The Rising Sun Counseling Center
Agenda
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Rising Sun Counseling goals were discussed in the Overview section. This was followed by a Competitive Analysis of four mental health practices. Sections followed regarding Branding Guidelines, Content Strategy, Website, and Social Media. These areas highlighted goals, tactics, and recommendations for each concentration area.
The team highlighted the project’s Results in three key areas: Website, Content and Social Media. The Results show that website traffic increased during the project. In addition, followers increased on social platforms.
Finally, recommendations were made in the Roadmap section, focusing on future content and platforms, an agency website, and proposed paid social media advertising.
Executive Summary: Rising Sun Counseling
Goals
Short Term:
Long Term:
Veronica Gorlovsky is the founder of Rising Sun Counseling.
She’s a licensed Drug and Alcohol Counselor (LDAC) in Portland, Maine. Her additional credentials include licensed clinical social worker, licensed alcohol and drug counselor and clinical certified supervisor. She offers in-person and telehealth counseling and her practice focuses on substance use disorders. Her business is growing -- with a waitlist for counseling. Her future plans are to grow a clinical agency. Her digital platforms include a Website, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Psychology Today.
Team Goals
The team developed goals, strategies and tactics to enhance Rising Sun Counseling’s social media presence, content, search engine optimization and website.
These activities helped promote the client’s goals of increasing Rising Sun’s search engine rankings, publicize brand image, and emphasize private pay options.
Project concentration includes increasing social media presence and building a brand that reflects her new niche/client persona.
This niche has an emphasis on men, but also includes women and young adults with mental health challenges. Ultimately, the social media presence, improved website and branding will serve as a foundation to establish a larger counseling agency.
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Competitive Analysis
Husky Digital
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Competitor Analysis - Website, Branding, Images
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Competitor Analysis - Social Media and Content
| Strengths | Weaknesses | Opportunities | Threats |
Christina Drabek |
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Manifest Maine (FB:@manifestmaine with 566 followers IG: @manifestmaine with 259 likes, 266 followers) |
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The Open Heart Space (@theopenheartspace with 197 likes, 204 followers) |
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Competitor Analysis - Empower Family Therapy
| Strengths | Weaknesses | Opportunities | Threats |
Website |
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Social Media |
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Content |
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Key Competitor Takeaways
Best Practices
Given the best practices and key competitor takeaways, we believe The Rising Sun Counseling would benefit from:
Website:
Content:
Best Practices
Social Media:
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Branding Guidelines
Husky Digital
Introduction/Goals
A brand is more than a logo, colors, or visuals, it is a story that creates a connection between you and your clients, which shares your values and sets you apart from your competitors. Branding is an ongoing process of creating and reinforcing the image or identity of your services in the mind of your clients. Branding is all about every aspect that reflects who you are and where you want to be.
Goals
Messaging Framework Strategy
To align Rising Sun’s brand across platforms, we created a messaging framework. It’s the values upon which your company/brand stands on and all content, messaging, and design should reflect this at all times. Anything outside of these characteristics on digital or within your internal organization will be seen as “off-brand”
The tagline is the same due to your affinity to it. It’s a tagline that was developed to fully encapsulate the Rising Sun experience and we believe it should stay the same.
Persona
What is a persona?
A persona is a fictional character created as a proxy for a target audience (Gartner, 2015). These archetypes include images and fictional names that make them viable to digital designers and marketers. Personas identify similar patterns of behavior that result in commonly held goals. Digital marketers craft personas by analyzing primary and secondary sources, including ethnographic insight arising from direct observation of people and from data on their behavioral patterns.
We identified people with substance use disorders (traditionally alcoholism and drug addiction) and other mental health challenges.
o Primarily men, age 18-45 (65-70%).
o Women, age 18-45 (30%).
o Younger adults with mental health challenges.
o Based in Portland, Maine.
Source: Heather Pemberton Levy, Gartner, https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/whats-in-a-name-creating-personas-for-digital-marketing.
We created a persona to create empathy for potential customers and learn their customer journey.
This was the foremost part of understanding what colors and tone of voice were best to reach this audience, as well as pain points they have so we can create content around it.
Persona
Branding Guidelines
To help Rising Sun become more recognizable we developed a branding guideline. A branding guideline is a set of rules on how to communicate your brand, especially in content marketing and on the website.
This includes a color palette, messaging framework, tone of voice, most used hashtags, imagery, logo, fonts, and social media content design guidelines.
