On Solid Ground: Building Beyond Social Media

Camille McDaniel (00:03)
Welcome, welcome back for everyone who has been with us so far and for everyone who is new, welcome to our podcast. Hopefully you’ve had an opportunity to kind of look at some of the other episodes, listen to some of the episodes and get valuable information. So today I am coming to you actually because I am listening to what’s going on right now as I record this, relating to TikTok. And so what it made me think of was not building your entire business on somebody else’s land. And right now, in case you do not know or haven’t really heard, as we speak right now or as I speak to you right now, the Supreme Court has upheld a judgment that TikTok will be banned in the United States and if that ban actually goes into effect, it will be going to affect in about two days. That is going to be indeed devastating for many people who actually have built their business, their full-time job is on that platform or that is a major source of their advertising and

and way that they promote themselves or promote their businesses. And so I wanna talk to you a little bit today about making sure that we don’t build our entire business on someone else’s land and how we need to put things in place and what steps we need to just consider when we’re talking about building our businesses and promoting our businesses with multiple avenues, including social media. And the song that kept…

playing in my mind when I was thinking about what’s going on with TikTok and when I was thinking about not building on other people’s land. I don’t know if anybody out there has heard this, it’s old, old church song, old gospel church song and it’s, it says the words say, on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

That’s like the chorus. It’s playing in my mind, but I am absolutely not about to even sing that. You have to look that one up. So when we talk about making sure that we’re not building on other people’s land, we want to obviously start at the beginning. And we just want to make sure that our business has the Lord at the forefront. What is he telling us to do in our business?

How is he asking us to align the services, the way that we conduct business so that it meets his purpose for us and so that it meets his purpose for those he desires for us to serve, for those that he assigned to us. So we absolutely first want to make sure that at the very top of what we’re doing, we want to go to him in prayer. For some of us, because this is the beginning of the year,

and for for some there is like corporate prayer and fasting that occurs at this time of the year, although it can occur at any point in time in the year but I know that there just a number of of churches that may take part in corporate prayer and fasting and so if that is what you happen to be doing at this time of the year then

know go ahead and as you are seeking God and a relationship, a stronger relationship with Him and guidance and direction, make sure that what you are doing in your business aligns and fits with His purpose for you and anyone who may come to see you for healing. And then after that and after you kind of get clarity on what to do, we want to look at like okay

So what is this marketing going to be looking like? I know who he wants me to serve. I know how he wants me to serve. I have things in my business lined up, my policies, my procedures, my training and all of that. But now how am I going to reach out? What do you mean, Camille, don’t build your business on someone else’s land? And for those of you who have heard this before, then you know exactly what I mean. know, TikTok might be going away.

Facebook and Instagram are now owned by the same company and there have been times, even though it’s kind of few and far between, but there have been a couple of times where those social media platforms have actually just gone down. You go to those social media platforms and they will not pull up for you in a Google search and obviously behind the scene they have their engineers, their technicians working to try to get the platforms back up but while those platforms are down, people are not

able to conduct business and if your private practice depends on your Instagram page, your Facebook page, your TikTok page, your Pinterest page, then you want to get a backup because none of those platforms that I just mentioned do you own. And so so when decisions are being made they are not including you on the decision making process

And if they decide to change up the way they want to do business, change their algorithm and the way that they pick up certain characteristics, I know Facebook did that, Facebook had a change some time ago so that when you even pay to advertise on their platform now, you cannot use certain words in order to be found. And one of which is you actually can’t use like certain church phrases and things like that.

in order to actually plug it into their system to be found. So, you know, and that you’d have to look at more detail, but I know I tried to do that, kind of identifying certain things and they no longer allowed it. So you know what, they can do that because that’s their business and they make the rules because that’s their ground. They own it, they set the rules. But how do you make sure that you have a little bit of control

over things like a platform going away permanently or a platform going down temporarily and it impacting your business. And so in order for us to really kind of have a good plan, we want to first, after we get clarity from the Lord, we want to make sure that we have a diversified plan. So we’re not going to put all of our eggs into just one basket. That’s never ideal.

we’re not going to put our our eggs into one social media basket, let’s say it like that. Okay. So have a have a couple of ways that you connect with potential referral sources or with clients directly. Or if you do business to business because you serve other clinicians than with other clinicians. So it’s not going to be just through Facebook, just through Instagram, just through LinkedIn, just through no, we’re going to have to spread that out.

And one of the ways that I would say you want to start is just make sure that you actually invest in a website. That’s where you’re going to begin. Why? Because you own that website. You can control that website. You get to dictate what goes on that website when and how. And if you no longer want that website, you get to control it coming down. Now, yes, there are certain things that do happen with

web hosting companies every now and again, that’s true. Sometimes they can even have outages but really that is not frequent. So I’m really talking about something that you get to control most of the time and I would say a website is a perfect place to start. If you don’t already have a website, get one. You don’t have to worry about making it super extensive but you absolutely do need to have a place where people can find you.

