Connecting with your potential clients through social media can be a game-changing strategy for any practice. Here at Kate Walker Training, we're already helping many entrepreneurs take advantage of this opportunity. But there's a downside of creating a social media presence for marketing purposes.
A current client finds you and crosses a boundary.
This episode is mandatory listening for any practice owner on social media. Through podcasting, blogging, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok etc., the relationships you can build with potential clients and other counselors in your industry are second to none! But what do you do when a current client starts engaging with your posts and crosses a boundary? How do you create an informed consent that specifically covers your boundaries on social media? What does damage control look like if things go sideways?
That's the focus of today's incredible episode. Review episode 17 and episode 18 to remind yourself why you are using social media in the first place (spoiler alert: because it's AWESOME!).
Season 2 is all about how practice owners can leverage the power of podcasting, blogging, Instagramming, and all the rest to go from "barely making it" and "overwhelmed" to running a successful practice and achieving balanced mental health.
The lessons I and others have learned on his journey are invaluable for any current or future practice owner, so don't miss this conversation!
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Connecting with your potential clients through social media can be a game-changing strategy for any practice. Here at Kate Walker Training, we're already helping many entrepreneurs take advantage of this opportunity. But there's a downside of creating a social media presence for marketing purposes.
A current client finds you and crosses a boundary.
This episode is mandatory listening for any practice owner on social media. Through podcasting, blogging, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok etc., the relationships you can build with potential clients and other counselors in your industry are second to none! But what do you do when a current client starts engaging with your posts and crosses a boundary? How do you create an informed consent that specifically covers your boundaries on social media? What does damage control look like if things go sideways?
That's the focus of today's incredible episode. Review episode 17 and episode 18 to remind yourself why you are using social media in the first place (spoiler alert: because it's AWESOME!).
Season 2 is all about how practice owners can leverage the power of podcasting, blogging, Instagramming, and all the rest to go from "barely making it" and "overwhelmed" to running a successful practice and achieving balanced mental health.
The lessons I and others have learned on his journey are invaluable for any current or future practice owner, so don't miss this conversation!
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
[00:00:00]
Introduction
Kate Walker: Hey, it’s Dr. Kate Walker with Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses and today we’re going to talk about something that scares most mental health professionals off of social media. I’m going to help you figure out a way to solve the problem, fix the problem, stop it before it even starts. So hang in and let’s get to work.
Hey badass. Let’s say you are following all of my great advice about posting and digital marketing and then you notice, oh no, a client is following me. It happens. And it could be something very obvious, like if you’re a Facebooker, you can go to members and you can see that, okay, I’ve got clients here, or it can be a little more stealthy like on TikTok and Instagram and you really never know who is following you. I mean, I guess there is a way to figure it out, but it’s not easy.
So, what can you do? Well, I’m going to do like I usually do and tell you two or three things that you can do right now, today, to address the issue before it even starts, and then I’m going to give you a couple of things you can do once things start going sideways, if they do. So if you’re listening to things and things have already gone sideways, don’t skip the first part, don’t skip to the end, because I think it’s still some good information for you and most state licensing boards are going to talk about maybe not this issue specifically but they’re going to talk about boundaries. If you live in a state that does not mention that, always go to the ACA Code of Ethics, the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics. 2014 is the latest publication and it gives you some great guidance, too.
So let’s start with addressing the issue before it’s an issue – and what I’m talking about is your consent form. So when your client becomes your client in the state of Texas, you must establish that special relationship through a consent for treatment form. And Texas license laws are very clear about what needs to be in the consent form or in the file, but really, what is the minutia inside the consent form? You have some leeway. Some things in the consent form, you have to talk about fees and schedules and what happens to your records if you die or become incapacitated.
But this is a social media policy that I’m talking about. In your consent form, having a social media policy is a great first step in letting your potential client – because they’re not your client until they sign it. Let them know that hey, I know there’s a social media thing out there and you know there’s a social media thing out there and we know we might meet up. Here’s what’s going to happen if we do. It’s kind of like that other thing you have in there that says, here’s what happens if I bump into you at the grocery store reaching for the eggs, or I go to my favorite cantina and I slide up to the bar and look to the right and oh, there’s you. Or I go to a cocktail party and I walk in and there you are. Right, you’ve got to have some policies for clients when you meet them out in the world, in the real world, in social situations. Now it’s more important than ever to have a policy that addresses what happens when you meet them in the virtual social world.
