Show Notes

Welcome back to the Designer Practice podcast, and I’m your host Kayla Das.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about three Psychology Today profile tips to help you get more referrals.

Now, before we dive into what these three things are, I really want to focus on something that I don’t think we talk enough about when we discuss our Psychology Today profiles.

Psychology Today Profile Features Outside of Your Control

When it comes to Psychology Today, there are many elements outside of our control, and we need to know what these things are so that we can then focus on the things that are within our control.

So some of these things that we don’t have control over regarding our Psychology Today profile is the Psychology Today profile’s algorithm. This means basically where you show up in other therapist listings.

Also, you can’t control the Psychology Today website’s SEO. Now, in saying that, I will say that their SEO is probably one of the highest amongst all of the therapist directories out there, so they’re doing pretty well when it comes to SEO.

That said, with AI now taking the stage, sometimes more clients are going to AI looking for a list of therapists, which sometimes isn’t Psychology Today’s website that shows up. That said, when it comes to actual search engines, Psychology Today typically shows up first in most jurisdictions.

We also can’t control the number of clients on the platform at any given day. So There are going to be fluctuations with the number of clients on the platform looking up in that particular jurisdiction.

So that goes to the next thing we don’t have control over, the geographical location of clients searching on the platform. Hypothetically, there could be, 100 clients in Edmonton looking for a therapist, where there might only be three people in Red Deer looking for a therapist. So we can’t control how many people or where they’re located.

We also can’t control the number of therapists listed in your primary jurisdiction. And I use the word primary intentionally because your primary is the location where you currently reside. It’s your main address that you have on Psychology Today. Whether you decide to hide that address or not, it is your main location. But when we get to the three tips, we’re going to talk a little bit about other locations that you can list in.

The other thing that we don’t have control over is the user interface of profiles. So what I mean by that is Psychology Today has a visual, both on the back end for us therapists to put our content in, as well as on the front end when clients are searching for therapists, there’s only a certain layout that we as therapists can focus on.

Also, we don’t have control over Psychology Today’s email spam filter. So this might be something that you personally have been affected by, or maybe you haven’t been. Different therapist directories have different spam filters to avoid you receiving a lot of spam from non-clients.

That said, depending on what a client puts in the email in Psychology Today, it could sift out as spam depending on the words. Now that said, Psychology Today is very good at being able to differentiate between what a client and spam looks like. But there is a possibility that someone may reach out to you, they may contact you, and then you just never receive the email because the spam filter had sifted through. So those are some things that we do not have control over.

3 Psychology Today Profiles Tips to Improve Referrals

So now let’s dig into what these three things are that you can focus on as a therapist to improve your referrals.

Client-Centred Language

The first thing, which I think is probably one of the most important pieces of your Psychology Today profile, which is the profile statement, so the written content you put on your page.

One of the biggest mistakes that therapists make is using a very therapist-centered profile, meaning really focusing on our skills, our training, the modalities we use, and who we work with. Sometimes we might say, “My clients this, my clients that,” which could create some distance between you and your ideal client.

Our goal is to create connection with your ideal client, it’s important to create client-centered content, meaning you’re speaking directly to and about the person reading your Psychology Today profile. When I say that, I mean you’re using you statements. You’re speaking directly to the client. When you’re talking about the things that you’ll do together in session, you’re using we statements, a very collaborative approach.

In addition, you’re bringing them through a narrative or a story of the life that they are experiencing. A lot of times we really focus on kind of that resume type profile as if we’re applying for a job to an employer. But effective marketing focuses on creating that emotional and intentional connection with your client before they come into the therapy room with you.

Because we know that when they are in the therapy room with you are 100% going to make that connection. But the goal is that you create that connection even before they reach out to you because that increases the probability of them reaching out.

If you do struggle with client-centered content, stay tuned because I am going to share something with you at the end of this episode that I think is going to be a game changer for you in this particular area.

Strategically Target Secondary Locations

So let’s go to tip two. This is a very important strategic shift that we need to think about when we are listing in all of the other areas other than our primary area on Psychology Today.

If you’re in Canada or the US, you have the ability to show up in four locations, your primary location and three other areas. That said, there are some countries that even allow more than four. But for the purpose of this particular episode, let’s just say that you have the ability to show up in four locations.

You do not have control over the number of therapist listings when it comes to your primary location because, of course, it’s where you live. That said, you have control over how many therapist listings are in the other three locations that you list. And what I mean by is that you can choose strategically where you want to show up, meaning you can go on Psychology Today as if you were a specific client and look up a specific area. Let’s say you’re looking up Red Deer, Alberta.

