Show Notes

Welcome back to The Designer Practice Podcast, and I’m your host, Kayla Das. Today, I’ll be discussing 7 ways you can optimize your Psychology Today profile so that you attract more clients.

Now, in today’s episode, I’ll be diving more into the technical elements of your profile and less about the written profile statement. But if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I think a well-crafted profile statement is a huge part of any profile’s success. So, if you want to learn more about how to write an effective profile statement, check out episode two called Three Steps for Writing a Psychology Today Profile That Gets Noticed, and you can check it out by heading to kayladas.com/episode2.

But like I said, we’re going to dive into 7 technical ways on how you can optimize your Psychology Today profile.

1. Have a Professional Headshot

So, the first way is to have a professional headshot. In my opinion, the best headshots are of people. If you’re a private practitioner, you’ll likely use your own headshot, so a photo of yourself.

But if you’re a group practice, you might want to use a headshot of a group of people. It might be the practitioners that work for you, or it might be an image of people in a waiting room, or of therapists giving counselling. Now, of course, you don’t want to use your actual clients but you might have actors or you may even use high quality images that you have the license to use.

Some of the photos that I see used often is logos or buildings or things like that, especially when it comes to a group practice. But these really don’t create connection. And honestly, I think the success of your profile is going to be whether or not you create connection with prospective clients. And your headshot is the first thing that people see as they’re scrolling down the results page. So, you want it to highlight and to stand out. And really people are connected to other people.

If you are a private practice owner, try to invest in actually having professional headshots done. Personally, my headshot is on a white background. Honestly, though, if I were to do it again, and I probably will in the near future, I love outside backdrops or outside themes, and I think that these really is visually appealing. If I were to do it again, I would certainly have more of an outside backdrop.

So, that’s number one, having a professional headshot.

2. Target Your Listing

Second is targeting your listing on your profile. And if you’ve never had a Psychology Today profile, you probably don’t know what this is, but basically when you sign into your profile dashboard and you go to edit profile, there’s a column that says Target Your Listing. And you have the ability to include up to four locations. Usually they say postal codes, but you have the ability to put four locations. And what I encourage you to do is to have four different locations.

So, for instance, if you were here in Alberta, you might have one postal code that’s in Edmonton, one that’s in Sherwood Park, one that’s in Calgary, and one that’s in Red Deer. And the reason for this is you want to be able to show up in multiple cities so you can reach multiple people. If you use, say hypothetically the postal code for Edmonton, for all four. Sure, someone puts in that specific postal code, you’re going to show up in that postal code. But if someone searches say Sherwood Park, you are not going to show up in that area, right? You’re only going to show up if someone looks up Edmonton.

So, you can actually reach more people if you use postal codes in different areas, especially if you provide online therapy. But even if you don’t use centers that are close to you, right? So maybe in Edmonton, Sherwood Park, St. Albert and maybe Spruce Grove. So, setting your locations can really help you reach more people.

3. Add a 15-Second Video

Third is add a video to your profile. Now, Psychology Today only allows you to have a 15-second video, and this can be really challenging to actually take the video. Trust me, I’ve done it. It’s hard. But why it’s important is that Psychology Today actually views people with videos more frequently than they do with profiles without videos.

Let me share with you why this is. If you go to the results page of the Psychology Today platform, so you type in, say Edmonton, for example. What’s going to happen is about 20 profiles are going to display on the page. Halfway down the page there will be kind of an ad like display that says 15-second videos where profiles with videos are displayed and clients can click on these videos to watch. So, it’s about 10 to 15 profiles down, and this is on every single page of Psychology Today of the results page.

So, your main profile might actually be on page 101, which chances of your prospective client going to page 101 is very low. But if you have a video, it can actually show up on page one, page two, page three, page four, really all the pages before that, and it gives you more opportunities to show up and for clients to click on your video and your profile to learn more.

When a client clicks on a video, your video plays, but also your contact information displays on the right-hand side of the page. So, they essentially see your profile, but they also hear your video and it gives you more chances to show up. So, this is why having a video is super important, even though I know it can probably be the most challenging and most time-consuming process of developing your profile, because creating a 15 second video is not easy.

4. Link Your Website on Your Profile

Having a website linked to your profile. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I want to purchase anything, I look at people’s websites. And for me, it really legitimizes their services and then I can learn more about who they are, who works for them, what services they are providing, and this is all really important for your prospective client as well.