Approved Mission: Rising Sun Counseling aims to tailor specific therapy, through emphatic and approachable counseling services, for each individual to help people heal so they can rise from darkness and live brighter lives.
Approved Tagline: “Helping People Rise from the Darkness, Helping People Shine Bright. Because Life Isn’t Meant to be Lived in the Dark.”
Approved Font: Libre Franklin Black
A sans serif font is used throughout digital platforms to accentuate a clean, friendly, bold & modern look.
Approved Tone of Voice:
Approved Colors: Black, White, Gold & yellow accents illuminate friendliness and joy, an optimism. Gold can induce great feelings of happiness, prosperity, and confidence.
Visual Strategy
In evaluating the Rising Sun’s visual identity we found that imagery needed to be improved for the overall design of the brand, especially on the website and social media. Enhancing the imagery was important because as the messaging/tone of voice was being established, the imagery needed to reflect that.
Filters boost your brand’s personality and creates consistency with any images you choose.
An archive of approved Images can be found here.
Imagery is dark and comes off as heavy
Vibrant images showing a sense of tranquility, happiness, and freedom
Before
Today
Recommendations
Rising Sun is complete with a Messaging Framework that can be utilized across different parts of the business - internal documents or content. All of Rising Sun’s content, design, and messaging should be consistent with this framework.
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Website
Husky Digital
Website Assessment Summary
Before
Website Strategy
Our goal for the website strategy was to improve website ranking and improve the website to increase client acquisition and align design with branding guidelines (men’s health, private pay, friendly). To accomplish this we increased organic SEO by keyword insertion in header and tags on every page, we optimized landing page with pop-up to capture email, linked icons to social media on the front page, contact page, as well as footer/header. We installed Google Analytics to research traffic, we updated the graphical look and feel with appropriate colors, imagery, wording, and made the website mobile-friendly.
Not only was the strategy to promote The Rising Sun Counseling’s brand, but to identify and publicize the many TRSC’s mental health counseling theories and modalities. We also wanted to highlight the client’s experience and several qualifications. We included a sliding information bar on what services were available.
Wireframes and Mockups
We created website wireframes and mockups of three important pages; homepage, services, and blog pages to illustrate an idea of what the website could potentially look like to rebrand and improve user experience:
Veronica should create a 1-2 minute video verbally discussing her services and theories or even what to expect when they contact her, that way people will have context and as much info as they reach out to Rising Sun.
View the full mockup here
After
Navigation
Before:
After:
Footer
Before.
After:
Add more CTA buttons
Blog Tab Added and Displayed on Homepage
Display Testimonials
SERP
Website Performance/Analytics
Website Performance/Analytics
Website Performance/Analytics
Total visitors from Maine area in the last 30 days:
Website Performance/Analytics
19 visitors came from Google, 22 from Facebook, 4 from Instagram, and 3 from LinkedIn.
Summary
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Content Strategy
Husky Digital
Content Marketing Strategy
We integrated all content marketing with social media to gain brand awareness and attract new clients. In the last three months, we initiated a full range of content marketing through blog creation, the establishment and updating of social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Quora), and newly designed creative and copy for daily/weekly social media posting.
The overall objective was to use the full range of content marketing to create a brand that would continually grow the client base and establish the foundations of an agency model for Rising Sun.
Content Marketing Strategy (Goals)
Content Marketing Strategy (Tactics)
Rising Sun will have of a variety of content as a means to market and promote the brand. The three types of content are video, social media posts/copy, and website blog.
These three were chosen because they’re easiest to consume, most preferred type of content people want, and are still the main sources of how people will find Rising Sun online (a.k.a. Top digital marketing strategies). Most important, the easiest content for Veronica to learn to create.
Blog
We produced 12 SEO-optimized articles and scheduled them to post according to content calendar. The strategy here was to create blog content that would highlight key brand/marketing points. These blogs could then be placed on social media to drive traffic to TRS website.
Strategy: Blogs highlight brand, increase expertise, drive traffic to website.
Tactics: Write short (4-paragraph) blogs. Post at least one time per week on website/social.
Social Media - Quora
Strategy: Use Quora to answer questions and drive traffic to website.
Tactics: Find questions with hundreds of views to answer, once per week.
Example (Link):
Question: Do you believe telehealth options are as effective as in-person counseling for clients?
Answer: No one person is the same, so therapy should look different for each individual.
Use Quora to generate traffic by backlinking to website, use for evergreen content for blogs and social media.
Social Content Calendar
Strategy: To create a successful, and organized, effort around Rising Sun’s content, a calendar will allow you to look ahead and create content in advance, planning for holidays and other events/campaigns.
