Why Helping Professionals Don't Like Marketing

More than once I tried to research the personality profile of a helping professional to understand why marketing is hard for helping professionals. I interviewed a psychologist. I took personality tests to try to discover the set of characteristics particular to helping professionals. All the personality tests I took recommended that I become a helping professional - counselor, healthcare professional, therapist . . . I am a helping professional.

This is as close as I can get to a set of personality traits for helping professionals:

• desire to serve others
• empathetic
• sympathetic
• compassionate
• intuitive
• strength
• altruistic
  

Why do helping professionals dislike business plans and marketing plans? Could it just be the language of the business world?

What I believe is that the same personality traits that lead us to be helping professionals are the same traits that make us resist marketing. Most of the traits listed above are right-brained, heart centered characteristics. Most marketing and business plans are presented as very left-brained activities in left-brained language with a lot of hype. I resist hype. The Super Bowl commercials were too violent for me.

I don't know about you but when someone is speaking in a language that I'm not in tune with it sounds like the teacher in the Peanuts comic strip - waaa, waa, waa . . .

What if it didn't have to be that hard?

*Photo from Flickr

by MAMJODH

Who Is a Helping Professional?

I tried to find an answer to that question and the closest I came was information on Yahoo Answers. A Google search for "helping profession" turned up even less based on that old cliche "more is less".

Wiktionary came close to defining helping profession. Someone had written that a "helping profession was a profession that solved a person's physical, psychical or . . . problems." I didn't like that either. Being the compulsive person that I am, I edited the Wiktionary definition of "helping profession - "A profession that nurtures the growth of or addresses the problems of a person's physical, psychological, intellectual, emotional or spiritual well-being, including medicine, psychotherapy, social work, psychology, education, life coaching and ministry."

Many, many professions fall within that definition, including yoga instructor, energy healer, massage therapist, nurse, respiratory therapist, surgeon, teacher, teacher's aide, audiologist, rabbie, priest, Reiki Master, life coach, marketing coach, spiritual guide . . . the list is endless.

Photo courtesy of batega / Josep Mª Rosell, Creative Common License, retrieved 1/30/09 from Flickr.

Honesty Sells in Social Media Marketing

Transparency is one of the buzz words in the social media marketing circles. Transparency is honesty and honesty sells.

Seth Godin in his blog today, Good guys finish . . . says that "spiritual business" is an interesting concept. He admits that there are a lot of crooks out there using dishonest strategies and scams to create more traffic and clicks for their websites but that generosity and fairness do pay off.

The good news is that the current trend in internet and social media marketing is transparency. Just be open and honest.

Marketing is about building relationships and relationships are built through connecting in an honest manner with the people you're trying to reach. Not everyone is tuned-in to your message. Not every one can speak your language.

If your message and marketing are open, honest and clear, people who are on the same wavelength as you will show up. With internet and social medial marketing, you may find out there are more people out there listening than you think.

Why a Photo Is Important in Marketing?

Chris Brogan, one of the social media and blogging gurus that I follow, made a post yesterday about Facial Recognition. Chris says that he realized the reason that he has so many faces on the first page of his site is because it humanizes information. His realization was affirmed by a flurry of comments.

Yes, Chris is right. Photos and faces humanize the information that we receive on the internet. It creates a connection.

For me it's also about reading a person's energy. Isn't that especially important to those in the "helping professions"? It's not about being attractive or unattractive. If you don't believe me, check out Seth Godin's blog. I follow Seth's blog and I love that cut-off, clickable image of his head. It tells me he has a sense of humor.

It's all about the energy.

Here's an example of how the energy of a photo works. I accidentally changed my profile photo on my Facebook page to the image shown above. My original photo was the photo to the right. When I asked a friend of mine what she thought of the new photos, she responded, "Do you want to look glamorous or accesible?" I changed the photo.

If you don't already have images and photos on your website, try to add a few. It humanizes your whole site and allows people to see who you are.

Introducing Enigma Marketing Coach

Through trial and error, I've learned the tips and tricks of marketing my own massage therapy business. I've learned what works best in print marketing and what works best in electronic marketing. Added to that I've learned how to use internet and social marketing tools for my life coaching business.

They say that any lesson learned of any redeemable value was learned the hard way. That's been true for me in learning about marketing. When you go to massage therapy school, they don't teach you much about real life as a massage therapist and almost nothing of value about how to market your business!

Fortunately for me, I have a knack for technology, software and marketing. It doesn't scare me like it does some of my fellow "helping professionals". I dive right in and test things out discovering what works and what doesn't.

I've consulted with friends who are counselors on what cell phone to buy or what computer has the best energy. They're attracted to the simple language I use to present simple solutions for their technology and marketing needs.

So here I am introducing The Enigma Marketing Coach. I provide marketing guidance for "helping professionals".

I don't work with big companies or even medium size companies. My ideal client is the "helping professional", mircobusiness or right-brained artist who isn't comfortable with technology.