If Social Media for Your Psychology Practice Feels Hard, Start Here
I hear some version of this from psychology practice owners all the time.
“I know I should probably be posting more. But then I open Instagram and just freeze. What do I say? How do I say it? Who am I even talking to?”
And honestly, I get why it starts to feel exhausting.
Because if every time you want to post you have to come up with the topic, work out the message, write it, design it and decide who it's for, you're starting from zero every single time.
That's the bit I'd change.
If social media for your psychology practice constantly ends up at the bottom of the list, I don't think the answer is another list of 50 things you could post about.
I'd start much closer to home.
I'd start with what you're already saying.
The things that feel obvious to you might be exactly what someone else needs to hear
If you're working with clients, responding to enquiries, speaking with referrers, answering questions from your team or simply running a psychology practice, you're surrounded by things worth talking about.
You just don't necessarily notice them because, to you, they're obvious.
You've explained something hundreds of times.
You know the questions people tend to have before they book.
You know the misconceptions that come up around your area of work.
You know the things you wish more people understood.
You know the sentence that makes someone go:
“Oh. I didn't realise that.”
To you, that's Tuesday.
To the person considering reaching out to a psychologist for the first time ever, it might be exactly what they needed to hear.
That's where I'd be looking for what to post.
Not at what another psychologist posted last week. Not at whatever happens to be trending on Instagram.
I'd pay attention to what's already happening around your practice.
The questions that come up again and again. The things people often don't know about your services. The parts of seeking support that feel completely obvious to you because you work in this world every day, but aren't obvious at all to someone on the outside.
And you don't need to use anything from a client session to find it.
Before you open Canva, you need something worth saying.
So, open your Notes app
That's it.
Please don't make this another job.
You don't need a new platform. You don't need categories. You don't need to colour code anything. And you definitely don't need to spend Sunday afternoon building an elaborate posting schedule you'll stop using by next week.
For the next week, just notice.
When you catch yourself thinking:
I explain this all the time.
People are always surprised when I tell them this.
I wish more people understood this.
We get asked this question constantly.
I've got something to say about this.
Write it down.
One sentence. Scrappy.
You're not writing the post yet.
You're just catching the thought before it disappears.
And obviously, we're talking about general themes, questions and ideas here. Nothing that could identify a client.
At the end of the week, have a look.
I'd be very surprised if there wasn't something good in there.
And don't just look for the obvious stuff
Your ideas don't all need to come from the clinical work.
Maybe your admin team answers the same question about assessments three times a week, but you've never thought to answer it publicly.
Maybe there's something about the first appointment that you wish people knew before they booked.
Maybe a new psychologist has joined your team and the only time you've talked about them was the obligatory “Welcome Laura!” post when they started.
Maybe you're offering something brilliant in the practice that barely gets mentioned because it feels obvious to you.
Maybe a referrer asks a question that makes you realise you've never clearly explained who your practice is best placed to help.
Maybe you've completed some professional development and it's changed the way you think about part of your work.
Or maybe you've read something in the psych space and immediately thought:
“Yes... but.”
There's something in that too.
Because the goal isn't to constantly invent brand. new things to talk about.
It's to get better at noticing the things already worth talking about.
One post is allowed to make one point
This is where I think psychologists can accidentally make posting much harder than it needs to be.
You know the nuance. You know the caveats. You know there are twelve other things you could say.
And because you care about being accurate and responsible, it can feel uncomfortable to leave any of them out.
But one post is allowed to make one point.
You don't need to fit everything you know about a subject into eight slides.
You don't need every post to become the definitive guide to a topic.
And you don't need to prove how much you know.
Say one useful thing well.
Simple doesn't mean simplistic.
And done is better than perfect.
Particularly when “perfect” has been sitting in your drafts for three weeks.
And please, let us see you too
There is another side to social media for psychologists that I think gets missed.
People want to see the human behind the practice.
Particularly when the next step you're asking them to take is to book an appointment and come and talk to another human about what's going on in their life.
So not everything you post needs to explain something.
Show us your face.
Introduce your team properly.
Tell us why you care about the work you do.
Share something you're learning.
Show us a little bit of the practice.
Tell us what you're excited about.
You don't need to manufacture a “personal brand”, you don't need to be dancing to trending music, and you absolutely don't need to share parts of your life you'd rather keep private.
There's a very big space between oversharing and being completely invisible.
Let people get a feel for you.
Because sometimes someone isn't deciding between therapy and no therapy.
They're looking at a few appropriately qualified psychologists and wondering:
Who do I feel comfortable reaching out to?
Being human helps them answer that.
A bank of good photos makes this SO much easier
This is one of my most practical tips.
Get photos you actually like.
Not just one headshot that has to last you for the next six years.
Have photos of you. Your team. Your rooms. You working. The little details around your practice. A mix of polished and more relaxed shots.
I recently got more than 450 new photos for my own business in a two hour shoot.
Am I going to use every single one? Hmmmm possibly not...
But now when I've got something I want to say, I'm not also thinking:
Okay... but what on earth am I going to put with it?
I've got years' worth of photos sitting there ready to go, and it has made posting SO much easier.
And if the thing stopping you is that you have no photos you actually want to post, send me a DM on Instagram with your location. If I know a photographer I'd recommend near you, I'll happily send them your way.
Make posting easier, not bigger
If posting already feels like another enormous thing sitting on your list, I wouldn't solve that by giving you a bigger social media strategy to implement.
I'd make the starting point smaller.
Start the scrappy note on your phone.
Pay attention to the questions that keep coming up, the things you find yourself explaining, what's happening around the practice, the things you have an opinion on and the little moments that make you think:
I wish more people knew this.
Let us see the human behind the practice sometimes too.
And when you do sit down to post, don't start with a blank Canva screen and try to manufacture something clever.
Open that scrappy note on your phone and choose something you've already decided is worth saying.
Notice first. Post second.
Because the problem probably isn't that you have nothing to say.
You're a psychologist. You have plenty to say.
The trick is noticing what's worth sharing before it's time to post.
And if you'd like a little help getting started, find me on Instagram and DM me NOTES.
I'll send you the simple prompts I'd put in that scrappy note to help you start noticing the things that might be worth sharing.
Done is better than perfect.
