ABA therapy practitioners might consider word of mouth or another form of advertising as the main ways to help grow their practice. However, social media platforms are another way of helping you reach new clients and expand the reach of your ABA business.
Learn more about social media platforms, why you should use them for your ABA therapy practice, and the pros and cons of each platform.
What is a social media platform?
Even if you’re not a technically minded person, you’re almost guaranteed to have used social media services or social media platforms in some way or another. But first, let’s define what a social media platform is.
A social media platform is an online website or application that allows people to engage with each other via the internet. These connections can be based on existing relationships that you have with people in real life or can be built purely via online interactions. These platforms allow you to perform a variety of different actions, such as private messaging other users, sharing content, and growing your social networks by connecting with other users with similar interests or careers.
Why use social media for your ABA therapy practice?
As an ABA therapy practitioner, you may be wondering why you would need to use social media. The short answer is that it’s a useful tool for marketing your ABA therapy practice.
If you want to know why, here are more details on the benefits it offers to you as a therapy marketing tool:
- It can help you grow your online presence and brand and develop deeper client relationships through engagement online
- It can connect you with new clients from the millions of social media users
- It can help you better understand your pool of potential clients by engaging with them or using analytics tools
- It can help you attract new talent for your practice
- It allows you to promote your products and services
- It is a cost-effective marketing tool
How to use social media to market your ABA therapy practice
If you’re considering using social media to help promote your ABA therapy practice, here are a few tips on how to market your therapy practice correctly.
1. Choose the right platform for your industry
No matter how good an ABA therapist you are, you’re going to make things harder for yourself if you don’t choose the right social media platform for your business. Consider what your goals are with promoting your ABA practice with social media, and then pick the appropriate platform.
2. Create professional posts that resonate with your clients
While you may be tempted to use your professional account to post about your cats, how you finally hit your target weight goal, or the silly thing your friend did, remember that your clients probably aren’t going to follow your business online to get updates on your personal life (although there are always exceptions to the rule). Remember to keep your social media presence professional and to post content that will be appealing to your client, such as advice on managing certain autistic behaviors, or how your business and ABA therapy can help your child improve their outcomes.
3. Post regularly
The best way to stay in people’s memories is to remind them regularly that you’re there. Post updates and content on a schedule so that social media users will remember to check in on a regular basis to see what you have to say.
4. Connect with the relevant social media groups
Some social media platforms have groups that are dedicated to specific niches. If you are allowed to join these groups in a professional capacity, consider doing so so that you can grow your brand and connect with potential clients.
5. Try to position yourself as an authority in your field
If you have the time to commit to growing your social media presence with additional content, you should try to position yourself as an authoritative voice. You can do this by creating your own content or by sharing other content that your followers find useful or interesting. But remember to make sure this content is credible and properly screened. Nothing could be worse for your reputation than creating a video that’s filled with inaccuracies or sharing a blog post that has suspicious links in it.
6. Take advantage of paid advertising tools
While there are definitely ways to grow your presence on social media platforms organically, you can help speed up this process using a platform’s paid advertising tools. These tools allow you to create posts or content that will be offered to a specific audience based on your requirements and will appear in social media users’ content feeds among their usual content. Your paid posts will appear in these users’ feeds even if they don’t follow you, as long as they fall into the target demographic that you’ve paid to reach.
Best social media platforms to use
There are many different social media platforms, each with its own audience. As an ABA therapy practitioner, each of these platforms could serve a different purpose in your social media toolbox.
Number of users worldwide: Approximately 3 billion.
As a healthcare provider, the largest potential ABA therapy marketing social media space is Facebook. With approximately 243 million users from the US, the majority of whom are between the ages of 18 and 44 (according to Statista.com’s “Facebook usage in the United States — Statistics & Facts” and “Share of Facebook users in the United States as of August 2023, by age group”), you’ll want to use this social media space to reach people who either need ABA therapy themselves or who might have a loved one who’d benefit from ABA therapy.
Number of users worldwide: Approximately 2.35 billion.
Instagram is another platform with an incredible number of users, with approximately 127 million of these users based in the United States (according to Statista.com’s “Number of Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok users in the United States from 2020 to 2023”). However, it’s important to note that the demographics of this platform skew younger (according to Statista.com’s “Distribution of Instagram users in the United States as of August 2023, by age group”), with the majority of users being between 18 and 34 years old.
Instagram is also a much more visual platform, with users posting primarily images and videos, meaning it will likely require more effort to maintain a social media presence on this platform. Whether you decide this is worth it will be up to you, but be aware that you may not see as many conversions (“converting” someone from viewing your social media posts to performing a specific action, such as reaching out to enquire about your services) as you would on Facebook because of the difference in demographics and content.
Number of users worldwide: Approximately 950 million.
LinkedIn is a social media network for working professionals, which means you’ll want to use it to connect with individuals who can assist with your practice. For example, you may consider connecting with people who might be interested in working at your practice or following individuals who offer services that might be beneficial to you in the future.
YouTube
Number of users worldwide: Approximately 2.7 billion.
YouTube is another video-based social media network that has a very large US audience, with approximately 246 million users based in America (according to Statista.com’s article “Leading countries based on YouTube audience size as of July 2023”). Unlike TikTok, this video platform’s users are slightly older, with the majority being between 19 and 39 years old (according to Statista.com’s “Distribution of YouTube audiences in the United States as of June 2023, by age group”). This means that with the right type of content, such as educational videos or discussions on ABA therapy and other autism-related topics, you may be able to position yourself as an authoritative voice and promote your business.
X (Formerly known as Twitter)
Number of users worldwide: Approximately 350 million.
X, formerly known as Twitter, might be a platform you want to consider for your business if you already have an established network of healthcare professionals on the site that you can tap into. Otherwise, it could be incredibly difficult to grow a social media presence on this platform due to it being a very trend-driven platform.
That being said, you could use it as an additional platform for connecting with other professionals, as there are many healthcare practitioners on X you might want to build professional relationships with.
TikTok
Number of users worldwide: Approximately 1.1 billion.
At a glance, you might be tempted to start using TikTok just because of the sheer number of users. However, the majority of TikTok’s users are young, with approximately 60% of users falling into the Gen Z demographic (26 years or younger), according to the Business Insider article “The average TikTok user in the US is an adult ‘well past college age,’ CEO says.” However, if you have the time or resources to commit to this video-based platform, you may find it useful to engage with TikTok users on topics related to your field, even if these users may not start searching for your services until they are much older.
The best ABA billing provider for your ABA therapy practice
If you’re looking for a way to free up some time so that you can focus more on growing your social media presence, consider outsourcing your billing to a trusted ABA therapy billing provider like Missing Piece.
Missing Piece is a company with more than 10 years of experience in providing high-quality billing services to US-based ABA therapy practitioners. We provide a comprehensive, scalable, turn-key solution that provides you with access to payer and billing expertise and quicker reimbursement, which gives you more time to care for your patients, as well as the resources you need to help your practice grow.
Contact us to learn more about how Missing Piece is the right ABA therapy billing provider for your practice.