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The Therapy Business Podcast
Psychology Today Profile Mistakes You Might Be Making
Psychology Today remains one of the most powerful lead generation tools for therapists, yet many practitioners make critical mistakes that prevent them from converting profile views into clients. This episode explores common pitfalls and offers practical strategies to transform your directory profile into an effective marketing asset.
• Avoiding bland, unprofessional photos that fail to showcase personality and build trust
• Creating short, engaging videos to establish connection before the first contact
• Leading with client pain points rather than credentials or professional background
• Using "you" language instead of "I" language throughout your profile content
• Breaking text into digestible paragraphs with clear formatting
• Creating a compelling three-part profile: client pain points, how you help, and call to action
• Including direct scheduling links to reduce friction in the booking process
• Ensuring your profile links to a website where potential clients can learn more
• Tracking your leads before and after making these changes to measure improvement
Make these tweaks to your Psychology Today profile, then email me to share how these changes have impacted your practice growth. Check out my previous episode on Psychology Today optimization for additional strategies to improve your profile's performance.
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*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl
Psychology Today is one of the best lead generating avenues for therapists. So, whether it's for you as a solo practice owner or for your entire team, I assume and hope that everyone has a Psychology Today profile. However, today I went on an adventure through Psychology Today and was browsing profiles, and I saw a lot, a lot of mistakes and missed opportunities, and, while I don't know these therapists personally, I'm willing to bet that they're not seeing the results from psychology today that they would like. I'm going to guide you through some of the top mistakes and things I'm seeing and how you can make sure that it's not happening in your profile. My name is Craig and I'm the owner of Dacey Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast, all right? So, like I said, I've been spending some time scrolling through and part of me wishes I could share these profiles, and I probably could. However, I don't want to be calling anybody out or shaming them or embarrassing somebody them as a person. In fact, I bet all of them, or most of them, are amazing therapists, but what's coming across is not being articulated that way, and I am willing to bet that most people are just scrolling right past them and moving on to somebody else. And so let's talk about some of the things that I am seeing and ways that we can fix this.
Speaker 1:So number one is bland, bland photos. So we want to showcase our personality. On psychology today, therapy is a relationship. It's a relational thing. People need to be able to trust you. It's already a lot for them to be doing this research, admitting they need help trying to find someone. There's so many factors in play of can I afford this? Can this person help me? Am I too far gone? Am I going to like them? All these things are coming to play, and the first thing somebody looks at when they're scrolling is your picture. We want to have a good picture. I've seen a bunch where it's grainy. It's a bad photo. It's them with somebody else where their face is half cropped. It's boring. Maybe it's just a headshot where they're, you know, close mouth, smiling. They're not showing any personality. Any way that you can showcase personality is going to be huge. So, instead of taking a picture in front of a blank background, like you would for a resume or for something professional. This is how can I show them my personality, who I am, how can I show them what I enjoy, what do I like? So still keeping it professional, making sure it's done with a good quality camera, ideally with a professional photographer, but maybe it's you in your office space, so you can showcase a little bit about what that space looks like. When they show up, really focus on your facial features Are you loose, relaxed, are you having fun?
Speaker 1:A lot of times I like to see therapists take pictures of them almost laughing, enjoying and just showcasing joy, versus this buttoned up, just like smile, which is awesome. I mean, it's better than nothing. Of course, you know I've seen plenty where there's no picture at all and, trust me, or it's a picture of their office space and not their face at all. Those are going to be not converting, probably at all. If it were me, I wouldn't even click on their profile. I want to know who I'm working with. It's a visual process. I want to be able to visualize working with this person and that's why having a picture that really showcases you, your personality, is huge. All right, the next missed opportunity I'm seeing is no video on your profile Video.
Speaker 1:While it's not a requirement, having a video on there is going to be huge for getting and building trust. That's really what we are trying to do is. We're trying to build trust. We're trying to help clients, potential clients, know and understand that we see them, we get them and bridge that gap. I'm a huge fan of video and podcasting and getting that my personality out there because, just like yours, my engagement with our clients is relationship based. It's huge. There is a lot of fear, anxiety, fear of judgment, a lot of shame around finances, and so we know and acknowledge that scheduling a call with someone on our team is a huge, huge, huge step, and so we want to bridge that gap. The amount of times that people get on a call with me, on a consultation call, and just even from out the gate, just say, man, I feel like I already know you, they recognize my background, they have engaged with me in some capacity through video or through the podcast, it eases that anxiety, that stress and that tension and trust has already been established.