On the internet, the internet is wide, it’s vast, there’s so much competition, go ahead and put yourself out there, make sure that you’re heard. In case you are looking for a website or know someone who is, my husband and myself have a company called Spectrum Sites, S-P-E-C-T-R-U-M-S-I-T-E-S dot com, and we do web building, web design.

for other mental health professionals to make sure that they can be heard, get their voice out there and we would love to support more Christian mental health professionals who are seeking to build their private practices. So check us out. The next thing that you want to make sure that you have if you’re having a website is you want to make sure that you do look into or invest in getting some ongoing SEO.

So SEO stands for search engine optimization. It means that your website is optimized to make sure that you are found when people go to look you up. And you can definitely use the search engine optimization. there are a lot of ways to enhance our SEO, one of which is the wording that we use on our website, another of which is the information that we put on our website, making sure that it’s fresh and updated and relevant.

to populations that we want to serve. Sometimes that is by putting videos on our website. Sometimes that is done through blog posts that we put on our website or articles that we hand out for people to download from our website so that when we are actually marketing and talking about how we support people, we can lead them back to our website and they can actually get something from it if there is a download available for them.

So again, it’s creating an experience where people are going and they actually have something to take away, whether information or whether an actual download, whatever you feel comfortable and led to do. The other thing is it’s important to be able to lead people to your land, right? Your website is your land. So you’re not just leading people to Facebook, you’re not just leading people to Instagram, you’re not just leading people.

to LinkedIn or to TikTok, wherever, you know, that’s someone else’s land and that’s fine. But how can people learn more about you, where you are, what you do, how you can help them? That should actually be your land, all right? Then the next thing that we wanna make sure that we also tackle is that knowing that your website is something that you can actually use in order to network with a multitude of people, whether that’s schools, churches, communities, other organizations.

know it really can actually take you a really long way okay. So now that we got that one out of the way, let’s look at something else that maybe we might shy away from, some people might shy away from and that is actually building relationships.

Like literally reaching out to people to say that I support this community in these ways. I would love to take a little bit of your time. If you have any, maybe we can meet by Zoom. If that’s more convenient, maybe we can meet for lunch if that’s more convenient. Or if you’re talking about certain places, referral sources where you would like to give them some information. You know, what’s the best way for me to send you this information? What’s the best time for me to come and drop this off?

I know you might be busy, do you happen to have maybe you know 20-30 minutes for us to sit and talk about how I might be able to support some of your clients or your patients depending on who you happen to be talking to at the time. For some people it may be proposals that you put together because you offer trainings and you would like to see how you might be able to help that establishment or that organization with their environment or their morale or their overall

health and wellness program. And so you might be putting together maybe a proposal, you know, whatever it is, it’s about connecting with people. Social media is wonderful. But at the end of the day, right, you have more control over the people that you actually reach out to and connect with in a very genuine way. So that again, if social media has a blip, or if social media gets banned,

then you don’t have to worry that all your connections are now gone because you had all your connections on this one platform. So let’s also look at how we might be able to identify people who also are supporting similar groups of people that we support. So for example, let’s say you happen to work with a lot of children. Who are other people that work with children? Well, school counselors work with children, pediatricians work with children.

Pediatric dentists work with children. There might be coaches if you happen to be into sports that work with children. There are a lot of individuals who work with children that might identify a need and you can be the person that they can consider, but you’ve got to make that connection and make the genuine connection to really better understand what their needs are, what they see, and then helping them to understand.

how you can support them, how you can support their patients or their sports team, know, the members on the team or whoever else they happen to be working with. So if you happen to find that you get a little nervous reaching out or this is something that I’ve heard over the years that people feel like it’s like sales. They’re like, I don’t really like sales. don’t really like having to try to convince people that

they should choose my services.

Well, you’re not really trying to convince anybody. I mean, do you believe that people really need support and help or no? That’s not a matter of convincing. First, you have to actually start with your own mindset. Do you believe that what you are doing is valuable? Do you believe that the Lord has called you to serve his children in this way? All right?

So if you believe that he has called you to serve in this way, then do you believe what he has placed on you as far as your gifts and your talents are needed? Or do you think that they’re just kind of frivolous and scammy? Right, so if the father has placed these gifts in you, then there is nothing frivolous or scammy about it. It is because we are in a world who needs healing and there are multiple ways that people heal.

So then you’re not at all, you are literally not at all trying to convince somebody or sell somebody. But honestly, it is kind of, and this is what just came up in my mind, so just roll with me here, but.

It is honestly like when the disciples were sent out, Christ sent the disciples out to preach all over the the nations and he said if they will not hear your message then dust, wipe wipe the dust off your feet and move on to the next town. And it is literally like that, your message will not be for everyone but you absolutely have a message that is needed.

And if you come up against some people who really, just don’t understand it, they just don’t seem interested in it, they don’t want to hear it really, then don’t be offended. Then the message wasn’t for them. Believe me, there are enough individuals hurting in this world. Go ahead and shake the dust off your feet and move on to the next town or as in this case, the next referral source. So don’t get caught up in feeling like you have to convince anyone.

