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Old November 15th, 2010, 11:05 AM
William Reid William Reid is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Texas
Posts: 105
Default Re: Tennis, I mean, Life Coaching Anyone?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sk8rgrl23 View Post
But why do you not like internet listings? I haven't done these simply because of the cost, and there's so many out there that you'd have to buy into at least 20 of them to make it marketing effective. But not even the one in Psychology Today? I do have a listing on Google Places and LinkedIn.
Does anyone want to start an "ethics of marketing" thread?

I differentiate links on legitimate pages from paid links and listings. In my experience, none of the paid links, link exchanges, or directory listings (online or print) that one gets in emails is worth the trouble or the cost (for my kind of practice, at least -- but my specialty is one that discourages advertising). Some are complete scams or link the therapist up with sleazy folks. A number of nice colleagues and other mental health or law resources have posted a free link to my page, as I have with some of theirs. I don't think that creates many (or any) referrals. I have avoided LinkedIn because of what I perceive as some unfortunate email address book copying issues (I could be wrong). Being on some peer list-servs seems professionally useful in some cases, but perhaps mostly for sharing information & advice, or just collegiality. For referrals themselves, one might want to be on referrers' list-servs (e.g., general physicians, hospitals, etc., who use your services but are not competing with you), not those of peers.

I know a couple of colleagues who pay for sponsored GOOGLE search listings. I don't know how successful they are, but they look a bit unseemly in my forensic field. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but my clients (who are usually lawyers, not patients), and their audiences (judges & juries) often look down on experts who advertise.

I have gotten a few referrals from the fact that my website is listed (at no charge) on a specialized association website (American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law).

Search engine placement is a different animal entirely. It's difficult (and to some extent serendipitous) to have one's website come up on the first page of a GOOGLE search for (for example) "psychotherapist" and "San Diego," but if you have a specific or unique service, or carefully-chosen metatags, you may get good search engine placement. That's very valuable. (In my view, one should not respond to the many email offers we all receive about optimizing search engine placement. Most are scams and even those that are legitimate are very unlikely to know anything about bringing real clients to a clinician's site.)

But maybe it's just me . . .
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