Speaker 1:Now, psychology today limits you to 15, 20-second videos, so just something short and sweet that can showcase your personality once again, kind of going back to that picture. Showing your personality also in the video is huge. Now, be careful You're not too stiff. I see that a lot on these videos that you're really stiff. Make sure you crop and edit If you make a mistake. If you have a long you know two to three seconds at the front or end of the video of you trying to hit the play button and squinting at your phone, just chop those up. It's not hard to do. A quick Google search will help you trim those down. You can do them on your phone. It's easy to trim a video and trim those edges off so that it's clean, it's quick and it's showing who you are. If you're going to write a script for it, just make sure you're not again too buttoned up, just robotic. Practice it enough times that you don't have to read it, that you can just loosely say it and show who you are. What kind of personality do you have? Ease their anxiety, ease their tensions that's the goal of the video.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to dig into the real meat and bones of your Psychology Today profile, because what I kind of just went through was the personality piece. But here is something huge, and I'm going to say probably 95% of the profiles as I was scrolling through. If there's 10 profiles on a page, nine of them have this mistake and it's not leading with the client's pain points. When somebody does a search on psychology today, what they're going to see is a list of therapists that meet the perimeters of what they plugged in. You're going to have your profile picture, which we already touched on, and then next to it is going to have a blurb the first two, three sentences in your profile description. That's what's going to show up. This is opportunity. This is the most important part of your bio, because this is what they're looking at first, before they even decide to click on you. They're going to see your picture, they're going to read this blurb and the mistake I'm seeing is people talking about themselves, people talking about their credentials.
Speaker 1:I am a licensed fill in the blank with this acronym and this acronym, this acronym. I believe in this. I am prioritized. My clients, I, I, I, I do this, I do that. We're not leading with their pain points. It's not about you. They, yes, we get.
Speaker 1:This is where I think the misconception comes. It's people are searching for a therapist and we are doing our best to say here's me, look at me, pick me. Here's why you should pick me. We're forgetting. They're there for themselves. They're there trying to solve a problem for themselves, while they're looking for someone. They're looking for someone who sees and acknowledges and knows what they're dealing with and, through something as simple as a few sentences, is saying to them I know what's going on and I can help you.
Speaker 1:So lead with your client's pain points. If you're feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, disconnected, if you're feeling like you and your spouse are living on two different sides of the planet, like you and your spouse are living on two different sides of the planet. Whatever your ideal client is dealing with, you hopefully know this. If you're a good therapist, you know their main struggles, your ideal client. What are their pain points? When they come to see you? What are they struggling with For us, for me and in our business?
Speaker 1:We know that, while people can be struggling with a million different things, the most common ones are they're not paying themselves enough. They're feeling burnt out. They feel like they have no clarity or plan when it comes to their money. They feel like a failure. They wish that they could take home more money and that they could free up their time. These are all common, common pain points that we try to speak into because we know it, we've lived it, I have lived it, I have been there. I know that feeling and I know there's hope and I know we can help. We have to lead with that.
Speaker 1:If you do this one, if, out of all the things I'm going to talk about, if this is the one change you make, it's going to be huge because you're going to jump out, because I promise you you're going to change it. Do a search, find yourself in that search and look at yourself compared to all the other therapists and they're all. I bet you nine out of 10 of them are going to be me, me, me, me, me. And then here is going to be you and I. As I found the people who already do this, the ones who stood out, I clicked on their profile and they were the most compelling candidate and I am willing to bet that they are getting a lot of leads through psychology today. So start with their problem. What are they struggling with? That can lead later into the bio, once they've clicked on your profile. That's where it leads into how you can help.
Speaker 1:They don't care about your acronyms. And that leads us into the next one, which is your people write it like it's a resume instead of speaking to the client. They don't care about your certifications and your acronyms. Most of them don't. They don't even know what they mean. They don't even know what they serve. All they want to know is here's how I feel, here's what I struggle with. Can you help with that?
