The Designer Practice Podcast
3 Steps for Writing a Psychology Today Profile that Gets Noticed
In today’s episode we’ll discuss the 3 steps for writing a Psychology Today profile that gets noticed.
If you’ve been in private practice for a while, you’re probably no stranger to Psychology Today profiles. However, if you’re new to the world of private practice, Psychology Today is the most popular and commonly used therapist directory profile for therapists.
There are multiple therapist directories out there and much of the content that we’ll discuss today is transferable to other therapist directory profiles as well. However, some of the information will be Psychology Today specific.
Step 1: Have an Eye-Catching Header Statement
This step is important because it helps your profile stand out to prospective clients while they are scrolling through the results page so that they click on your profile and learn more about your services.
Psychology Today allows the first 200 characters of your profile to be viewed by prospective clients on the results page which is approximately 2 to 3 regular length sentences.
There are two things that I believe are essential when creating eye-catching header statements:
The first thing is adding what I call a service notice at the beginning of your profile. A service notice is a 3-to-5-word sentence that highlights to your ideal prospective client what type of therapist you are and who you serve.
Let me provide some examples:
Maybe you work with clients experiencing workplace stress, your service notice might be Workplace Stress Specialist.
Or perhaps you’re a trauma therapist, and your service notice might be Trauma Counselling Available.
Or if you work with couples, your service notice could be Couple’s Counselling Offered.
If you offer other services that you want to highlight, you could also use 1-to-1 and Group Counselling Offered or Offering 1-to-1 and Group Counselling.
A service notice helps prospective clients better understand the services that you provide.
Secondly, after your service notice use a powerful statement that reflects your prospective clients’ most pressing or challenging feeling, experience, situation and/or symptom.
In my private practice I worked with clients experiencing workplace stress and burnout. So, my service notice was Workplace Stress Specialist. However, my statement was “You wake up and dread having to go to work each morning” because this was one of the biggest pain points that my clients experienced.
Step 2: Creating Connection through your Psychology Today profile
Throughout your profile, your ideal clients’ struggles and situation as well as their desired solution. Also, highlight how your services will help them achieve desired solution or help them to mitigate their biggest problem or pain point.
On Psychology Today, you have three paragraphs that you can use to create connection with your prospective client. Your first paragraph is 640 characters and your second and third paragraphs are 360 characters each. Keep in mind that this is characters, not words.
You can create connection by using “You” statements that speak directly to the client. Try to avoid speaking too much about you and your services because your profile is a really meant as a ‘hook’ to help them understand that you’re the best person to help them. The best way to demonstrate that you’re the best person to help them is showing them that you understand what they’re going through.
Also, avoid using therapeutic modalities in your written profile. Fortunately, Psychology Today has a side bar of the profile which you have the option to add all of the therapeutic modalities and approaches you use. But in the actual written statement, try focusing more on how your modalities will help your client than the modality itself.
Let me share why this is:
In marketing there are two concepts: features and benefits.
Features are essentially the mechanics of a product or service; whereas, benefits are how the mechanics of the product or services helps a consumer achieve their desired result or outcome.
Typically, clients are more interested in the benefits than the feature itself.
So, let’s apply this to therapist directory profiles, therapeutic modalities are essentially features, whereas what clients want to know is how whatever approach you take helps them transform, grow or overcome a specific obstacle.
Step 3: Have a clear call to action
Finally, tell your prospective client exactly what you want them to do next. This might seem like an obvious step but it’s really important to make it super clear what you want prospective clients to do next in order to learn more or how to contact you.
Some common call to actions could include
• Call me today to set up your initial intake appointment
• Email me today to set up a free, no obligation, 15-minute consultation or
• Check out my website to learn more.
There you have it, the 3 steps for Writing a Psychology Today Profile that gets noticed.