And one of the things that I have seen, especially when it comes to new private practitioners, is setting up a Psychology Today profile and not yet having a website. And although there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that! Really understanding that it’s really our natural human behavior to want to learn more.

And because Psychology Today only provides a limited space of what you can provide, having a website linked to it is a very natural next step so that they can learn more about you, your practice, and then of course, eventually reach out to you. And from my experience profiles that have websites tend to convert better or tend to get clients more frequently.

I think this for three reasons.

(1) One, it really legitimizes your practice because even though in theory having a registered business is really the stamp of approval for having a business when it comes to consumers or it comes to clients, it’s having a website.

(2) The second is it helps a client learn more about you, your service, so that they can build connection with you and really start liking what you have to share before they even contact you.

(3) And then finally it moves them away from a platform where there are many therapists onto your own land, where it’s only one, and that’s you. Or if you’re in a group practice the people that work for you. But the point is they’re moving towards you versus moving towards or getting distracted by other therapist profiles.

And, of course we know that therapist directories are designed for advertising therapists. And that’s why there are so many therapists. Sometimes there’s hundreds and even thousands depending on which town or city that you’re in. But for prospective clients, it can be really distracting. Then what happens is that if a client or a prospective client is distracted by another profile, they’re likely going to forget about you and your profile and then move to the next person. So, I say, let’s move them away from the shiny objects and move towards you being the star of the show.

5. Avoid Using the Endorsement Feature on Your Profile

Number five, avoid using the endorsement feature of your profile.

A newer feature on the Psychology Today platform is the endorsement feature where you can link profiles with other therapists. However, from my experience, this feature hasn’t been that effective for individual therapists.

And the reason is because most of the time when there is an endorsement link created between two therapists, there isn’t a written endorsement. So, what I mean by that is, each therapist hasn’t written something for the other person, they just linked together without writing something of benefit to each other.

And if we think of what endorsement means, really by definition an endorsement is when someone says something nice about you and your service. But most of the time what ends up happening is that when there are multiple therapists linked to a profile, it really becomes easily distracting for a client or a prospective client because it looks more like an additional therapist’s list instead of actual endorsements. And actually, I always connected it to the friends you might know feature on social media because it really just looks like these are relevant therapists that the client should click on.

And as the endorsement section is at the end of the profile, there’s really nothing after the endorsement section to entice a prospective client to stay on your page so it can inadvertently provide an opportunity for prospective clients to move away from your profile and onto another therapist’s that’s linked with you and they might get the client or they might also have another person linked down theirs and a client keeps going down this rabbit hole of therapist after therapist.

So, you do have a few options though when it comes to endorsements.

The first one is you can simply remove any endorsements you have on your profile so that when clients scroll down to the bottom of the profile, there’s absolutely zero distractions. But I do know that removing endorsement profiles can be tough for some therapists because often the endorsement links are actual therapists we know.

So, this is why you can also do the next step. So, this is why I say you don’t always have to remove everyone if you don’t want to. But what might be beneficial for you and for them is you could reach out to each endorsement you have and ask them to go into the endorsement section of their profile and actually write you a review. Because even though the link between you and that therapist still exists, and a client can certainly still move away from your profile if they click on that person. But now you have something of value on your profile endorsing you and your practice so prospective clients know that it’s a review or an endorsement instead of a list of alternate therapists they should click on.

Finally, it is your profile, so you can certainly keep endorsements on your page, even if they’re missing written endorsements, if you’re comfortable with knowing the potential that clients might make the mistake that this is relevant therapists and that they’ll click on these therapists and move away from your profile. So, really, it’s totally up to you.

Now, there is something important to note if you are a group practice though, if you’re a group practice, you might actually want to link profiles among therapists who are in your group practice. And that totally makes sense because at the end of the day, the income is still coming to your practice, whether it’s one therapist or another, and each therapist can actually still write a written endorsement for each other.

6. Track Your Profile Metrics and Analytics

Number six, track your profile metrics and conversion rate.

This is often where I lose people because it sounds complicated, but please stay with me here.

When you sign in to your Psychology Today dashboard, you’ll see a bunch of numbers show that Psychology Today tracks for you. These are called metrics.

There are three really important numbers that you’re going to want to know to be able to track your conversion rate, and these are your:

(1) Total contacts,

(2) Profile views,

(3) Results views.

Now a conversion rate is the rate at which a prospective client takes a single step towards becoming your client.

