Content marketing has been a buzz-word in the business world for the last few years.
Essentially it means using content to share your expertise and knowledge with a community of people that are interested in your information.
Through the sharing of content you are building relationships with people, which then leads to greater increase in inquiries to your business.
Why? Well we all know that we are likely to choose the services of people we trust, and content marketing helps you build trust with your readers.
Content marketing works for a few reasons, which include:
- you provide interesting and valuable content that people keep coming back for again and again
- you position yourself as an expert in the area that you are sharing content and become known as a resource for others
- your community sees you as an authority in your niche and over time you become the ‘go-to’ person for solving specific problems
- over time, your community values your content, which increases your ‘know, like and trust’ factor
Content marketing is a great strategy for counsellors to ethically market their services online.
As a counsellor, you have lots of valuable knowledge and skills to share with others
As I see it, counsellors and therapists are positioned perfectly to use content marketing as an effective strategy to engage with potential clients, as well as provide a great community service.
I know from my years of training and study, I learned lots of valuable information that can assist many people in learning how to live healthier and more fulfilling lives.
Much of this learning can easily be transferred into creating content that readers will find valuable.
You may not realise it, but you probably have enormous amounts of knowledge that can be turned into compelling content that can then be shared with others.
The first step is to start producing that content…
Your community is looking for your valuable and helpful content
I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that we live in an era where we are consuming massive amounts of content.
You only have to walk down the street or catch public transport to see people with their heads down whilst reading their smartphones, to see how addicted we all are now to information.
I don’t see this changing. In fact, I think it will continue to expand, which means it’s more important than ever to get your content in front of your ideal clients.
Content creation helps you build relationships with prospective clients
So becoming a provider of quality content for the people you would consider your ideal clients is a great way to start relationship building.
As you regularly provide informative, interesting and helpful content, your readers begin to form a relationship with you.
It’s through your readers feeling connected to you and thinking they know you in some way through your writing, that you are much more likely to be front-of-mind when they or someone they know needs a counsellor.
There’s also the phenomena I call the ‘second client.’ The second client is someone who will never become your client, but because they know you through your content, they become an advocate for your business and start referring people they know to you.
Often we don’t know this person and have no idea that they exist, yet they are often silently doing some of the marketing work for your business.
How to create content for your counselling business
So maybe you’re starting to get on board with this idea of content marketing and how valuable it could be for your business.
The next step is to look at how and where you’re going to create this content.
The most obvious answer is to publish the content on your own website.
By publishing your own content on your website, you’re in full control of the content and can start to attract more visitors to your site.
The other benefit from publishing your content on your own site is over time, you’re driving more people to your website where they can read about your services and your counselling approach and philosophy.
The power of blogging for your content marketing
Having a blog on your website is one of the easiest ways to start your content marketing strategy.
A blog is a listing of all your posts – the articles which form your content.
Your posts display in reverse chronological order, so your reader sees your most recent article first and the older content beneath.
Having a blog is a quick and easy way to publish content on a regular basis. A blog also allows you to organise your posts via categories and tags, so visitors can easily find articles on topics they are interested in.
Oh, and having a blog is GREAT for SEO – search engine optimisation.
When you have fresh content on a regular basis, Google and the other search engines will show you more love and tend to give your website more importance over other websites in the search engine results.
Something to consider if you want more eyeballs on your website.
Content marketing is an ethical solution to marketing your counselling business
One of things I love about content marketing is you can form a direct relationship with your readers through the power of your words.
And your readers begin to respect you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge with them on a regular basis.
This is a win-win relationship, because you’re providing a valuable community service by helping people with your information, as well as building relationships with potential clients and your second clients, who advocate for your business.
You can begin this whole process by thinking about what content you’d like to create.
Reflect on:
- the type of clients you work with and the problems they bring
- where you feel passionate in your work
- what are your specific skills and training
The intersection of these three things is a good place to start creating content.
Use a mind map with your main theme of topic in the centre. Then brainstorm all the related themes and topics the you could write about. All these ideas are potential content for your content marketing strategy.
Have fun doing this and follow your passion. This is where you will write the most engaging and interesting content.