So a virtual policy, or a social media policy, you’re going to want to cover exactly what that is. So you know if you’ve been listening to me here in season two, we’ve talked about podcasts, blogs, TikToks, Instagrams, YouTube, covering anything that has to be transmitted digitally, cover that under your social media. So it can be something as simple as: it is possible for you to find me on social media, it’s possible for you to like and follow me on social media, just know that I will never acknowledge that on social media. Another thing you can point out is social media is not a communication forum. I know that sounds weird because there’s a lot of communication that goes on on social media, but letting your potential client – or, you know what? You can always give this to current clients too as an addendum; there’s nothing stopping you from doing that. Letting clients, potential clients, know that social media is not communication. That if they reach out to you and communicate through direct messaging or they tag you in a post and ask questions, that is not communication.
And you need to tell them what you will do next. Will you delete their post? Will you just ignore it? If you don’t tell them, they won’t know, and then they’re going to have all the feels. You aren’t responsible for anyone else’s feelings on this planet, but you are responsible for acting in an ethical way that follows your license’s laws. And one of the things that we know is that our clients can feel abandoned when they are ignored. Again, you can’t stop all the feels in your client and the best antidote for miscommunications is communication, and that’s what you’re doing. You’re giving your consent for treatment form, you’re revising your consent form to include a social media policy – that’s one piece of it, but you still have to have the conversation. Nobody likes fine print. Sitting down with a potential client and saying, here’s my social media policy. If you follow me and I can’t stop it, it’s up to you. If you comment, I’ll ignore you, I’m going to delete the post. If you DM me, I’m going to ignore you, I’m going to delete the post. Saying that out loud, with your outside voice, is part of clearing up the misunderstandings before they happen.
So the consent form establishing a social media policy is a great first step. Now, what I’m not including in here are Google reviews or public reviews because of course, Facebook allows reviews, or at least they did – I’m not sure if they changed their algorithms or policies. Google, of course, allows reviews. And so if you want to include a policy for reviews in there, most license boards prohibit anything that is for your gain at the client’s expense. Not a lot of state license laws mention Google reviews specifically, in fact, I’m not aware of one, so this is one of those ethical decisions that you’re going to have to make it on your own, but including it in your consent form at least starts the conversations.
So if you’re going to somehow reveal to the world that you are my client – because remember, protected health information belongs to the client; confidentiality belongs to the client. If the client wants to share their own information, you can’t stop them, nor should you stop them from doing that. You are entrusted with their identity, protected health information, confidentiality, contents of any conversations. You’re entrusted with that and that’s why you are held to such a high standard to protect that. So you’re taking care of it and the consent form is how you communicate to your potential client or your current clients how you are protecting that sacred trust. You’re protecting their information in these ten ways. So adding social media in your consent form is another way of communicating to this person, hey, here’s how I’m going to protect your information. If you want to let everyone know that you’re my client, if you give me a review on Google and it’s wonderful or terrible, there’s nothing I can do about that. Just know that I’m here to protect your information.
Now, you will need to check your own license laws regarding what to do if this client or potential client writes some kind of a scathing review or starts to slander you in some way because the rules about defending yourself against a client’s actions are different in every state, I think. Remember the thing at the beginning – this is not legal advice.
So this conversation you’re having using your outside voice with your potential client, you are saying to them: look, I’ll protect your information here, you’re responsible for it over here. Here’s what I’m going to do if I see this happen. I’m going to delete the post. With a Google review, I’m pretty sure you can’t delete the Google review, but that’s a podcast topic for another day. So with the social media, you can let them know that their post will be deleted. Now, the other thing to consider – this is a consent form, right? This is the pre-conversation. It’s letting them know if they out another one of your clients – and this has happened before.
If you get someone who is angry because their brother or their sister is in therapy or their spouse or their partner or their boyfriend is in therapy, or it could be someone who is not happy with the job you are doing with their child, with their brother, with their sister-in-law, whatever. And so they, in their I guess kind of twisted meaning well kind of way, they’re going to out you on Facebook, but they’re going to mention their child, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, partner, whatever’s name, well, if they do that on your post, you’ve got to have a policy for that. What are you going to do if you see that some third party has outed your client?
