Social Media Marketing for Pelvic Health Therapists

A podcast episode (Pelibiz / Belly Biz) by Dr. Kelly Alhooie offering practical, low-tech social media strategies for pelvic health professionals. She emphasizes uncovering a deep personal ‘why’ to sustain posting, choosing and focusing on a single platform (she favors Instagram), batching content, studying successful accounts, defining a clear brand/mission, and using varied, authentic post types (quotes, humor, client features, behind-the-scenes). The tone is candid, motivational, and pragmatic.
Chapters
Welcome to pelibiz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I've grown my pelvic health practice, orthopelvic physical therapy, and now I'm helping pelvic health professionals do the same. Each week I give you the knowledge you need to grow your practice. Let's get into today's episode. What's up, guys? Welcome to the Belly Biz podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Alhuey. Today we're going to talk about social media and why. For some of us, it is so hard, and I am right there in that boat. I've always been on the campaign of social media. Stupid. Why do I want followers? I have other things to do. I'm too busy for followers and I'm too busy to interact online. And I can only get you so far that mentality, just FYI. So I'm here to talk to those beginners out there that are like, how the heck do I post consistently on social media? It has been literally the thing over the last two years that I have struggled the most with. And I would say over the last three to four months, I've really kind of found my stride. And I'm going to give you guys the tips and tricks. Coming from a person that's a not tech person, that doesn't really like the Internet and likes to see people in person and meet people in person and all the things and not really do the Internet, I'm here to tell you, let's get you on the Internet today and here's how. And not make it, like, overwhelming and confusing and all the things. Okay, so number one, this is the biggest tip I have to say, because otherwise you will give up on social media. What is your biggest why? Okay, whatever you just told yourself or whatever you just thought about, I need you to think deeper than what you just thought. So if in your mind, if you said my big why is so that I can take my family on vacation. No, no, no. What's the big why? Why is that important to you? Well, it's important to me to take my family on vacation because it means that I can actually have time with them and I can show my kids a different life or a different world or whatever else. Okay. No, but truly, why is that important to you? Well, when I was growing up, I never was able to go to Disney World. And because I didn't have money, I didn't grow up with money. And I always wanted to. And I just thought it'd be so cool to kind of get back to my kids to be able to do that. Okay, now we're getting into the deeper why, okay, if you don't have kids, I don't have kids. So for me, it's about my health. My deep why is I want to do things to improve my health, but also my deep why. My true, true why is I don't want you all to struggle the way I did when I was working two to four jobs just to pay my student loans, just to survive. And I did that for eight years and it probably killed my health. It's probably the true reason that killed my health for real, because I just didn't stop because it's not like I was living large. It was just, I was just trying to make ends meet. When you come out of school with 62, I think I got paid, yeah, $62,000 a year, which, you know, with taxes I probably got paid 40 something thousand. And then I had 200 plus thousand dollars student loan debt. And it wasn't like I was trying to pay it, you know, in a year. You know, it took me 10 plus years to pay my student loans off and I had to work two to four jobs to make ends meet. So I don't want you guys to have to go through the same struggle. And I think that's where my passion comes from so much, especially with female entrepreneurs is we can live the life that we want, we can take care of the kids, you can do all the things, you can make the money you want. When we do things, the reason why I'm, you know, really hanging out on this is when we do things that we absolutely hate. I hate social media. Okay, I'm just being honest here. Okay. When we absolutely hate, I gotta remember every single day, why the hell am I doing this? Okay? I'm doing it because I know that it's going to help and impact so many of you and no one else is doing it. So for me, I just feel this responsibility that, I don't know, I felt since I was literally nine years old when I told my parents I don't want to have kids and I just want to have an amazing career and help people. I literally said to my parents that when I was nine years old. And it's just something that's in me that I felt and I just, I just knew it and it's truly my passion. So you gotta find that. So that's number one. Because this, this stuff can get hard, but I'm gonna make this as simple as possible for you, okay? So number one, think about your deep, deep why? And don't make it superficial, because if you make it superficial, you're not gonna last in the game. Number two, stop saying you're busy. Because I use this excuse to myself over the last two years. I'm so busy. I have two companies. Why would I want to post on social media? It just means that it's not a priority. So if you're using the busy excuse that, AKA you're telling yourself it's not a priority, okay? And let's just not lie to ourselves. It's just. You're right, it's not, because I absolutely hate it. So I don't want to make it a priority. Instead, change the mindset because of the deeper why I have to do this, because this will help get my brand out there to then overall, it