If you were looking up Red Deer, as if you were a client, you would type in Red Deer, and you could scroll down to the bottom of the page and see how many pages of therapists are listed. Now, in larger centers like Edmonton, Toronto, and Calgary, there are going to be hundreds and hundreds of pages. And each page has twenty therapist listings on each. So if we think of some of the bigger areas, that’s where a lot of us choose to list because we believe that because the population is higher, that is a better place for us to list. However, it’s also where everybody else is listing as well. And I say it’s more important to list in a moderately populated area with lower therapist listings.

Now, what lower means to you might be very different depending on your geographical area, where you’re licensed, and of course the clients that you serve. But if we think about maybe a place that has eight hundred thousand people but may have 30 pages of therapists versus somewhere that has maybe 1 million or 2 million people but has 1,000 pages of therapists, the probability of you being seen through the Psychology Today algorithm is much, much higher if you list in a moderately populated area with lower therapist listings. Because even though we can’t control the Psychology Today we can increase our probability if we strategically choose where we list. So I encourage, if you haven’t already, to look at the three alternate locations that you show up in and see how many pages of therapists there are.

I want to give a caveat, again, going back to some of those larger centers. In many of the larger centers, I’ve tried to go up to 150, 160 pages, and I just gave up because it was a lot of therapists and a lot of pages. So we can assume that if you’re getting to about 150 pages, the probability of your main profile being seen is quite low.

But if you strategically choose locations based on not only population but the probability of you being seen by clients when they’re on Psychology Today, you increase your chances of being clicked on.

Record a Psychology Today Profile Video

The third and definitely an important distinguisher between you and other therapists on Psychology Today is having a video on your profile. Now, I can already hear you say, ” Kayla, I dread having a video on my Psychology Today profile. That’s why I didn’t do it.” But if you pretend to be a client, and again, typing in a location, whether you show up in that location or not, halfway down every single page, you will see a list of videos of therapists who have a video on their Psychology Today profile.

Now, I’m only hauling this statistic out of nowhere, but I am going to tell you that majority, probably even close to seventy to eighty percent of therapists, will not put a video on their profile. Yet every single page of Psychology Today in a particular location will list videos from therapists. So let’s go back to what we mentioned before.

Let’s say that you’re on page thirty-eight or even a hundred and fifty in a particular jurisdiction. The probability of you being seen is quite low for your main profile. But if your video shows up on every single page until then, you have a higher probability of being clicked on.

So what I suggest is ensuring that you have a video so that the probability is higher. We often think that our main profile is the most important, which it’s probably equally as important, but we forget about setting ourselves up and optimizing our profile so that we can beat the algorithm. of course, we can’t really beat it, but we definitely can be very competitive within it.

And so probability and having an attractive profile are very important for you to be clicked and contacted.

Done-For-You Psychology Today Profiles

So I mentioned earlier that I do have something really important for you that I think you really appreciate, especially if you struggle with the client-centered profiles. I created twenty done-for-you, already written Psychology Today profiles that you can purchase, copy, paste, and publish your profile in fifteen minutes or less. These twenty profiles are across a variety of different niches. Fifteen specialized niches with five generalist profiles with slightly different focuses.

If you’re interested in these profiles, they’re very low cost.

You can purchase these profiles at kayladas.com/done-for-you-profiles

or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

These particular profiles are at a very good price. I can’t promise that they’ll stay there forever, but they are going to be helpful in creating that connection with your ideal client.

But the other two tips I had for you today is about strategically positioning your profile so that the probability of you getting clicked on is higher.

Because even with the best profile statement, if no one ever sees your profile show up in the listings, they’re never going to see the profile.

So these are just three of many optimization and strategy tips that you can implement in your Psychology Today profile.

And again, I totally recommend my Done-For-You Psychology Today profiles. These aren’t templates. These aren’t prompts. These are already created copy and paste-ready profiles that you can use across 15 different specialized niches and five generalist with slightly different focuses.

I hope this was helpful. Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode, and until next time, bye for now

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by Denis Pavlov Music from Pixabay

The Designer Practice Podcast and Evaspare Inc. has an affiliate and/or sponsorship relationship for advertisements in our podcast episodes. We receive commission or monetary compensation, at no extra cost to you, when you use our promotional codes and/or check out advertisement links.