Tactics: At a minimum, use a free Google calendar to schedule each content posting.
Example (Link):
Content Guidelines
All recurring content has been designed with a template for quotes and blogs.
IG Posts follow a “Quote - Photo - Quote” Format
Access your canva designs here.
Canva Designs
Strategy:
Designing social media content is used as visual component of digital marketing strategy. Creating branded designs are meant to create brand awareness/recognition and attract people to the business.
Tactics:
Here is a link to all branded content.
*An example of a branded post, promoting a blog on the site. The design was created to mirror an actual blog post, giving the viewer visual pointers that this is a blog post on a website. This post would then be linked to the full site, helping people to access the next step in their customer journey.
Video
Strategy:
Create a dedicated Youtube channel and make a series of videos with themed messages.
Tactics:
Posting videos on Instagram with mental health related topics, also featuring special mental health events in the future.
Example:
Three videos edited, one posted.
SEO Strategy
Our goal was to improve SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) rankings for Rising Sun by boosting keywords (starting with Instagram # and keyword search), writing high-quality website content, backlinking (any page or link that “points back” to your webpage), increasing the quality descriptions of services on the website, and increasing mobile speed. Additionally we created meta descriptions and meta tags for each page, as well as linked the website’s XML sitemap to Google, that way search engine crawlers can find keywords.
Website Content Plan
A content plan was created to integrate and optimize content for SEO, copyediting, keyword insertion and design.
Link to content plan
Keywords
The keyword is the search term that you want to rank for with a certain page. So when people search for that keyword in Google, they can find that page on your website.
Some keywords with high search volume include like “counseling near me” and “alcohol use disorder.”
Some long-tail keywords like ” Stress management counseling” or” substance use help,” are more specific and less commonly searched for. Even though there are fewer people searching for these terms, they have higher search intent and might be more motivated to become your clients.
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Social Media
Husky Digital
Social Media Analysis
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Key Takeaways
Social Media Strategy
Social media is a communication tool that is used to market the ideas of a brand. It is a stop in a potential client’s journey that can communicate a brand’s key values.
Our goals for social media are:
The strategy is to separate personal from professional accounts. We planned to establish a social media content calendar, create a variety of content, use high-resolution photos, have a solid company bio/description and hashtags, and follow mental health expert. We also planned to create a content guide that would allow Rising Sun to have a framework/template to create and share content that will engage users and reinforce the brand.
Tactics
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
Tactics (Con’t)
Handles: @therisingsuncounseling
Bio: Veronica Ingrao, LCSW, LADC, CCS
Licensed clinical social worker/licensed alcohol and
drug counselor/clinical certified supervisor
www.therisingsuncounseling.com
Branded hashtag: #therisingsuncounseling
#Hashtags
Current Hashtags
#recoveryworks (39.4K)
#traumahealing (289K)
#healthymindhealthybody (365k) #mindfulnesstherapy (5K)
#spiritualdevelopment (238K)
#healingheart (37.4K)
#therapistsofinstagram (231K)
#psychotherapist (251K)
#healingtherapy (17.9K)
#therapyworks (95.8K) #acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy (30.5K) #recoverycommunity (87.2K)
#mindfulness (23.1M)
#telehealth (207K)
#mentalhealthquotes (534K)
#sobermovement (283K)
#mentalhealthblogger (432K) #mentalhealthjourney (127K)
#counselingworks (19.3K) #codependencyrecovery (37.9K) #therisingsuncounseling
#portlandmaine (833K)
#mainer (87.4K)
Why use hashtags?
A hashtag, a label for content, helps people who are interested in a certain topic, quickly find posts or specific information and engage with your brand. In other words, hashtags make your content more discoverable, expand your audience, and also encourage audience interactions. Instagram allows to include up to 30 hashtags per post, and up to 10 hashtags in Stories.
Tips:
Recommendations
As social media is another key channel to raise brand awareness and boost brand engagement, all of messages and designs should align with the content and brand guideline and be consistent.
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Overall Results
Husky Digital
Results (Website)
WEBSITE--Overall Analytics for two-week period
Results (Content)
CONTENT--Analytics for Blog, Quora, Video over two weeks...
Results (Social Media)
LinkedIn: (In the last 30 days)
31 followers
Page Views: 35
(Total number of views of your page, across all tabs.)
Post Impressions: 130 (Views when an update is at least 50% on screen for at least 300 ms, or when it is clicked, whichever comes first.
