Top Mistakes I See Chiropractors & Other Health Pros Make with Instagram Marketing (And How to Fix Them) PART 1 [Episode 94]

Hello, my pumpkins, or should I call you now my Christmas trees, my winter, my holiday trees. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode is going to be, as soon as I got the whole outline written out, I was like, okay, this is going to be two episodes because it's going to be a little lengthy. But it is the top six mistakes that I see.

These episodes are going to be more focused on brick and mortar, chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage, that type of thing, versus online business owners. I know I have a lot of online business owners still in my audience, or I have a lot of brick and mortar who are adding some type of online component. I just have to be honest.

Teaching online business is just not my favorite thing. And I have a lot of people I can send you to. So if you ever need, you're like, Hey, I don't need to learn these things. Like I have a huge network of people who I trust to help you with the online business part. And like I said, it's not saying I'm not going to ever talk about it and not talk about it any.

Um, But like I said, so this episode is the top six mistakes I see brick and mortar health practitioners making and how to fix them on Instagram. And how I came up with these top six mistakes is just from Yeah, almost six years of doing this actually January will be my six year business anniversary and we're almost 100 episodes on the podcast, which reminds me if you have not let yet left me a rating or a review, can you please do so?

I want to say if it's apple, you can do the rating and the review. If it's podcast podcast, Spotify or Google podcasts, I believe it's just a rating, but yeah, I would appreciate it. It helps me out a lot. And also, if you can follow the show, that also helps me out a lot and helps me to this. This takes a lot to produce a lot this much free content, and I love doing it, but that's just one like simple, easy, free way you can support me.

So I appreciate that so much. So without further ado, like I said, here's going to be part one. of six common mistakes. So today I'll cover mistakes one through three. And in next week's episode, I'll cover four, five, and six.

Hey, welcome to holistic marketing simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions. And you didn't go to school to learn how to be a holistic Full time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day every day.

So let's come hang it out while we chat all things, even your marketing and my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote should to a, I get to more dream patients and clients. Hi, I'm Melissa Birdsell and I'm a chiropractor in Moline, Illinois, and I listen to the Holistic Marketing Simplified podcast.

Diving right in to mistake number one. And It is your Instagram bio is probably not optimized for a couple different things. The first thing is it is not optimized for search. I've talked about this multiple times before. If you're a visual person, I will link a free blog post that I have in the show notes on how to set up your Instagram profile properly.

But when you go to your profile, And you tap the edit profile button. This is going to be a lot easier to understand if you're kind of like looking at it. There are only two things that are searchable. That is your at handle. So like at X, Y, Z chiropractor. That is called your username in that edit profile.

So those two things are your handle and your username. Those two, those are synonyms. Okay? So that one is searchable, and then there's a name line, and that name line is what shows up in bold on your profile that is also searchable. Those are the only two fields that when someone goes to type something into the search bar on Instagram that will populate.

For example, if I have just moved, like I live in Cincinnati now and I've just moved to Cincinnati and I'm trying to find a massage therapist and I type in Cincinnati massage, if you don't have Cincinnati massage in your name, your username, that at handle or that bold name line anywhere, you're not going to populate in search.

Now, to be fair, I do understand that. Majority of the people use Google as their main way to search things, but a lot of people search on Instagram too, because sometimes I prefer the way people create content on Instagram versus how I find it on Google. So yeah, people definitely still are searching and you don't want those two lines to be redundant.

Meaning if you're at handle, your username is. at XYZ Chiropractic, you don't also want the name line to say at XYZ Chiropractic because that is redundant. You are essentially wasting about 45 to 50 characters of searchable real estate in that name line section. So I like to have what I call my trifecta, which is Your name as the, I, I come to so many profiles and there's no, there are no provider names on there.

And I understand that a lot of people are in like really larger clinics now. And if you have like multiple, like say you've got like, my friend Rebecca was saying she has like seven providers now. So I get that. That gets a little tricky to have seven different providers names in your bio. I think there's still a way to do it, but obviously, yes, that gets a little tricky.

I would at the very least, like, okay, say that there's, you're the main provider and you've been in town for 30 years and let's say you have two associates and the two associates have only been there in town for a year. Like, I still think it's okay to just have your name as the searchable, because you got to think about what are people actually searching.

