There are some behaviours going on with health professionals that need to stop!   I don’t think there is intentional malice with what is happening, but it is getting a lot of attention, it is being spoken about behind closed doors, and chances are you are maligning your reputation.

Specifically, there are two issues that I talk about in this episode of This Is Private Practice

1. Vanity metrics on social media especially Facebook
2. Trying to get speaking gigs when it’s clear you have no clue what you are doing.

You can click the image below and watch the episode in full.

For those of you who don’t want to spend the 12 minutes watching, here are the Cliff notes:

1. Being proud of the difference we make in the world is good.

2. Vanity and unhelpful Pride turns up when the noise we are making can be interpreted as “Look at me, Look at me, Look at me”.
3. We need to be mindful and intentional with the way we are showing up on Social Media platforms.
4. If we’re measuring things like Likes, Shares, Comments on our Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn posts, I want you to understand that that is a vanity metric. And what it does is it opens us up to competition and comparisonitis and we’re just going to make ourselves feel flat and awkward and awful.
5. Therefore, we need non-vanity metrics.
6. If all you’re doing is pursuing Likes on your page and you don’t know me and you have no relationship with me, don’t ask me to like your page after I have just accepted a friend request from you. That is a vanity metric and that is hurting your brand. If you’re doing that to me, you’re doing that elsewhere and that is hurting your positioning and that is hurting your brand.
7. If you are a health professional, why are you asking me to like your Page? What makes you think that I am your ideal prospective client? What is it about your Page that I’m going to engage with, that is going to make me want to leave what I’m doing to come and engage with your content? Because that’s essentially what you’re asking me to do. So please stop doing that vanity metric.
8. If you are accumulating likes on your page, please, please stop it. It’s unhelpful and it’s actually turning you into that sleazy salesperson that you’ve been avoiding.
9. If you want to tell me that Facebook does not work to help you grow your private practice then, you haven’t invested in learning how to make the platform work for you. It does work, but you’ve got to make sure you’re using it properly.
10. If you want to be a Speaker and if you want to get paid for speaking and be known as a keynote speaker, then you need to approach people like myself or other people who have conferences and events and help us understand what you can do to help me meet my goals. Just sending me an email saying I should hire you to speak at my event is unacceptable. Please don’t do that. It shows me that you’re incredibly insecure. So why would I ask an insecure person to speak to my audience? And you haven’t helped me understand how you can add value to my people.
11. Don’t be lazy. Do the work. Find out how you connect with the people that you want to able to serve. That is your responsibility. As a private practice owner, as a person who wants to build referral sources into their business as a business owner, you can’t just expect that Facebook connections are going to make that happen or an email to me when I have no clue who you are, it’s going to make that happen for you as a new income stream.

    Here endeth the sermon!

    Until next time, go be your awesome self!