Business today is different!
We are living in an online world, and with the COVID-19 crisis, more and more of what we do (and will do) is online.
This makes a digital presence for a psychologist and the associated practice critically important.
But what exactly do we mean by a digital presence?
The underlying key to a vibrant digital presence is having a strong understanding of what your message is. Your message encapsulates the unique value and transformation that you bring to your clients.
At the essence, people interact with your digital presence to overcome and obstacle or to achieve a goal. The better you understand your unique value proposition and that message comes across in your digital presence the stronger your digital presence will be.
Another way of looking at this is to ask: What do I want the people reading my content or browsing my website to understand about me and the services I provide. This message should be consistent everywhere and reinforced everywhere.
Your audience is the intersection between the clients you want to serve and the people who get a benefit from your services. There may be a large subset of people that get value from your services, but you want to limit the type of people your serve. Maybe you want to focus on trauma even though you could also help almost anyone.
Understanding your audience will help you understand and define your message. Understanding your message will help identify who your audience should be. This illustrates how building your digital presence is an ongoing evolutionary process, each piece that you build will help you go deeper in other pieces.
Once you know who your audience is, you create content that resonates with them to build connections. This is a two-way street just like relationships that are not online. Building reports and connections requires you to get to know your audience. To understand where they are at, how you can help them and ultimately how they become clients. This is the beginning of building a trusting relationship.
Understanding where your audience is online is very important for nurturing them. Are they on Facebook? Instagram? Searching for issues? Reading articles as their issues are building until they need to see a therapist. Understanding where your audience is online will help you to expand your digital presence so that your message is heard where your audience is.
One thing to remember is that your audience is not your peers, your friends, or your family. If they don’t resonate with your digital presence or relate to your message that is ok. They are not the ones you are talking to; it is your audience that you are talking to. Focus on them.
For psychologists that deal with issues, especially big issues, the first time your audience interacts with your digital presence is when they are in crisis. This means that the connection, trust, and the rapport has to be built quickly. The client may go from the first visit to your site or your content to booking a session all in the same visit.
The size of your audience is less important than the quality of the audience. It is better to have an audience of 100 where 10% book your services than an audience of 500 where 1% book your services. Constantly search for the audience that most needs and benefits from your services rather than trying to just build a big audience.
Your website is the foundation of your digital presence. It is the one piece of your digital presence that you have complete control over.
The traffic to your site, related email lists become assets for your company. Once you create these assets they can be leveraged into new business opportunities. As an example, if you write a book you have a ready audience that you can contact that would gain a benefit.
Other parts of your digital presence such as social media are dependent on those platforms. If they change their rules there is nothing you can do about it.
Build your platform on a strong technological base with a strong tool set. Technology is going to change so it is also advantageous to pick technologies that will grow with you or are able to be swapped out for better technology.
Remember that your digital presence is for your audience, so you always need to keep up to date with the type of online experience they are accustomed to.
On the online world there is no way of going directly to your website unless you know the URL. There is always some intermediary to get your audience to come to your site.
You will need to create as many different ways that your clients can navigate to your site, the more ways they have of finding your the larger your audience is and the more valuable that asset is.
The biggest intermediary is Google. Your potential audience goes to Google and searches, Google does their best to match the searcher with the intent of their search. Google should be the first intermediary that you focus on as it is free and the audience that comes is searching for what your site has to offer.
Social media offers another way for your potential audience to navigate to your site. Social media brings like minded people together. The use of your social media profiles, groups, and sharing between social media members will build awareness of your site and will help funnel people to visit your site.
Digital directories are another method of building your audience. Digital directories are listings of companies that provide a similar product or service. There will be multiple digital directories for psychological services, some free and some paid. Google provides a specialized digital directory called My Business that integrates into Google maps to facilitate local searches for business.
Other Digital Presences can reference or link to your digital presence. Building relationships with other psychologists or other sites related to psychology gets your name out there in the online world. These references give another way for your audience to find your site.
Understanding your audience and where they spend time online helps focus where you spend effort. Maybe your audience is visual and spend a lot of time on Instagram, maybe they are business oriented and spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, maybe they read on websites that have related topics, maybe they participate in Quora forums on certain topics, and on and on.
You get the idea.
Networking and relationship building has always been a part of running a successful business – it is now just different, it is online and the online world is so much bigger than the physical world.
Google, by analyzing trillions of searches has determined that a key component for providing results matching the intent of what people are searching for is E.A.T. EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trust. EAT is especially relevant for psychologists. Potential clients searching for services are searching for an issue to be resolved, or a goal to be achieved. For both of these the more you can demonstrate your expertise, authority, and build trust the more likely they are to book a session.
By focusing on EAT you are accomplishing two objectives. One, you are demonstrating to your site visitors that you have the expertise for their issue / goal, your are an authority in the area, and you are building trust in who you say you are. At the same time you are providing this information so that Google can correctly send the proper traffic to your site.
Audience is a big factor in generating EAT. Difference audiences are going to connect and resonate in different ways. Understanding your audience so that you are presenting your content in a way that resonates with your audience will build more trust, and show your expertise and authority in a way that your audience accepts.
The technology also plays a role. The technology is going to support the users experience and the user experience will either build or erode trust. Your audience may perceive your services as slow if your website is slow. If they associated expertise with organized information, an organized site will build more perceived expertise than an unorganized site. For some authority is based on customer feedback and case studies, for others it is based on books being written or quality blog articles. Understanding your audience for building expertise, authority, and trust is an ongoing journey of discovery, both of your audience and of yourself.
You want your site to be one half of a relationship with your audience. There is a give and take. As you grow with your audience, they will see the journey and the journey will help to build trust.
Audiences are looking for guidance.
In the physical world stores do a lot of planning to figure out the layout of a store, it is the same in the online world.
Once a visitor comes to your site and becomes your audience, you want to guide them through the process of consuming your content.
View the understanding of your services and how you can help them to solve their issue or reach their goal as a journey that they go on and have guidance to show them the next step.
I believe this is especially important for psychologists where the audience may be in pain when they come to your site, the fewer decisions, and effort they have to expend, the more likely it is that they understand your message and book your services.
A digital presence is a living thing, it’s dynamic and constantly evolving.
It needs to be constantly fed new content, relationships and connections have to be nurtured.
The latest technological trends need to be followed. New technologies are always springing up; voice control (Alexa, Siri, Google Home), better tools, 5G, and whatever is coming next.
New social media platforms need to be explored to see if your audience is a part of the new platform.
If you nurture your digital presence it will start to take on a life of its own. Connections that you have will start sharing your content, prior clients will share their experience on their digital presence, and other different ways that information is shared on the internet.
The more you are known for who you are and the value you uniquely provide, the more opportunities will reside on your road. Who knows where that road will lead.