So if people are out and about in town at the grocery store or at their kid's soccer practice, rather than saying, Hey, you should check out XYZ chiropractic. They might not call your business, call you by your business name. They might refer to you by your name. Hey, you should see Dr. Smith. So you want to make sure you have your name and your business name, as well as some type of keyword like chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, whatever in, um, I'm not saying you have to have all three of those in the name line.

I'm saying if your username, your, your at handle is your business name, for example, then you want to use the name line for your name. Plus a searchable keyword. Now, we're not going to get cutesy with the searchable keywords. This is not the place to be unique. This is literally the place that you only think about, like, what are people actually typing in to search, okay?

So I've used this example before. The um, April Adams, I call her my not therapist, who I've worked with, um, for a long time with subconscious work. She calls herself jokingly a mental hygienist, which I think is adorable. That's great to have in her bio section, but she doesn't want that in the name line because no one is searching mental hygienic, hygienist, hygienist.

Okay. We've never successfully fit three doctor's names into a name line, but we do have clients where I'll give you a real life example. Our client, uh, Dr. Alicia Davis. So her username is at Davis Cairo NC, she's in North Carolina. And then on the name line, we have doctors Davis and Kessel. And then we have Raleigh, Chiropractor.

Oh my gosh, I totally forgot to say the other, the third thing, which was your location. So that's the, the trifecta maybe I guess location I meant to say was kind of more of like the keyword. So again, somewhere in that username and in the name line should be your business name, the actual. Provider's name or names, a location keyword and a keyword of what you do.

Now you only get around, like I said, 50 characters in that name line. So I like to use this free website, just Google character counter. It's like character counter online. org or something like that. Because you don't want to go, Instagram will only let you change that name line. It's either once or twice in a 14 day period.

So you don't want to go messing around playing with characters in the Instagram app itself. You want to go to that website, play around with the ideas there first. So I get messages all the time like, Oh, mine doesn't perfectly fit this formula that you gave me. That's fine. It doesn't always fit for everybody, right?

Like I have a client who has a short. Last name and a short city name. So for them, it's super easy to fit everything. And it's just one provider, right? It's super easy. So don't like analyze this to the nth degree. It's not that big a deal. Figure out what you feel like is the most important that people are going to be searching.

You also don't want any type of weird abbreviation of your name or your city name because that's also not what people are searching. I've seen some handles sometimes and I'm like, what does that mean? They're like, oh, it's the abbreviation of my clinic name. I'm like, well, nobody's. Nobody's searching that like, so it needs to be searchable.

The other caveat disclaimer that I'll give here is you really don't want to be messing around changing your username, that at handle, unless like, let's say your account's either dead, like you've never really used it or it's brand new because that is what actually changes your Instagram, like your unique URL.

So if you have a QR code. Or you have like a QR code for people to follow you on Instagram or you have your Instagram linked on your website or in your emails. If you change your username, it's going to change your URL and then the links are going to be broken, which is fine. You can just go fix the links.

It's just something to. Note. So for example, my unique URL to get someone to follow me on Instagram is instagram. com slash Mollie A. Cahill because my username is Mollie A. Cahill. So just something to be aware of there. In this same category, and like I said, let me go back before I move on to the next topic of what's in your bio.

Reminder that all you have to do, I have a free blog post that like, if you're like, I have no idea what you're talking about and you want to see it visually, I have it broken down in a free blog post, um, linked in the show notes, or you could even Google how to set up your Instagram profile properly, Molly Cahill, and it'll probably come right up for you.

The next thing in your bio, so this is still under mistake one in your bio, but the next thing I see in bios is very vague. Language, or jargon, subluxation based chiropractic for the whole family. I mean, if I were to go pull every single one of my friends, they'd be like, I have no idea what that means. We help women restore their vitality.

I mean, that sounds cool. Uh, I don't really know what you do. I'm still a little confused. Helping families get back to their best health. Uh, I mean, not bad, but I still don't quite understand what it is that you do. So I say, don't be afraid to get really granular, really specific in your bio. And it doesn't have to be in the form of an I help statement.

It can be. I always use one of my favorite, and this is a, she's a online health coach, but I always use one of my former hub students as an example, because it was like, We crafted her bio to say, I can't remember exactly, but it was something like helping women over 40 regain their energy, lose stubborn belly fat and find their purpose as empty nesters.

