Referral Directories

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 you decide which ones to do, but I will tell you our biggest practitioners usually are signed up with two to five professional referral directories. Here's how you decide which professional referral directories you should join. You google your area, you google where you live or where you practice, and then you google your specialty. You might say something like this, "marriage counseling DeLand, Florida" or "couples counseling DeLand, Florida". Then when you search on google for that you'll see the professional referral directories come up and they'll say psychology today, psychology today, goodtherapy.org, therapy tribe. The ones that are on the first page you have to consider joining those particular professional referral directories. Now, I want to tell you some get good results and some don't, but a lot of it is not the directory but rather what you put on the directory. Let me give you an example of the things you have to have to be good, you must have a professional picture. Don't do a picture that's a home shot or anything like that, do a professional picture because when they see all these people they see all their pictures, and if you don't pass the picture test, they aren't going to read a word that you write. Now, therapists spend hours and days and weeks and months writing the three paragraphs that go on the second page but if they don't like what they see in your picture they'll never read your first three lines. If they like what they see in your picture, they'll read the first three lines which are on the first page. Your first three lines have to talk about your specialty, don't be wordy, talk about your specialty and talk about any other big things that you treat such as depression, anxiety, marriage counseling and things like that. But make sure you get them all on the first three lines. See, some therapists tend to be a little bit wordy, they'll say, "It becomes apparent as we travel through life that there are some things that we anticipate that don't necessarily happen the way we plan it," and there's your three lines and you said nothing. See, how much better would it be to say something like this, "I love to work with kids who are struggling to fit in." See how that feels? If you had a granddaughter that was struggling to fit in at school or if you had a son that was struggling to fit in at school and you saw that and said, "I love to help kids who are struggling to fit in." That's who you'd go to. Don't make it wordy, get right to the point, your specialty, the other big, what we call the big three or four problems, then get that in the first three lines. Because here's what's going to happen, if they don't like your picture they won't read the first three lines, if they don't like the first three lines they won't read the next three paragraphs, if they don't read the next three paragraphs they're not going to call you. You have to have good picture, good three lines. The other part of the three paragraphs isn't so important, what they see in the three lines they may very well call you from that. You've got to get on these professional referral directories. That's our tip for today. Think about getting on them, the average therapist that has a bigger practice is on about two to five professional referral directors.

This is Dave Kats, thanks for listening.