[Ad: 40-hour training]
So the law here is going to be a little bit different because you obviously can’t stop what a third party is doing, who they want to talk about or what they want to say. There are laws against slander, etcetera, etcetera. But having this conversation with your outside voice, with this person in the room, you can at least let them know what you will attempt to do. So again, you can let them know, as soon as I see the post, I’m going to delete it, I’m going to contact you, I’m going to let you know that someone else has posted and they revealed that you’re my client. I’m going to do X. I’m going to do Y. I’m going to do Z.
So I don’t know if you want to include a policy like, you know, if you start communicating with me despite what we’re talking about today and you want to use social media to talk to me and tag me and all of the things I’m telling you not to do, well, then step number two is going to happen. So here we are. We talked about what to do to mitigate the issue before it ever becomes an issue. But now here we are and perhaps you have a client who is following you on social media and they think that they are helping. They are sharing, they are liking, they’re thumbs-upping. They’re showing that they really adore every word that comes out of your keyboard.
Well, this is a tough one, and here’s why. If you’re using social media to market your private practice, we talked about this before in one of our episodes – if somebody engages with your posts, you want to encourage that. You want to like it, you want to say, hey, thanks for sharing that with your book club, Sally, I really appreciate it! Hey, thanks for the kind referral, John, I really appreciate it. You want to make sure that you’re stirring that pot and keeping that conversation going because engagement is a very, very good thing if you’re positioning yourself as an expert in the community, building your brand, etcetera.
Well, what happens when your client tries to do that, and crickets. You don’t like the post, you don’t call out their name, you don’t give them any attention at all. In fact, remember what you told them with your outside voice when you first met them. You may delete their post. Now, even though you’ve had this conversation, your client comes to you and their feelings are hurt because you’re not liking, you’re not calling them out, you’re not complimenting them, and in fact, you deleted the wonderful review that they gave you. That’s got to be a discussion. If they don’t talk to you about it, guess whose responsibility it is to have the conversation? It’s your responsibility to protect this boundary. Boundary patrol is your job.
So when you talk to your clients, even if they don’t bring it up, you may have to say something up like, hey, I noticed that you’re liking my posts and I really, really appreciate that, or I noticed that you shared a post and I really, really appreciate that. Just know that I will never acknowledge you like I do everybody else on social media and I do this to protect your confidentiality because that’s what you’ve entrusted me with. And they may say, well, how hard is it to like my post? Well, that could lead to more communication and remember, we are the biggest sabotagers of our own boundaries, right? If you put in your consent form “I will not respond. I will delete your post.” And then you make an exception, and you say, yeah, you know what? You’re right. If you just stick to liking my posts, I won’t delete them.
Well, now you have opened the door. You have broken your own boundary and your own policy. If that person has been with you for a while and they feel super comfortable with you and you feel super comfortable with them, now they’re putting more things out there. Anyway, you kind of see where I’m headed here. This is a problem you create when you break your own boundary.
So when things go sideways – remember, I hope they don’t. We’re not planning this out so they go sideways. We’ve done the consent form. You’ve had the conversation with your outside voice. You’ve addressed the issues as they’ve happened in a client session and you’ve had the chance to address each incident and you have been strong and you have stuck to your boundary. Well, then the third box over here is yep, well, things are sideways.
So if you skipped to this portion from the very beginning, hi. Hello. I’m glad to see you, I’m glad you’re here. What do you do when things go sideways? So for me personally, this has happened a couple of ways. There was a Facebook incident and then there was the terrible Google review incident. I’m not, of course, going to give any identifying information. The Facebook incident was the issue of a family member calling out another family member. The issue of a Google review was two partners, one wanted the relationship, one didn’t want the relationship, and my neutral stance really made the other partner mad who wanted the relationship.
So at the end of the day, I had to address two issues with people I would never see again. These people weren’t coming back for sessions with me. They were not going to have a phone call with me with behavior and boundaries. They made it very clear they didn’t care about my policy, they didn’t care about what I had said with my outside voice. So I had to do this on my own. Now, for a mental health professional, we are obligated to act in an ethical fashion and follow state and federal laws. If you don’t already have one, I need you to Google something called an ethical decision making model. Print it out, put it in your back pocket, take a picture of it, do whatever you’ve got to do. But anyone in our business must have an ethical decision-making model.
