You may be wondering how to improve your therapist profile to get the most referrals. Well, after matching over a million therapy seekers, Mental Health Match has learned a lot about what makes for a successful profile. This short guide provides our best advice for improving your profile.
We hope these tips help you get started with Mental Health Match. Remember – the most important part of your profile is just making a connection with clients, something you’ve spent years training to do.
Avoid A Lot of Clinical Language
While clients may have heard of EMDR or CBT, they don’t have a connection to those terms. Instead, say things in your prompts such as “retraining your nervous system to be less reactive” or “using logic to understand your thoughts and feelings.” Keep in mind that these more clinical terms are already listed in your Focus Areas and Approaches too.
Explanations in everyday terms, particularly those that showcase solutions, not the diagnosis or problem, create clarity and reduce anxiety for therapy seekers.
Define Your Niche
Mental Health Match is about the match. If you try to speak to everyone, it’s harder for clients to feel seen in your profile. When you define the clients you want to work with, you help clients feel confident they’ve found a good fit.
Here are two good prompt examples from high-performing profiles:
“I work with people who feel overworked and unappreciated. My clients are the go-to person for their family and friends but question who they are and what makes them happy.”
“I work with people who hold on to stress and trauma and are ready to heal and grow. Many of my clients identify as Black or Latino and are used to downplaying or avoiding the tough experiences that come with living in this world as a person of color.”
Make The “My Approach to Therapy” Prompt Truly Approachable
This answer is your most important. It’s the one that appears in both match and directory page results like this:
Along with your profile picture, it’s a client’s first impression of you and your practice. Explore how these profiles display on our directory pages, here, and with the example below:
Use a Friendly & Welcoming Photo
Photos are your first impression. They should feel human and natural, but still professional. Keep in mind that many of our clients are using mobile phones to search, so think of how your picture will show up in that context.
Make sure your photo has:
- Clear eyes, ideally without glasses as those obscure pupils and create glare
- A portrait rather than a full body shot (cropped below the shoulders)
- A polished, but not artificial look, e.g. don’t use any enhancing filters
- Bright but natural lighting
- Few background distractions
- Avoid anything that looks particularly photoshopped, altered or artificial
- Occasionally therapists hold pets in their photo, or include something that is a bit more specific, e.g. a men’s combat trauma therapist is wearing a camo military jacket and posed in nature. This is a bit of a wildcard, but it can work well if showcasing your personality suits your approach.
Here is a more in depth recommendation on taking a great therapist photo.
Always Add a Video
A simple video gives a client a sense of your personality and vibe. Profiles with strong videos always perform better than other profiles on our site. Keep your video simple, and in a vertical format. More than half of our clients are using the site on their phones.
If you’re struggling to know what to say, keep it simple. Introduce yourself, and then perhaps use our prompts as inspiration for what you might say. You can also pretend that you’re introducing yourself to a client at the beginning of a session.
Remember that you sit in front of clients every day and connect with them naturally and professionally. Do your best to capture that feeling in this video.
Here’s an example:
Practical Updates that Help You to Match
Selecting your Focus Areas and Approaches on your MHM profile is key to helping us match therapists with the right clients. Think of our matching algorithm as a translator, who takes a client’s needs then matches them with a therapist and their specific approaches.
Consider your specific areas of expertise as well as broad terms that might be inclusive of them, but try to avoid selecting redundancies, e.g. Anxiety and Anxiety Disorder.
Choosing more than ~10 Focus Areas will hurt your profile as it makes it harder for our algorithm to prioritize who to match you with, and it can be confusing to a client, e.g. it can appear like you’re a jack of all trades but a master of none.
Don’t Forget Your Fees, Insurance Details and Availability
Perhaps this goes without saying, but some therapists forget to display their fees, or only include one insurance. This limits the pool of clients you’re able to match with. Include all possible compensation in your profile.
Importantly too, our algorithm will only match you with clients looking to pay at or above your listed fee. Therefore, if you are cash pay and work on a sliding scale, consider lowering your posted fee if you are willing to accept clients below your posted rate.
Find more resources and tips for each section of your profile when logging into your own dashboard here.
