.

[WHITNEY]:
Of course. Thank you again for having me.

________________________________________

[ALISON]:
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you learned something new. I definitely did. We don’t use Instagram that much in my own practice. We do have an Instagram account. But I would say we definitely aren’t doing all of the things that Whitney recommends. So she gave me lots of good ideas about how we can definitely step up our game when it comes to Instagram. And yeah, so thank you so much Whitney for being on the podcast today and I’ll see you all next time.

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This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.