High quality content is the cornerstone of digital marketing and it’s been the core of the marketing system I’ve used for over 20 years. Google search, social media, and email are wonderful ways to obtain new clients, but they are merely the vehicles and tools for delivering content. You have to start with good content for any digital marketing efforts to work.
As a therapist, you probably don’t think much about creating website content. It’s probably a foreign and uncomfortable area for you to venture into. You don’t have to let the idea of digital marketing and content make you uneasy. When you reorientate your thinking to creating the right content and centered around the humans you help, the entire process will start to fall into place.
Quality Content is Human Focused Content
Without human focused content, most digital marketing efforts are useless. Too often content gets de-prioritized and de-humanized. This issue has grown significantly in recent months are small business owners and marketers jump on the artificial intelligence train and try to fast track content creation.
AI is great, but it doesn’t represent your beliefs, your voice, or your unique ability to connect with clients. High quality content is thoughtful, it’s human-centered, and it’s created with purpose to help people. AI cannot deliver that human element.
So how to you write human focused content that will actually connect with readers? You focus on the needs of humans. These needs typically manifest themselves in fears, frustrations, challenges, pain points, problems, and questions.
Human focused content is an important principle of content writing. When you’re thinking about and creating content, it’s important to remember how each piece of your content fits into the bigger journey that your prospective clients’ is on. And when you approach creating content with this mindset, you connect deeper with your future clients and your content becomes infinitely more valuable to them and your business.
Always ask yourself questions about your clients and how you help them. What problems do they have, what fears do they struggle with, what questions do they ask? These are the data points you want to keep in mind as you think about writing content for your website and digital marketing efforts.
Different Types of Content You Can Create
When I first started out in digital marketing the entire concept of writing web content was fresh and new. Not to just me, but to the world. Content marketing was the wild west of the web. I tried a lot of different techniques until I began to get into my groove and make headway.
What I learned along the way was there are many types of content you can create and not every type of content works for every creator, target market, or service offering. You must try things out to figure out what works for your personal style, your specific target market, and what can translate well for the services you offer.
Here are some popular types of content you could implement on your website:
- Blog posts – A blog is a collection of individual posts or articles that are added on a regular basis. I explore this topic in a lot of depth in my post titled The Therapist’s Guide to Blogging, so I’ll let you hop on over to that post to learn more about this option.
- Checklists – A checklist is usually a one page PDF or inside a blog post. This would be a list of things your client needs to know, something they could do in a specific order of actions, or even questions that they could ask themselves to help facilitate growth or awareness. DIY personalities (like myself) love checklists. It can educate and empower us all at once.
- Templates or worksheets – A template or worksheet can be virtually anything that could help prepare or guide someone. A lot of people need something tangible to understand a new topic. A worksheet will help bring your words to life, and when done right, it can help people connect with a topic in a very intimate level.
- Videos – Videos are amazing tools for connecting with people who don’t like to read. They can be recorded with your iPhone, uploaded to YouTube, then embedded into your website. You don’t need to have a professional videographer to execute this. You just need to be authentic. You post videos to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, so you’ll create content for your website and content for social media at the same time.
- Interactive webinars – A webinar is an online presentation that can be live or recorded and offered as a replay. These are generally 45-60 minutes in length. People who really want to learn a subject deeply will like webinars. A live webinar is great for offering interactive Q&A and it can build massive amounts of credibility with your community if executed correctly.
- Quizzes or assessments – Online assessments are simply an online version of the old fashion quiz. These interactive tools are an extremely popular tool for helping people explore a concept or see a conclusion.
As you read through that list your eyes might have glassed over and I may have lost you halfway through. If that happened, it’s just because a number of those items just don’t resonate with you.
And that’s okay. What I’d like you to do is revisit the list and only pick on a few that you’d be interested in doing.
Examples of Content in the Mental Health Space
I love examples and I think examples make it much easier for people to digest new ideas. In keeping with this flow, I’d like to offer examples of human focused content that relate to what you do and who you help.
Here are some examples of content used to connect with people:
- The Crappy Childhood Fairy – Blog
- The Calmer – Blog
- Syracuse University – Therapist Checklist
- Begin Again Institute – Am I Addicted to Porn Assessment
- Protect Young Eyes – Internet Safety Assessment
- Sunrise Services Inc. – Do I Need Therapy Quiz
- Eddins Counseling Group – Career Burnout Test
- Sherry Walling – Introduction Video to Movement
- Therapist Aid – Positive Psychology Exercise Worksheet
- Sukie Baxter – How To Relieve Stress And Anxiety Fast Video
I’ve given you a wide range of sources from therapists and recovery centers to consultants and coaches. Each of these sources utilizes content to connect with people. Whether they are allowing the person to use introspection to evaluate their own life or they’re talking about their own challenges, the content has purpose, it’s designed to connect, and its goal is to provide help.
While I’m not endorsing any of these sources, they are great illustrations of the variety of content you can provide to reach your target market, improve your website’s retention rate, and bring in new clients to your therapy practice.
What’s Holding You Back?
In the world of digital marketing, high quality content is the foundation for success. I know it can be a daunting task to create content, especially for therapists who may be more focused on the human element than the digital one. However, it is still very important to focus on the humans you help and remember that each piece of content should fit into the bigger picture of your clients’ mental health journey.
I know firsthand how challenging writing content can be. It takes time, it can be mentally challenging, and it can be really hard to get started.
If you’re struggling to get started, just think back to your day. What did you talk about? What challenges did your clients or future clients talk about? How can you help them overcome those challenges?
Start there.
Just start typing out your conversation as if you were in a session. Then let it sit. Circle back to it in a few days and take a fresh look at it. Ask yourself how can you shape those thoughts into a blog post, video, or another piece of content?
That is your first step. And once you take that one, the second will be much easier.