Like very, very specific. So it's okay. Like I said, it doesn't have to be in sentence form. If you're kind of having like a block around it, you can literally just do bullet points if you want. So it can be like pregnancy, Postpartum, pediatric, like you wouldn't even list out things like that. If you have a, like a, like a really subspecialty that you help, like maybe you see a lot of babies with tongue ties, like put that in your bio.

You are like a bajillion times more likely that's scientific math to get someone to actually hit the book button with you if you are super specific like that. So. Really just try to avoid, like I said, these really vague, general ideas of better health, and try to get more granular. And if you're like, I don't know where to even start, like, you're going to leave out some things.

That's okay. It's still going to, Like people can make the leap of like, Oh, if they help with this and this, they can probably also help me with this. Like if you list, let's just say three main things you help with in your bio and someone doesn't see one of their exact things they need help with, but it's like similar, they're going to still book with you.

So even my friends who, let's just say, do like gut health, for example, instead of saying gut health, we list out things like chronic heartburn, indigestion, um, constipation, diarrhea, like that kind of thing, people are like, Oh, I have that versus, I don't know. Do I have gut health issues? I think I do. I've been hearing this thing about gut health recently.

So it really does make a difference to be super specific. Um, there's a saying in marketing, I can't remember the exact wording, but it's something about how like vague doesn't sell, general doesn't sell. Anyway, Pete, you gotta be super specific, okay? And I have done like 50 million podcast episodes around your messaging, so you can go back to any of my podcast episodes that have the word messaging in the title.

And you'll find how to break this down a little easier. All right, so that was mistake number one. Moving on to mistake number two is not optimizing for local search. So, as I said in the intro, I'm talking a lot more about brick and mortar. Um, or even if you're not brick and mortar, like say you draw a local audience.

So, not optimizing for local search is like a big issue that I see. And here are a couple ways that you can make sure that your Instagram posts are being seen by the right people locally. And side note, before I dive into these tips. This is why I love, this is probably my favorite thing. This will be why I love teaching local marketing more than online business marketing because it's kind of like my content.

Like I, if I were to go viral, it's not always going to be a great thing for me because I am so niche. And the same thing, if you're brick and mortar, you are so niche just simply because of your location. So if you go viral, It doesn't always like, we've seen both sides of the, of the coin. Okay. We've seen a client go viral who literally texted us and said, our phone's ringing off the hook for no patients.

And then that same exact client went viral with a different reel. And then she gained a ton of followers. But when we look at her follower location, a majority of them are in Mumbai. So there really is, like I said, not always great to go viral. It's not always bad either. Like I said, sometimes it can lead to an influx of new patients or clients, but that's just one, like I said, why I love teaching local marketing is because you just don't have to have the sheer volume as someone who, let's say I'm like a fashion influencer and I make a dollar or 20, probably 25 cents for every pair of Amazon, you know, Lululemon legging dupes that I sell you.

I need to have like a thousand comments to even make a living. Like for you, That's not the case because you run what's called a conversion account, not an influencer account. And actually I have a post planned about how we have one client who she averages less than five comments per Instagram post probably and she gets like 10 new patients a week from Instagram.

So it's just cool because you really don't, people see that and they're like, Oh, it's not working. I'm not getting comments. But it's like, that's not necessarily true. The indicator when you have a conversion account and you're drawing a local audience, which is really, really cool. So here, uh, here are the ways you can optimize for local search.

One is hashtags. Uh, I see a lot of like viral Instagram quote gurus are like, hashtags are dead, blah, blah, blah. That's just not true. I can show you statistics. I mean, we don't, I wouldn't, not every single post of our clients gets like tons of views from hashtags. Some do. Like we had one the other day that had like 300 extra views just from hashtags.

But if you're not listing as maxing out on as many local hashtags as possible, then you're missing out on not only keyword search, because the cool thing about hashtags on Instagram now in 2024 and 2025 is that they double as. Keywords. So if I do hashtag Cincinnati, oh, 'cause hashtag Cincinnati is too big.

So if you live in a big city, check the saturation of your hashtag. You want it to be lower. I would say for, for local areas less than 500,000. So let's say I'm using hashtag Cincinnati. Oh, that also, not only can people find me on that hashtag page, but on Instagram, but people can also find me just by typing in the word Cincinnati.

