Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants. I have a tip for you. Do you know what's hot right now on the internet? Different things are hot at different times. 20 years ago, a website was hot. When we started this company, 50% of therapists did not even have a website. Now, of course, everybody has a website. Then Google, became wildly popular to advertise on Google. Then the next step was Facebook, became wildly popular to advertise on Facebook.

You know what's hot right now? Podcasts are becoming a hot thing. You should learn how to do podcasts. Podcasts are really nothing more than you, and you usually have a guest. You visit together, you record it and you release it to the internet. Now, there are different places where you can release your podcast. The first one, you can use Apple podcasts. That's a place where you can get it seen. Then you can use Spotify. That's a big one. Also, there's one called Podbean. Podbean, P-O-D-B-E-A-N, is a group that will-- If you give...

This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. One of the best things you can do is advertise on the internet but advertising on the internet alone is not enough. There was a book written long time ago called Megatrends and they talked about having high tech but also having high touch. That as we get more technical and use the internet more, we have to make sure we don't lose our high touch.

Now with COVID in the rearview mirror, one of the things I've noticed about COVID that make a huge difference in our community, and all over the United States is that customer service went down, COVID was a nice reason to reduce your customer service, and customer service went down almost all over. You can connect with your community in a lot of ways. You can sponsor events. You can volunteer to work in community projects.

I don't care what you do, but I will tell you that you need to be visible. You see, most professions like the medical profession or the chiropractic...

Hi, this is David Kats for Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

You know what's hot on the Internet right now? Well, it's probably not what was hot on the Internet a year ago and it's probably not what's going to be hot on the Internet in a year, but right now what's hot on the Internet is this, advertising on Google is very important.
If you want to build your practice, you probably want to spend between $100 and $300 advertising on Google. It's extremely easy to do. You can get about anybody to help you if you don't know how. The second thing that's real hot right now is Facebook.
Facebook is hot because you can do posts and you can boost those posts, which means you pay Facebook to show it to more people and you can do actual ads on Facebook, where you'd use your ads manager's program. Then the hot one that's new on the scene, there's a couple of new ones on the scene. One is Instagram. Instagram is a hot new area to advertise and to be seen on.
Facebook owns Instagram....

 Hi, I'm Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

I will never forget when I was a young man learning about the internet, I did all the things my coach told me to have a good internet presence and yet I wasn't number one in our area. I said to him, "Why am I not number one? I've done everything that you told me to do." He said, "Well, Dave, it's very hard to get to the top unless you have enough reviews." That message stayed with me forever.
If you find that you're not at the top of your internet game and you need to have more new patients so you need a better internet presence, one of the best things you can do for yourself is simply get reviews. Now, you have to get reviews on different places. You can get reviews on Google, of course, and then Bing and Yahoo. You can get them on yp.com, even on Angie's List and Healthgrades so you can have reviews in a lot of different places.
They say that the sweet spot for Google is between 12 and 15 reviews. If you...

Hi, this Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants, and I have a tip for you.

You know right now the best way to get new patients is by having a good Internet presence. Now, what does it mean to have a good Internet presence? Well, most therapists don't have a real good idea or have a real good handle on this, and so I say to them, "Do you have a good Internet presence?" They say, "Well, I have a website, and I think I might be on Google," but here's what you really have to do to have a good Internet presence.

First of all, you have to be listed on the professional referral directories. I'm sure almost everybody has done this, but if you aren't listed on Psychology Today, you're really missing out on a big load of new patients. The second thing you have to do is you have to be listed on every search engine, so you have to be listed on Google, Bing, Yelp, and Yahoo.

Now, when I say listed on them, you have to go there. Just type in Google for business, and it'll say, "Can we advertise...

This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

One of the ways you are going to get noticed on the internet is to have reviews. Now it used to be reviews were hard to get and when I talk to therapists they say, "We can't have patients leave reviews." It is okay for the patient to leave reviews but you can't ask for the review. You shouldn't ask them because it is unethical to ask them to leave a testimony. You can have your colleagues leave reviews. You can have your family leave reviews. You can have your friends write reviews and it's gotten much easier in the last six months. It used to be that you had to go to a desktop computer to leave a review, but now you can leave a review on your mobile phone. If you have an android phone it automatically comes loaded with Google Maps and if you have Google Maps you can leave a review for the therapist right from your mobile phone. It is very easy to do. Just look up the therapist's website and it will say write a...

Hi, this is Dave Kats for Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

Everybody knows that they should have a website and pretty much every therapist now has a website, but some therapist websites are what I call cyberspace junk. They're floating around in cyberspace and nobody ever sees them; nobody ever goes to your website unless you direct them. They aren't going to find it by searching on the Internet because your website is not optimized. It's important to have a website. It's important to have a nice design on your website. It is far more important to have your website optimized so that it shows up when people are searching for you. Now, how do you optimize your website? One of the things you do to optimize your website is to make sure that your titles and subtitles on each page say something about counseling in your area, or your areas of expertise, and the area that you practice in. Let me give you an example. I used to put together a website that I thought was a nice...

This is Dave Kats of Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

One of the best things you can do to keep your practice full is to put out a newsletter on a monthly basis. It doesn't have to be much of a newsletter. An 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper with print on one side is enough. Email it to your patients each month. I have a therapist with an e-mail list of 200 people, mostly patients. She sends out a newsletter every month and she never sends out a newsletter that she doesn't get a new patient or reactivation of an old patient. So I'm saying putting out an electronic newsletter is very important because it costs you nothing. Make sure you have the permission to send people these newsletters and be absolutely sure that when you send them out, you don't accidentally expose their e-mail addresses to other people. That would be a violation. I had a therapist once that sent out newsletters to about a 175 people and it had all the other people's names and e-mails listed and...

Hi, this is Dave Kats from Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

One of the things you must do if you're a therapist is get on all the pertinent professional referral directories, and, of course, the granddaddy of them all is psychologytoday.com. If you're not already listed on psychologytoday.com, you're making a big mistake, you have to get on psychologytoday.com. Now, psychologytoday.com charges about $30, where the rest of them generally charge about $20, but the $30 is well worth it. Now, in case you don't know what a professional referral directory is, it's just a website where you can list yourself, and information about you, and then people can call you or go to your website from that professional referral directory. Here's what I would suggest you do. There are lots of good companies, there's Psychologytoday.com, there's goodtherapy.org, there's therapy tribe, therapy nation, find a Christian therapist, there's a lot of different ones that you can go to. I'll let...

This is Dave Kats with Therapists Consultants, and I have a tip for you.

One of the best things you can do to improve your internet presence is very simple, and it's free. That's just getting people to review you, to give good reviews about you and your organization. Now, it's become easier than ever to give reviews. Right now, if you have an Android phone, you have Google Maps already downloaded. If you have Google Maps, you can look up your clinic, and then anybody that looks up your clinic can give a review. They'll give a five-star review. They just touch the fifth star, and they'll say, "What would you like to say?" and they'll say something good about you. They'll say, "Okay, this will be posted under your name." They say, "Fine. Post it." and the review is done. If you have an iPhone, you have to download Google Maps. Once you download Google Maps, you do exactly the same thing. Who can give you reviews? It's not professional, in most people's opinion, to have patients give...