Speaker 1:If you are a, if you have four or five letters after your name, yes, I would say, put them next to your name, whatever where it's appropriate, but leading with. I am certified in this, I have a bachelor's in this and I have a master's in this and I do this and this and this. We're leading with the problem, and then we're speaking directly to their experiences and we're speaking directly into how you can help them. What I would encourage you to do is go through and count how many times are you using the word I, I, me, we, where it's all about you or your company. Count it out and figure out how many times it's there and then count how many times you're using the word you or something focusing on them. And if you are talking about yourself more than you're talking about them. There's a problem and we need to fix that. Again, I'm not judging you. This is opportunity. This is going to be a huge turnaround. So if you find that you're saying, I don't beat yourself up, be like amazing because now I have a way to increase. Our psychology.
Speaker 1:Today leads by making this one change use language that talks about them. Use you language, not I language, not me language. And please don't talk in the third person. I saw a couple of those. Craig Dacey is a licensed therapist. No, that is like the most disconnected you could be from the potential client is by not even talking from yourself. It's like a narrator wrote this about you and here's why you should choose them. So please don't do that. Use you statements. We can help you feel better doing this. After therapy, you will feel more like this. So it's that piece changing your phrasing from I to you. All right.
Speaker 1:The next one is poor formatting or just like a wall of text or, even worse, bad grammar. Please proofread it. Please ask a few friends to proofread it. Please use paragraphs and punctuation and show your competency level in there. When somebody clicks on your profile, if it's all one giant block of text back button that's. No one is going to read that. We want it to be digestible. Most people are going to skim. Most people are skimming because the odds of your profile being the first one they clicked on is slim. They've probably clicked on a few, they've probably been doing this for a little bit and they're not reading word for word everybody's profiles because most of them are saying already saying similar things.
Speaker 1:So we want to break it apart. Make sure it's not too long or too short. Usually, ideally, we want 150 to 200 words. So try and hone in on that and use multiple paragraphs as you're doing that. So breaking it apart into chunks, I usually say two sentences, maybe three, and then you do a line break. So really chunking it out into sections. That's going to help drastically with just how people read it, how people skim it, how you can talk to them.
Speaker 1:If you're wanting to get cohesive on how you're doing this, here's a way to break it up into three parts as you're writing your bio or your description. The first part, the first two to three sentences, once again, are the client's pain points. What are they dealing with, what are they struggling with? Don't go too broad on this. You're not trying to help everybody. You are trying to hone in on the ideal client. If you have a specialty focus in on that, what are they feeling, what are they struggling with? Then the middle section is how you can help and, once again, using you language as much as you can. So what is what is therapy going to do for them? What is working with you going to do to their life? How does that help?
Speaker 1:If you are wanting to talk about your office, if you're wanting to talk about those things, post a picture. In fact, that's that's as we even going back to picture and bridging that gap, post a picture of your. If you meet people in person, post a picture of the office, even if it's empty. That's just visual, is going to ease some of that tension of here's what I can expect. They're no longer stepping into the unknown. They can visualize what they're stepping into. They can visualize you. Because you have a picture and a photo. All of those unknowns are getting cleared out and it's making room for them to take that action step. So, instead of talking about we meet in person and it's a calm and quiet, soothing place, just post a picture, Don't even talk about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's going to help with that piece. We're focusing on them and then finally closing. How can they reach out to you? With that piece, we're focusing on them and then finally closing. How can they reach out to you, how can they get in touch with you? Which is going to lead me to my final thing that people are not doing, which is there's no clear call to action and then mostly psychology.
Speaker 1:Today's profiles are making it really difficult for people to get in touch, for people to get that next step of help. We're not making it clear what that looks like. Get that next step of help. We're not making it clear what that looks like. What does it look like to work with you? So here's getting the help you need is easy Click this link, go to our website, email us, call, whatever that is going to be. I'll talk about my preferences on this in a second. Do say click here. Let's just say email us at this to schedule a 15 minute consultation. This call will just be a and kind of in one sentence, give them an outline of what they can expect on that call. Again, easing that unknown. Just what is this call for? It's a low pressure, just get to know you, opportunity to see if we are a good fit. It's a low pressure, just get to know you opportunity to see if we are a good fit, if we can help you. So just really outlining what does that look like? What do they need to do next? Please have a website linked.