Oh, I have the. It's like doubles as a keyword. I have a whole blog post as well, free blog post that I walk you through step by step on choosing hashtags. Um, and part of that is choosing local hashtags. We'll also make sure that blog is linked in the show notes cause I don't want to get too much in the weeds about picking hashtags, but I will just say max out on as many local hashtags as you can find that have a search volume of, I would say.

at least a thousand, anywhere from like a thousand to 500, 000 is going to be, you know, probably what I would look for. And you see it right there. When you type in the word Cincinnati, it's like, let's say I'm a prenatal chiropractor in Cincinnati and I typed in to the Instagram search bar, hashtag Cincinnati mom, you'll see exactly how many uses it has right there.

So that's how you know your search volume. So like I said, Max, if you're in a small town, you're not going to find as many local hashtags that work for you. So don't be afraid to like, like literally brainstorm, like what all areas of town do I pull people from? And just write all of that down. This is how anytime we onboard a new client, we have them list out all of the local cities, towns.

Like if you're like where I live, there's a lot of townships. I don't actually live in Cincinnati. I live in Westchester. So like there's a lot of little, like I said, little townships. So listing all of that out and then also adding on little qualifiers like mom, local, local business, chiropractor, massage, whatever.

So like hashtag Cincinnati local, hashtag Cincinnati mom, hashtag Cincinnati. massage, those can be, like I said, max those out. And if you're in a really small town, it might not be, like I said, you, you know, your area better the best, but if you're in a really small town, let's say an hour outside of Milwaukee, would potential people still be looking at the hashtag Milwaukee mom?

Maybe, I don't know. You know, your people better than I do on, like I told you that hashtags double as keywords. So I'm going to go into keywords a little bit more because that's another way to optimize for local search. So I can't remember exactly when this all rolled out, but Instagram is now key worded.

It used to not be. And when I say keyword, it's like literally just like Google. So I was giving you an example of what happens if you type in hashtag Cincinnati mom, but you can even just type in. Cincinnati mom, probably, kissing into the search bar without the hashtag. I always use green smoothies as my example when I'm demonstrating keywords.

If you just type in the word green smoothie with no hashtag into the Instagram search bar, it's going to populate a ton of posts and reels. That have green smoothie either as the photo, yes, it can, it knows what the photo is of, the text over the actual, if it's a graphic, if it says the, if it's a graphic that says green smoothie over the graphic, gonna pick that up.

If it's a reel that says green smoothie over the video, it's going to pick that up. If you have the words green smoothie written in the caption, that counts. Or if you have hashtag green smoothie, all four of those places. are places that keywords can get picked up. Now, it's a lot like Google, right? To where you're not very likely going to rank on the first page.

Like, let's say you're sharing a green smoothie recipe. You're not going to rank probably in the search results unless your green smoothie recipe goes viral. But I'm just giving you example because that's like a really saturated hashtag. That's why you don't want to use hashtags like hashtag health, hashtag wellness.

It would literally be the equivalent. To you trying to rank on the first page of Google for the word health, like it's just not going to happen. So that's why, like I said, I just use green smoothie as like an example to illustrate, like, if you want to go see what I mean by keywords. So as we are writing, how can you like implement this in your posts?

When we are, let's just say we're editing a reel for a client in our Instagram management agency, which by the way, we are on a wait list, but we are going to start taking some new clients February of 25. So if you haven't hopped on that wait list and you were wanting us to do your Instagram for you, you can just go to mollycahill.

com and tap the Instagram management tab at the top. And you can get on the wait list there. But so if we're going to create a reel for a client, let's just say, um, a pediatric chiropractor in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we will literally put the words pediatric chiropractor in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sometimes on the text that's over the reel.

So as an example, we have a real, it's a video of our client adjusting a baby and the text over the screen says, I've helped hundreds of parents get their kiddos off the antibiotic rollercoaster as a pediatric chiropractor in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So if we were making this real for her three years ago, we probably wouldn't have included Sioux Falls on the text.

We might not have even included pediatric chiropractor. I don't know. That would have been dumb. We should have. But like I said, so now. I don't know. Like I said, and this is the actual text over the screen. This isn't even in the caption. So that's one place, like I said, we're really making sure we've got keywords on the, over the actual reel.

And then another edit that we've been making for our clients in the captions, uh, is, and also if you're a hub student, all of these things that we do, these trickle down to all the captions and all the reels ideas inside the hub. The hub has right now, like over probably close to 500 captions in it. And so we haven't been able to refresh all 500, but we've been working through them week by week, a few at a time.