will help me to build my practice, which then my practice will give me time and financial freedom to then be able to do the things that I actually want to do with my kids or my family or whatever else. Do you see how that works? And if you don't have a practice and you have an online space, it's the same thing. Same thing. Number three on the list here is you gotta just take your shot in the fact of you gotta put yourself in the game. So instead of just being like, you know what? I'm just. I just don't like the way I look. Many of us females, we can relate to this. Like, trust me, when I started doing posting online, I literally remember it would take me three hours, and I'm not joking, three hours to say one sentence online. I put on a nice blouse. I ordered a fancy background from Amazon and hung it up. I had an apartment, one bedroom apartment then. And I put pillows and all the windows that the lighting would be perfect. I literally said, hi, my name is Kelly, and had a pause because I would just freeze because I didn't know what else to say. If that's literally all you can say, that's what I literally want you to put out there. And just expect that probably one to two people will watch it and that's it. And that's okay because you're just learning that's 100% okay. You only want one to two people watching it at that point. Okay? But you got to shoot the shot in the fact that you got to just put yourself in the game. It's like playing basketball. If you didn't shoot your shot and maybe you shot like 40 times and you didn't get it in the basket, but maybe that one time it went in that one time that it went in is like you, that video going viral. Okay. And that video going viral will bring you massive impact. Well, it can if you do the right things. That's for a later episode. Okay. But so you just got to put yourself in the game. So I always recommend the first video. It's the most easiest to talk about yourself. Everyone can talk about themselves. So the first video I would ever put on social is. Hi, my name is Kelly. My practice is this or my company is this. And we help treat men and women get. Get rid of bladder leakage, hip pain, low back pain and pain with intercourse to be able to return to the activities you love. That's literally all. All I'm saying. Putting nice music to it, posting it. Okay. Posting it on my stories as well. So I'm really talking about Instagram here. Whatever platform you want, you can use that too. But I'm really just talking about Instagram now. Here's my fifth tip. Just pick one platform. Just pick one. Okay? I know many of you guys want to be on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn and all the things. Just focus on one when you're first starting out, because if you try to do every single one of those, you're not going to master any of it. And you will give up. You will 100% give up. So my advice is pick one. For me, Instagram is easier than TikTok because I'm old and we just had it longer and so it's easier for me. Okay? So I stick to Instagram. It's not. That doesn't mean I'm on TikTok. But later you can get on TikTok. When you hire a team, know your. I think this is our sixth thing. Know your core mission in the fact of what do you represent? Like, what is your brand? So for orthopelvic physical therapy, like, that's where we help treat men and women get rid of bladder leakage, low back pain, hip pain and pain with intercourse to be able to return back to the activities that you love. That's. That's what I would put. That's my core mission. So if I have hip pain in my description, low back pain, I. I am going to be promoting those things. Okay. On my social media. If I talk to. My messaging was about chronic pelvic pain, then I'm really honing in on chronic pelvic pain in my messaging. Right. For pelvis. Mine is I want all women to be able to make more money and live healthy while doing it like, that's my mission of Pelby Biz is be healthy and make more money for all women. That's it. So my messaging has got to be around health and making more money and living the life that us females want to live and basically doing it all without killing yourself. That's the goal. Okay? And if you're, like, unsure on, like, what your mission is, then what I would do is go and research who did you admire? So go on Instagram, go on TikTok, whatever platform you want to choose. Who do you admire? Who are you actually following? Because those people are more than likely people that you admire. So go through and be like, oh, you know what? I want to be like this person. If you want to be like that person, go to their reels and figure out which ones, because everyone. You can see which ones are popping and which one are not with that. Then see, was it the music? Was it the way they did a call to action? Was it the hook that got them? What do we think made that video go more viral then? I'm not saying copy them. What I'm saying is take a version of that and you do some reel that is similar to that. Okay. Because if it popped already for one account, it could pop for yours as well. And so if you're also confused in the messaging, look at what the title they have in the bio and says, like, what is their messaging? Maybe that resonates with you, but maybe you tweak it again. I'm not copying. I'm just putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. That really, truly is authentic to me. Okay. And going with that, I would write down. If you're listening to this, I would write down. I think this is our seventh point or eighth point. Okay? To this would write down five accounts that feel authentic to your brand that are kind of like what you are doing. And I want you on the daily. You need to put them as your favorites. Okay? You can. There's a star. You can put them as your favorites. And I need you