So a typical ethical decision-making model will do the following. Okay, literally, I just google ethical decision-making models. There are scholarly articles, and those are wonderful. I always put in the qualifier “pdf” because I want something I can download. But here’s something that just popped up: a framework for ethical decision-making. Step one: identify the ethical issues. Okay, well, if somebody is calling you out on social media or a Google review, or they’re revealing the identity of another person, the ethical issue is probably boundaries, not your hurt feelings. That’s the part that hurts, your ego, but in the case of someone calling out another family member, the issue is confidentiality, and then whatever you do next is going to affect boudnaries and confidentiality as well.
Step two: get the facts. Well, the facts are in front of you and they are being transmitted through the world wide web. This is happening. It’s in front of you. Other facts are there may not be a lot of recourse through Google or Facebook. There’s not a lot of ability on your part to shut down a Google review. Another fact is you may be able to take down the post on Facebook, you may not. There was a time where if it was left in the review section, you couldn’t take away the review without shutting down the ability to get reviews. That may have changed. So where this happens to land, if it’s happening just in your feed or if it’s happening in a review section, those facts will impact your decision.
Evaluate alternative actions. So what would happen if you did nothing? What would happen if you did something? What would happen if you address it? What would happen if you ignore it? Choose an option for an action and test it – don’t implement it yet, just test it. Do this kind of what if game. This is a great time to get consultation. Sit down with a colleague and say, okay, I have a couple of options here I want to test with you. You kind of push back, tell me what I would be facing if I did X, tell me what would happen if I did Y, tell me what would happen if I did Z. And then, finally, once you’ve consulted, implement your decision and reflect and wait for the outcome.
So if you’re listening to this part of the podcast because something has gone sideways, get your ethical decision-making model in front of you, contact your malpractice insurance. If you’re a member of a professional organization, they probably have attorney privileges for you. You can contact an attorney and just get a quick phone consultation. Call a trusted colleague. Ask if you can sit with them and just bounce some ideas off. And then start to go through these steps.
If you’re listening to this part of the podcast and I have just scared the bejeezus out of you, well, I’m sorry, I’m usually not that person. I don’t want to scare people. The reality is, though, if you’re in private practice, you’re right up there with Joe’s Restaurant. You’re going to have people who love you and you’re going to have people who hate you. And with social media, there’s an element of anonymity where people just feel like they can kind of do and say whatever they want. They may troll you just because they’re bored that day.
Many of our clients are dealing with issues where the topic we’re talking about is kind of enticing. And so that’s another thing to remember, too. I could probably kick it back to step one. If you deal with a particular population that you know would sort of be enticed, triggered, whatever, about this issue, well, then maybe develop some sort of an incognito profile. I know on Facebook, you have a personal profile and a professional page. If you have two parts to your practice, so let’s say you have a clinical part and a course creation part like me, you might not want to market on social media at all for your clinical part and save all of your social media part for your course creation.
Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t have to have these conversations. You’re out there. People can find you. They can do what they do. So you still may have to have the outside voice conversations and of course have a policy in your informed consent. But if you find yourself here at step three and things are sideways, always check with a trusted legal counsel to see what the best option is. Consult, consult, consult. Action. Do a thing. Take action somehow and do it in the best interests of the client. And then wait for what comes next. I know that’s scary, and I know that’s probably not a great answer to soothe your nerves. But the fact is, you, Joe’s Restaurant, we are all in business and that puts us in a vulnerable spot. It’s not so vulnerable, though, that you can’t do this. You can do this. Your fear is much greater than the reality.
Have you ever seen those memes where it’s like, “I thought quick sand would be a much bigger issue as an adult based on the content of my TV watching when I was a kid”? Our head is full now of this step three that I just gave you when really, what I want you to focus on is the step one. Get your consent form in place. Get your social media policy going in there. Have the conversation before anything happens and then go back and listen to my podcast about the why of social media and digital marketing. Set some goals and KPIs so you know if it’s actually working. What you may discover at the end of the day is that you don’t need social media marketing at all but you love blogging and people are sharing your blogs and it’s helping people. Or you get people listening to your podcast and downloading your podcast or they’re coming to you from your podcast to become one of your clients.
So please don’t give up on social media – all social media – because of this episode. Now start to really have some thoughtful thoughts about which platform might work best for you as you get your content calendar together.
Alright guys, you can do this. You can do this. You’re too important to your community to lose to the fear of something that might happen when you can focus on what you can do to prevent and mitigate. I hope that made sense. You guys are awesome. This is Dr. Kate Walker. Have a wonderful day and I’ll see you next time.