Speaker 1:The number of people I saw on here without websites was too high for my liking. I truly believe you need a website. I don't think you need to go spend thousands and thousands and thousands on a web designer to create one. There's so many resources and tools out there, like Wix. You could go on Upwork and hire a contractor to help you design it if you would like. A website's really important. It doesn't have to even be robust. Even if it's just one page with pictures and some copy. That's going to help captivate and motivate them to reach out, and then a link so that they can easily contact you.
Speaker 1:This is all about the more information. Like I said, with Psychology Today, they limit you. I believe it's like 2,000 characters, 2,000 to 3,000 characters, so you are limited on what you can even write in there and we don't want our profile to be too long anyway. So people want to learn more. There's nowhere for them to go. Maybe there's something on your profile that they are still wanting to explore more, and if there's nowhere for them to go, again back button, they're going to move back. They're going to find someone who's got a website.
Speaker 1:I did that when I was looking for my therapist if they didn't have a website, because I was feeling really, really nervous, anxious about hiring a therapist. I'd never done it before and so I was almost looking for every excuse not to reach out, as funny as that sounds. I'm wanting to find one, but also I'm trying to give myself an out to not actually pick up the phone and call. So if the call to action was pick up the phone and call. So if the call to action was pick up the phone and call to schedule, I was hitting the back button. If it was email, I was more likely to do it, but I needed a website so I could go learn more about them, and I've shared on the podcast multiple times. My therapist has his own podcast. That's what ultimately made the decision for me, because I got to know his personality, just like I've been kind of hitting on throughout this episode.
Speaker 1:Getting to know their personality, getting to know you, is huge. So please include a website and then my favorite way to do it is to have a calendar link directly to your calendar so they can just book a consultation. Have it there. We are reducing friction. We are getting rid of friction. They can come to your website immediately schedule a consultation. They don't have to send an email, they don't have to pick up the phone and call While they are at their peak of all. Right, I've carved out time, I've sat down. I'm going to do this. It's important to them. They are emotionally at a high where they want the help. Give them the opportunity to schedule that consultation and, as best as you can, create space so that they can book with you within 24 to 48 hours. This is where having a team is super helpful. This is one of our stipulations, or something we track with my team is that if somebody goes to book a consultation with us, that they can get on somebody's calendar within 48 hours. It's not always going to be the case, but for the most part, if we're getting booked out further than that, then we need to either make some tweaks, make some changes, or we might need to hire we might be just short on staff at that point so making sure they can get on a call with you very soon Outlining what does it look like in that call to action.
Speaker 1:What are those steps take? All right, that's a lot of stuff I just threw at you. I recommend going back listening, pull up your profile, listen to this again and make these tweaks in real time. Do an audit of your, of your profile. Have some fun with it. Have some fun looking at other people's profile. Without being mean, I wasn't being malicious as I was looking at these, but go through and just have some fun saying, ooh, yeah, what is this? This guy put a picture of a bird which I saw, and what does that have to do with anything?
Speaker 1:So go through and find areas where you you can see where they're maybe lacking, and then find ones where you are like, ooh, this, this profile is really compelling. What are they doing? Well, what are the ones doing that are turning you away? Just be curious. Have some fun with it. Be curious, take notes and then go and evaluate your own profile, make the necessary tweaks, and I can't wait. Shoot me an email, make the tweaks and then let me know what has changed from what you're doing before to what you're doing now. Maybe sit down and how many Psychology Today leads have we gotten in the last 30, 60, 90 days and then, moving forward over the next 30, 60, 90 days, track it again and see do we see an uptick from these changes and tweaks that we're making? And then shoot me an email. I would love to hear how it has positively impacted your business. All right, I'm rooting for you. I hope it is just the. I hope you're just swimming in leads and clients your ideal client and that business is just going to grow exponentially Once you get your psychology today profile honed in.
Speaker 1:I do have a full episode where I talk about other ways to improve your psychology to today profile. Scroll through, find that episode, listen to it. While some of these are on there, there's also some other ideas and other ways that you can improve it that maybe we didn't hit on today as I was going through the mistakes that I commonly see. So check out that episode, improve that profile. I can't wait to see it and I'll talk to you guys next week. Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a practice owner that you may know If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice. Head to therapybusinesspodcom to learn how we can help.
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