studying those accounts and writing down. This video did really well on this account. This did. This video did really well. Why start. You have to study this. I didn't even know this was a thing that you study social media. I thought you just post and said hello and comments to people. Like, I mean, this may sound crazy, but I didn't know. You have to study it. It's like, oh, light bulb just went off. You really have to study this stuff to see, like, what's. How are people making an impact and what's. And what's hitting? So. And then number. Let's just say number eight. You need to make a plan to take the freaking pressure off of posting every single day. I don't know about you guys, but when I was doing it just day to day, I'm like, crap, I gotta make a social media post. Crap, I gotta make a social media post. Do you know how many problems come up throughout my day that I have to solve? And by the end of the day, the last thing that my cre. That my mind wants to create is a creative instagram post or TikTok post on. On five ways to stop your leakage. Like, that's the last thing that's on my mind. So instead, this to me, was a big game changer. Instead, I batched content, and I'm sure people have heard about this before, but I didn't really try it. Okay? I didn't try it. And so what I did. And I'll probably do a live on this soon. And if you guys want this, just let me know in the comment sections on the show notes. But I have a social media chart, and it basically I put it in a Google format, okay? Or Google spreadsheet, and I have a hook. So what words are gonna make people stop? Then I have a problem, and then I have the solution. So in the pelvic health world, the. Probably the number one thing that we all see is incontinence. Because I think by the end of, like, 2050, there's gonna be, I think, like 30 million people incontinent. For real. Okay? So the biggest thing we're seeing is incontinence. So with that said, that's the problem. Now how's. What's the solution? So the solution could be you showing them one tip on how to stop their leakage. The solution could be you showing them a modification that they could do at the gym to not have leakage. The solution could be you showing them how to position in bed so they don't have leakage during intercourse. Okay? The solution could also be you promoting your practice and how you actually show people how you take them through if they have leakage and how they get. How they overcome leakage. That could also be a thing. The solution could also be you showing a video of you in clinic, like, working with a patient that has leakage and then seeing like, oh, wow, okay, this is what pelvic health is. I never knew what pelvic health was. That doesn't seem too bad. Okay, so seriously, on Sundays, I have Created this habit. I take 30 minutes out of my day and I literally just batch content. I write it out on the, on the form first. There's five slots. I write it out in the form of what I'm going to say and I literally say one sentence. Stop the video. Next sentence, stop the video. Next sentence, Stop the video. And then I put the three videos together. That equals a reel, put it with trending music. Tada. And then I post it throughout the week doing that. So I will edit all the videos first on the weekend. And then all I have to do is just find the trending music, which is easy, quick. It just has a little arrow if you're on Instagram. And then I just post it. That's it. So it's super, super simple, guys. It's way better than trying to every day trying to figure out what amount of post today. So that has been a big, big help. Okay, number, let's just say number 10 different ways that you, that you can show up and post on social media. I never thought about it like this. So I loved when I was able to break this down and be like, okay, what are different things that we can do? So number one, you can put up an inspiring quote and it just has words coming across the screen. That's one way you can show up. Okay, number two, it could be something funny. Maybe you tripped and fell and people always laugh at that stuff. Maybe you're dressed in a vag costume. That's funny. Maybe you did like a little skit with you and a partner because we're all public health therapists and like, that's cute and you want to put it on there. If you make people laugh and get them to show emotion, they're going to remember you. Okay. Also the third thing is emotion. So if I have something that's like, I had chronic pelvic pain and now I'm able to walk again and I'm showing a story on that. I'm gonna put emotional music to that. I'm not gonna put like upbeat, like kind of music, but I'm gonna put some sad ish music with that. Because you want to get people to remember your post and how you do that is pull out emotion. Also, you can do adventure. If you're going on adventure to find. If you're going on a venture to your mobile phone, physical therapist or OT and you're going on to someone's house to treat them, I would film you literally putting your table in the car. I would film you pulling your table out. Get Someone to film you setting up a table inside their house. Like that is an adventure. Like, oh, what is this person doing? Oh, wow. This is how she shows up to this person's house. Like, people are interested. Also, you can post about common pain points, like life leakage. For us, it's hip pain. We see a lot of hips, low back pain, dra. Ab separation. These are very common diagnoses that many people come and see us for. Also, you can post about how to treat them. What does treatment look like? What does dry needling look like? What's the benefit of it? You can just post different techniques. Maybe some active release McKenzie techniques. Whatever you're into and your core values really, you know, gear off of, promote