So, there are two conversion rates that matter here:

(1) There’s the rate that clients click on your profile from the results page.

(2) The second is the rate that a client contacts you.

And I do include website views here for exactly the same reason that I’ve shared before that a client moving away from your profile to your website is a positive step towards becoming a paying client.

When you know these two conversion rates, you can determine where your profile may or may not be performing well. So, you might be thinking, “How do I track my conversion rate?” With a simple math formula. If you’re anything like me, math is probably not your first language, but bear with me.

So, to calculate the rate at which clients are clicking on your profile from the results page, you divide the number of your profile views by the number of your results view, and then you multiply it by a hundred for a percentage.

So let me give you an example here. Let’s say on your dashboard it says that you have 20 profile views and you have 500 result views. You would then divide 20 by 500 on a calculator, of course, and your calculator is going to display 0.04. And then you multiply this by a hundred, which then means your conversion rate is 4%. What this means is that 4% of those searching on Psychology Today in your jurisdiction or wherever you show up, wherever you targeted your listings, 4% are clicking on your profile.

Now, it’s also important to know that not everyone who searches is even going to see your profile. For example, if you’re on page 101, the chances of your profile being seen is very, very low. So, it’s natural to have a conversion rate that’s between around 3 to 11% at any step.

And so really understanding that having a lower rate is not a bad thing, but we do want to stay above 3% at minimum, especially if we’re in a smaller jurisdiction. If you’re in, say, Toronto, and there’s probably hundreds of pages, you are likely not going to be seen very often, which means your click rate is going to be less, but if you are in a less populated place, you actually might be clicked on more. So understanding there could be differences between that.

So, the next step that matters is calculating your contact rate. So, you divide the number of total contacts by the number of your profile views, and then you multiply it by a hundred for a percentage.

So going back to our example, if you have 5 total contacts and 20 profile views, you would divide 5 by 20, which will show 0.25 on your calculator and multiply it by a hundred, and it will be 25%. So, this means that 25% of the people who actually landed on your profile took the next step, whether it be checking out your website, emailing you, or calling you from your profile.

If you’re below, say 3 to 4% on either conversion rate, you can make tweaks that correspond with where you’re losing clients. Now, this is why it’s important to track metrics, because sometimes people are like, “Why should I?” ” What’s the purpose?” Because you know where your profile is not performing.

So, for example, let’s say you had a low click rate. You might want to edit the first 200 characters of your profile. You might want to change your profile headshot. You might want to add a video. Essentially what you want to do is stand out more from the results page so people actually click on your profile, so they get to see everything that you have to offer.

The second step is that maybe people are clicking on your profile, but they’re not contacting you, so you might have a low contact rate. This means you might want to focus more about the content in your profile, so this could be your written statement, it could be the information on the sidebar of your profile. It could be adding a website. Really anything that would encourage a prospective client to contact you after they’ve landed to the profile. And going back to creating connection, and I think this is the biggest and most important part of your Psychology Today profile.

And there’s only one that you take away from any of this content is creating connection is the most important. You are there to show the client and to support the client through their journey, not only in the therapy room, but through your marketing. So often when we have a low contact rate, but we might have a high click rate, it means that clients just aren’t connecting or jiving with what we have to say. So, focusing on some of those things can really help you know how to optimize and improve your profile’s performance.

7. Avoid Typing Your Website URL in the Written Profile Statement

Finally, number seven, avoid typing out your website URL or email in a written profile statement. And the reason I have therapists avoid typing out their website or email in a written profile statement is because it can skew your metrics and your analytics. Because Psychology today cannot track manual website searches or emails.

Now, of course, it’s always a great thing if a person is contacting you, whether it be through your profile, whether it’s a manual contact, or whether it’s a tracked metric. But what often happens is therapists say, I’m not getting any contacts from my profile. I should get rid of my profile. And even if they track their metrics, what they’re seeing is low contact rates, even if they have a pretty good click rate, and that’s because people are manually, or at least some people might be manually putting in your contact information because you’ve put it there. And then what might then happen is you remove your profile. You no longer use it, and then you even see less clients coming in.

So, avoiding typing it out so that people can see it. But really utilizing Psychology Today metrics tracking system so that you can know if your profile’s working or it’s not.

So that is the 7 Ways to Optimize Your Psychology Today Profile.

I hope this was helpful in going through this today.

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Thank you for listening today, and I hope to see you next time.

Bye for now.

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