Just make sure to state clearly how you can help, how you can support, how you can facilitate healing. If they don’t receive it, you move on because there are many people who need it and want to hear it. And that’s the same thing for anyone who’s listening to this, who maybe it’s not individuals that you serve, but it’s like more like corporate work that you do. Every corporation will not accept your proposal. That’s okay. Maybe you’re not meant for every corporation, but…

you will find the corporation you are meant for and that is the one that you’re going to put all your energy into. Okay, let’s look at what we want to also do after that because we talked about the website, we talked about wanting to create genuine connection with people just in the community like around you know where we are going to be or even if we happen to, let me say this, if we happen to be clinicians who service people over a vast

amount of land. So maybe you go state to state, maybe you go corporations even out of the country or people out of the country, you still want to build relationships. Now those relationships might be over zoom because maybe you can’t really get to the next state over that quickly, that’s fine, no problem. But you want to work on building connections that go just outside of social media. Here’s another thing that you want to consider and that is making sure that you build a list.

Now, I know everybody is not really high on email lists and actually everybody doesn’t even have anything to send out to people. But here’s where we’re going to go back to. If all your connections are on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Facebook happens to glitch and go down, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna reach anybody? What’s your backup plan? Okay, let’s say,

Facebook goes out for a whole day and you really actually want to get some work done to go ahead and reach out and connect with people. What’s your backup? How are you going to reach this group of people that you’ve cultivated? You’re going to want to maybe find another way to keep in touch with them. So your backup plan might be that even though you may not have email lists and things to send out every month or every week, whatever,

fine but at least have a backup so that if your social media goes down, you have another way to reach the individuals that help to support your practice. So I would say that when you are connecting with people, maybe you can even develop some kind of offering that is centered around like what you do and when I say offering, it could be as simple as a PDF with information based on what you specialize in.

So if it’s a PDF on keeping healthy marriages or signs to recognize when a marriage might be in trouble, signs to recognize when your teenager might be in trouble, things to watch out for if you happen to be dealing with addiction, all of that, it could be a really quick one for people to give you your email address, for you to stay connected and you can let them know, I would like to make sure to stay connected and if…

this particular platform glitches or goes down, I want to make sure that I don’t lose connection with you because I value you as a wonderful potential referral source or as a wonderful referral source. And for your time, I’d also like to give you this PDF to better understand how I support teens or marriages or families, whatever the case may be, or corporations. So consider actually getting email addresses.

Store them. You never know what you might decide to do in the future. And in the future, maybe those email addresses will be a part of how you keep in touch with people regarding trainings that you’re doing or new offerings that you have in your practice. There’s just so many different things that you might actually do where you really could benefit from having other ways of connecting and reaching people. Okay? So we want to keep that in mind.

And then in all of this, just be thinking about how you want your message to come across to other individuals, no matter what platform you are on. So you want to make sure that you brand yourself like over time in a way that makes you identifiable. Now, there are a lot of people out here who might still do that might do the same thing that you do. That is fine.

I would still encourage you to put your voice out there because maybe everybody’s not doing what you do in your area of the woods. Everyone is not you, so they don’t do it exactly how you do it. You know, there are many different things that you can do in order to keep people kind of reflecting on you. And again, like I said, website, connecting with people, reaching out to them every now and again, a Happy New Year.

How are you doing? Hadn’t talked to you in a long time. Hope all is well. How your patient’s been going? Or if it’s a teacher, how things been going this year? You know, how’s teaching going? Has it been a smooth year or rough year? You know, what are you guys needing? Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe it’s a podcast like the one that you’re listening to now, like Christ in Private Practice. What are you being led to do? How are you being led to shine your light?

your God given light to all the world. Let’s kind of start thinking about it and let’s start thinking about that diversification across all platforms just in case something happens and one of those platforms is no longer in use. You do not want to then be all worried that all of your income is going to go by the side because you actually had

all your eggs in somebody else’s basket instead of building up yours and maybe a part of your buildup is you do use someone else’s land a little bit. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that but you want to use a little bit of this land, a little bit of that land, a lot of your own land. Let’s have a nice portfolio, a diversified portfolio here okay. Hopefully everything that I’m bringing to you in this episode makes sense because it just came to me and I was like my goodness

let me go ahead and put this out there because I can’t believe how times are changing but you know once upon a time people were heavily on MySpace. Does anybody remember MySpace? Okay so you know and that’s been long gone and you know maybe TikTok will be following in those footsteps. I guess we’ll see what happens in a couple of days but either way you know what in all things just

your full trust in the Lord because He’s got you covered and there’s going to be a lot of things that change over the years and over the months and over the weeks and days but He will direct your path again right? Put your full trust in the Father and He will order your steps. So until we meet again I hope you have a wonderful weekend, a wonderful day, a wonderful month. I’ll be back in the next episode. We’re going to actually be talking about

how we are going to, it’s gonna be a two part episode and the first part will be talking about where we start with helping our clients to heal, starting with the source. So until next time.

CPP Ep. 20 On Solid Ground: Building Beyond Social Media