that. So if I was more of like a Feldenkrais person and I believe that less is more, well, then I'm going to show me, like sitting in the room with a patient, not really having much. If I'm more of like only a manual therapist and I have all these tricks and tools and whatever else. And I may show that I do graston. I may show that I do dry needling to make sure that I do cupping. I may show that I'm doing art McKenzie, all the techniques, because that's me, because that's how that what I learned. Type what is what feels right to you of how to show up and what's truly authentic to you. If I'm a chronic pelvic pain specialist therapist, and I never really see athletes, but then I'm showing up with a CrossFit weightlifting bar on my social media, it may not make sense and that may not be so authentic to me. So stay with your brand on what you truly treat and like, what you truly believe in. Okay? It's not to say you can't show up, but truly, when you're starting this out, like, really just build on the core beliefs that you are about. Let's see what else I want to say. Also, I think this is very important. Know your role and you're like, what the heck? Okay. What do you mean by that? I mean by I had to. I had to learn this too. I. I had to learn what I'm good at. So think about this. If you're listening right now, think what has people told me in the past that I'm good at? For me, it's talking because I like to talk. That's how I communicate. I am not a writer. I misspell every single word. Okay? So if you, if you see any misspelling, it's it's me. It's actually me that wrote it. If it's not misspelled, it's someone else that wrote it. So I'm not a writer. I know that for a fact. I'm not a reader. I don't like reading. I know that I can talk. So if there's a reel that I need to talk on, I'm cool with that because I can talk. Some of you guys are like, oh, hell no, I'm not talking. So if you're not a talker, maybe a quote across the screen is better. Maybe if you're not a talker, just someone video you doing your work might be something, and then you could put words over top of it. If you are a talker, maybe you should film yourself doing a podcast and take clips of that. Maybe if you are a talker, you should film yourself answering your team back on Voxer. This is what I do, just film myself answering my team back on Voxer of different problems I'm solving. That's content. It doesn't have to be. I think this is a big aha moment for me. It doesn't have to be where you're sitting in front of your camera, like, just being like, okay, I'm going to do the thing now. Like that just. That doesn't have to be like that. People want to see truly the behind the scenes and, like, what's happening rather than, like, the fake version that you're putting on the Internet. When it comes to. I'm going to go back to, like, your roles, are you. Do you want to be the face of your company? Do you want to be the editor? Do you want to be the writer? Do you want to be being filmed if you're speaking on stage, do you want to be filmed when you're actually just working? Like, maybe you're working around your house, maybe you're working at the clinic, maybe you're working, like, doing stuff online. Literally sit there and film yourself from, like, behind or to the side and film yourself, like, typing on your computer. Do you want to film yourself? Like I said, podcasting, you can also do something where you're reacting to a video. You can film your reaction. People like that stuff. I don't know. I think it's weird, but people like to see people like, surprise and like, wow. And they just like, reactions. Film yourself, like I said, at your clinic, put up maybe some quote that your population, like, let's say postpartum moms, a lot of them can relate to a messy hair bun. So put up A quote about how, you know, you walk around your pajamas, around your house and a messy hair bun. Something that's going to really speak to that population, to the postpartum moms, post old videos. So if you have been doing this for a little bit of time, you're still not making, you know, traction on this. Go back and analyze what reels have actually been, you know, trending or actually did well. So if you normally get like 200 views on a video and you got a thousand, repost that, a thousand view video. So what I do is at the end of the month, I have my spreadsheet that I was talking about, my hook, problem and solution. At the end of the month, I go back and I go through that chart and I'll see, okay, which one had the most views. I will highlight it on that chart and then I will repost that video to see if it has more views, less views, or what happens. But if it did well one time, then let's see if we can do it. It can do well again. And you may tweak it. Like if the first time from, like, oh, this seems like it was. It went. It did good, but maybe it was too long. All right, let me just shorten this and then I'll tweak it and then repost it. Feature clients, I think that's massive. I think we should do way more of this and we don't do enough of it. So featuring clients is huge. Share other provider stories. Like, you know, if you have another PT friend or an OT friend and you're like, wow, they're doing really good, like, share their thing or share a chiropractor that you know that's down the street from you, and you're like, wow, they're doing awesome things. Like, would love to collaborate with them, share their stuff. Okay, So I think these are really important things to just, you know, really think about. And then when you start your video, when it comes to, like, the hook, you have to make sure that it catches someone's eye. So I'm not going to start my video like this. Hey, guys, what's up? It's Kelly here. No, because already people are annoyed by my voice or annoyed by. They're