My last blog post was quite ‘educational’.  I created the opportunity to speak into a couple of behaviours that have been receiving some negative attention. And these behaviours, while they might be well intentioned, are a sign of ignorance and are harmful to our brands.

What many people do not understand is that your brand is more than the nice graphics, with the consistent font, and the cool Instagram grid. I would assert that these visual elements support our branding, they are not our brand.

Our brand is how people experience us.  It goes beyond the visual on a screen or a headshot on a business card or which couch to choose for your waiting area.   It permeates all of how we turn up online, offline, in person, through our team members when we make requests, when we deal with complaints, and when we apply to speak at the event run by our peers.

If you didn’t see the last blog post that OK, here it is just for you

I had quite a few people reply to my last blog post, and what encouraged me is that people overall were looking for guidance on how to use platforms such as Facebook with a well intentioned purpose as well as the etiquette of asking for speaking opportunities. That encouraged me greatly as this means that people read and heard what I had to say and wanted to do better by themselves, their peers and the industry as a whole.  So, to those of you who took the time to reply, thank you for being so invested.

There are a couple of responses that I really wanted to share.  I’ve requested permission from the writers, because I think these responses add to the conversation and help us to understand why we are doing what we are doing.

 Amy Van Slambrook, MA, LMHC, CELC writes the following is response to my ‘rant’ about the use of Vanity Metrics especially with our use of social media profiles.

I, too, have wondered about how each week on the weekly posts [this occurs in quite a few FB groups we are a part of ] for giving our website, it seems to be about garnering likes which, perhaps naively, I chalked up to supporting each other in our reach and the possibility that if a fellow colleague sees valuable content on my page, they will pass it along to their clients – that’s kind of how i use it but it does feel especially “parasitic” when I’m asked to like a page that has nothing to do with me, our industry but is someone’s husband’s/friend’s business or is their side hustle.

Amy raises a great point here.  The expectation that if we are sharing useful content that a colleague might happen to see, they would share it with their clients.  I think we can all be excused for having thought this. However how many of us actually do this?

My biggest concern here, is that this constant desire to have colleagues and peers like our pages and our content will in time water down our message as we will be creating content for them, and it’s my fierce  assumption here that our peers and colleagues are not our clients or our prospective  clients and we should not be writing content for them.

Dear health professional, you can use social media to grow your influence, to generate leads and create sales for people to come into your practice but you need to learn how.  Just asking peers to like your page or your profile is not HOW.  We are smarter than that.  Most of you have higher education degrees so learning how to use social media effectively to drive leads into your practice is something you can learn.

Thank you, Amy.

And then there is this response from the wonderful Katie Vernoy, and I share this because, well Katie has rewritten my previous blog the way I wanted to write it originally.

I so want to just have this email say “Hi Joe Muirhead [I especially like that my name is misspelt, you won’t believe how often that happens] – Hire me to speak at your conference or event! I have 40 billion likes on my FB page, so you should hire me. Also, while you’re looking at the amazing number of likes on my page, go ahead and like it yourself. I have already friended you, so you’ll be liking my page one way or the other. My talk is on authentic marketing and how to 10X your business in 2 days.”

 hahahahahaha

 I also want to try to invite you to like my biz pages…

Katie’s interpretation of my last blog post is typical of the commentary that I have been hearing from my peers and colleagues who run events.  Its not how you want your prospective customer to be responding to you.

Fabulous health professionals, please stop looking for the easy way, or following the crowd. If you want to be considered as a valuable speaker at events in 2020, then learn what it is you need to be doing to make this happen.  Be intentional about learning the craft of speaking, and also the skills of marketing yourself as a speaker ( and no they are not the same thing – at all).

And if you want social media to act as a part of your sales funnel, to keep your clinicians and your practice full in 2020, then this too is a skillset you can learn. Be intentional about what you need to do, who you need to get alongside of, and how to spend your PD money to make sure you are positioning yourself in a way that attracts your ideal clients directly to you.

If you have read this email and have gone, I need to know how, then how about you book in for a Power Coaching session in January (please know I am completely booked until Jan 13) and lets build a plan that you can implement in 2020 to help you achieve these goals.

Now go be your awesome self