And we will add in little like Mad Libs style. Sections for you to fill in like this is what we've been pivoting towards where normally in the caption or years ago in the caption, we might have written it simply like wanting to get your child off the antibiotic roller coaster for their ear infections.

Come, come see us or something like that. Now we would never just say come see us in the caption. We would say come to our school. specialized pediatric chiropractic clinic in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Like we're literally adding those keywords into the caption. Just like if your website company does SEO for you and they, you probably see how they write your blog posts or how they put the descriptions on your website where they're always mentioning your location.

They're always mentioning your specialty. That's the other thing you want to have in your captions as well. And then the last way that you can optimize your account for local search or just not even local search, but just local community are is engaging with other local businesses in your area and posting collaboration posts.

So, let's say that, you know, you're again, I like to use the pregnancy chiropractor example, just because it's so easy. You want to be commenting on other like doula, midwife, lactation, tongue tied dentist, newborn photographer, whatever, commenting on their posts and then also doing collaboration posts with these people.

So if there's, you know, a doula who commonly refers business your way and then you refer patients back to them, then maybe you create some type of collaboration reel, which I did a whole podcast episode on this, what, maybe five episodes back if you want to check that out. And then that way that collaboration post or collaboration reel lives on their page and yours, which is like what's better than two, one audience is two.

So the engaging part doesn't necessarily have to be someone like in your network and that you're collaborating with and like commenting on other local, but it can be any local business. So coffee shop, restaurant, realtor, dentist, like I said, it doesn't necessarily have to be. Like, Oh, this person could be a referral source.

It's just anybody in the local community. Um, maybe there's like, you know, here I'm like, I think about like there's these cute custom sugar cookies and she doesn't have a storefront, but she always posts like her Instagram is really hopping. So maybe you share the custom sugar cookie post for like a small business Saturday, like shout out.

Or. you share, like if you know a photographer that's doing like pop up mini sessions, even if you don't really know them or know their work, like it's still okay to share other local businesses because you know you would want that as well. So I have all of this step by step in an engagement checklist.

You can get that at mollykhill. com slash engagement. But that, um, like I said, mistake number two is not optimizing for local search or just like building local community. And those are the things that I would be focusing on. And then we're going to wrap it up with mistake number three today for the part one of this episode or part one of the series.

And it's that there's no personalization on your page. If I come to your page and it's a hundred percent stock imagery and Canva graphics, I have no feel for who you are, what your clinic is like, what you're like. Um, and it's just not going to convert me to being a patient or a client because whether we like to realize it or not, we all make.

emotional buying decisions, not logical factual ones. I mean, so I'm not saying it doesn't play into it at all, but for the most part we make emotional buying decisions, especially for things as personal as what you do. So if I'm, you know, going to be undressed on your table as you massage me, I would like to see a photo of you before I come in or, um, what your space looks like, right?

So that means. Nixing stock photos, we don't even use them in our agency anymore. We only do on very, very rare occasions when we are desperate and our client hasn't sent us any content to use. So nixing stock photography, and like I said, I'm not saying you can't have any Canva graphics, but they need to be within your most recent six posts.

There always needs to be a photo of your face or a video, even better, of you. If in your bio, you say, you know, I do active release. technique on athletes, but then I come to your page and I see zero photos of you working on an athlete. Like I said, what is an athlete? Like I said, that's like not a great, you know, maybe you do, let's say you do prenatal massage and you have that in your bio.

And then I come to your page and I see zero photos of you giving a pregnant woman a massage. Then I'm like, do you know, do you really? Um, I always tell this too, with my pediatric chiropractors, because it's still such a. Topic that so few people are well educated about that they just can't even imagine what pediatric chiropractic would be and so you have to show them you have to show them what it is every single friend who have ever told about pediatric chiropractic and then I send them an actual video of it.

They're like. Oh, that's not what I thought. I'm like, yeah. So you have to show that you do the thing you say you do. All right. So that wraps it up for my first three of the most six common mistakes. I see brick and mortar health. And wellness practitioners making and next week's and next week's episode, I will go over my other three mistakes.

So I hope you have a fan tastic rest of your day. Thank you for listening to holistic marketing simplified. And Hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast. Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce, to bring you free information.

So in order for me to be able to continue doing that, we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly A. Cahill. C A H I L L. I would greatly, greatly appreciate your support.

I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.