not getting to the point. So instead, start the video with. So here it is. Action. Did you know that 48 million people in the US will have leakage by the year 2023? That's going to catch my attention. Oh, she's talking about leakage. Oh, that's me. Okay. I can 100 relate in two seconds, we all do not have attention. Spanish. Okay, so you need a tripod. I would order a little tripod off of Amazon. Okay, you want to not take the video in selfie mode because it doesn't. It doesn't have as good a resolution. So you want to actually, like, shoot it with the camera that's on the back of your phone. Especially with those iPhones, because they have many different cameras if you have, like, the max. So it really is a good quality. Okay, you're gonna do that then. What I do is I create different folders on my phone. This is important because it's got me really organized. Instead of figuring out, like, oh, how do I go back and find this video that I posted forever ago? Okay, what I did is I made different folders. One is labeled unedited. So I put all my little clips. Remember, I made a clip, then I did another clip, another clip, and I put those three clips together, put all my unedited clips in an unedited folder on my phone. That's what it's labeled, unedited. I created another folder on my phone that says edited. So once I put those three little clips together, I move that video into edited folder, then I'll move the video into published once I've already published it, so that I can go back at any given point. When I go back through and look at the end of the month, like, oh, what video did? Well, it should be in publish because it's already put together for me. And then I could republish it, or I can edit it a little bit more, tweak it, and then put it back on. So I think really having a good system and organization around this is massively, massively important, so that it takes less of your time and you're not fumbling, thinking, like, oh, how do I find this video? And it's just more organized. So you're like, okay, I got this. Like, I can do this. When you have a system, things go faster. When you're like, I hope I get a video out today. It just doesn't happen. Because then we pull in the excuse of, I'm tired or I'm so busy Instagram, stupid. I mean, these are all the things I told myself. So I'm talking to myself, really. So, yeah. So then I put on the spreadsheet, and then at the spreadsheet, I go back and look at every video and. And see what number of views that it had. The more views, the more it tells me that that was more impactful towards people And I'm going to make more content around that. So that's, you know, that's really important as well. So hopefully you guys got a little glimpse of the systems that I tend to use. And I've discovered when it comes to posting again, the biggest takeaways. Stick to one platform. Truly know who you are. Truly know how you want to show up and how you want to, you know, represent yourself. I'm also going to say this for those that have seen me in person. They know that, like, I love to dress up in person. I love to dress up when I go out to dinner. I hate to dress up when I'm around the house. Okay? So authentically me is someone that's going to come on the Instagram thing and I get it. Like, trust me. I had this rash on my face. It's still here. It's not even a rash. It's an infection. I have this massive infection that I've had for a whole entire year and had to continue to show up online when everyone's talking about skin care and making their skin more glowy whenever else, try having a frickin infection all over your face. And showing up online, people are like, what the hell is wrong with this girl's face? But instead I had to authentically show up. This is my brand. This is literally what my brand is in the fact of. I believe that you have to take care of your health to have your business grow. And that's what I want to promote. So I'm truly authentic to myself. Then I have to show up with this whole infection on my face and not try to hide it. And sometimes, yeah, that's hard. Sometimes, yes, it's scary 100%. I'm not saying it wasn't, but sometimes after you just do the thing, it's actually also like, it's freeing to just be like, look, look, this is what I'm struggling with. Take it or leave it type, you know, people like, that's just what it is. So I, I don't know whatever you, you're fearing, because I know most of you are like such in fear about this. Whatever you're fearing, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. You cannot please everyone. And they sometimes people will leave comments but they truly don't know. Sometimes you're deeper. Why? Because you can't say everything in a minute video. So post whatever if people have problems with it and just say, you know what? I can't please everyone, but I feel good about this because I showed up authentically for myself, and I think that's massive. So hopefully you guys learned something today. Just. Just try. I mean, literally, just try. And then let me know in the comments if you guys want my chart that I use for social media. Just say me in the comments and I will get it to you. But hopefully you guys have a great rest of your day. Bye, guys. I consider myself a business and life coach. Are you ready to live the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur? If so, let's chat. See the episode notes below and go ahead and book a call. See you all next week.
More from Kelly

The providers stuck the longest aren't broke, they're just waiting #coaching #mindset

The death of traditional pelvic PT clinics #physicaltherapy #businessgrowth #trends

Cash Based Practices | Hospital Job vs Private Practice and the Math Nobody Shows You

Stop letting fear run your physical therapy practice #cashbasedpt #mindset #shorts