Custom Button Clicks: 3 (Total number of clicks on the custom button; Visit website)
Results (Social Media)
Facebook: (In the last 28 days)
335 page likes
342 page follows
Page Views: 58 (the number of times a Page’s profile has been viewed by logged in and logged out people)
Page Likes: 14 (the number of new people who’ve liked your page)
Post Reach: 218 (the estimated number of people who saw any of your posts at least once)
Post Engagement: 79 (the number of times people engaged with your posts through reactions, comments, shares, and clicks
Results (Social Media)
Instagram: Received +176.2% more content interactions in the last 30 days, compared to Sep 28- Oct 27.
Accounts Reaches: 463
(the number of unique accounts that have seen any of your posts, stories, or IGTV videos, at least once)
Impressions: 2,585
(the number of times your posts, stories or IGTV videos were on screen which may include multiple views of your content by the same accounts)
Profile Visits: 285
(the number of times your profiles was visited)
Website Taps: 7
(the number of times the link to your website was tapped)
Total Followers: 377 followers
Top Locations: Portland (34%), Boston (5.1%), South Portland (2.7%), Windham (2.1%)
Top Post Interactions
289 impressions
195 reaches
27 likes
3 shares
2 new followers
5 profile visits
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Roadmap
Husky Digital
Roadmap
This Roadmap includes our recommendations, based on analysis of the other sections in this slide deck, and working with TRSC over the past 12 weeks.
The recommendations focus on future content and platforms, a new agency, and paid social media strategy.
Blog Upload Instructions
This step-by-step instructional guides you on how to access the Blog Manager on the Wix Dashboard. It also guides you on how to submit, publish your work and access where to implement SEO keywords and metatags.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
VIDEO HERE
Agency Mockup
We designed an agency-ready mockup website to help you communicate with future designers once you begin onboarding more clinicians to the practice. The vision is to create an accessible platform for full mental health services and sources of mental health information in Portland, ME. Key features of the mockup include:
You can access the full mockup here.
Agency Mockup Strategy
Strategy: Design an agency-ready mockup site to help Veronica communicate with future designers on building her digital business using Lucidchart wireframing, Adobe Xd for mockups and design approach from expert therapy web designers and establish agencies.
SMART Goal: Within the next 2-3 years, Veronica will create an agency for her practice, housing multiple clinicians/counselors/therapists ranging from substance use disorder to marriage counseling.
Objectives: When growing company, Veronica will have a structure and design to build from, equipped with login features, accessibility widgets for people with disabilities to create an inclusive digital experience. Key features include:
Key Themes:
Creating an agency mockup that will prepare to create a easily accessible platform for full mental health services and sources of mental health information
Agency Mockup Strategy (Tactics)
Rising sun website will be a place where people will think of when they think about mental health as it provides both reliable services and sources of mental health information for people.
The website will be easily accessible for everyone even people with disabilities.
It will be a platform in which full of beneficial content that helps educate and inspire people.
Based on your needs from the surveys, a list of best matched counselors with descriptions will show up. Clients can choose the right match by themselves.
Agency Site Mockup (Homepage)
Highlights:
To create this mockup we studied the customer journey of a dozen prominent counseling agencies that serve individuals & organizations.
Agency Site Mockup (Who We Are)
Highlights:
Agency Site Mockup (Our Approach)
Highlights:
Using Medium
Paid Social Strategy
The Rising Sun Counseling should consider placing Google, Instagram/Facebook Ads, which also can be tailored to demographics such as age, gender and even geographic city—Portland, Maine. Husky Digital also believes TRSC should consider Google AdWords as part of its ongoing paid strategy.
Paid Ad Goals
In any advertising campaign, one must look at a company’s objectives and goals. TRSC’s branding themes convey a friendly and experienced approach to mental health counseling to a younger demographic. With these goals in mind, some of the social channels will work more than others. We believe that a combination of Google AdWords and Facebook/Instagram Ads, will help you drive traffic to the website and convert to clients. However, these, and other, social platforms can be added/dropped as they work, or don’t work.
Paid Social Strategy
Strategy: Drive traffic via PPC ads to website and convert to paying clients.
Goal: Establish an advertising strategy that grows business by using Facebook/Instagram and Google AdWords. An additional goal is to be in the top five of Portland mental health counseling on Google search.
Key Tactics: Within Portland, Maine, demographics, buy Facebook Ads and Google AdWords to cater to the TBSC persona, with a daily spend rate goal. Assess ROI in Google Analytics or client referral numbers. Use hyper-targeted keywords. Buy a “local pack” that appears in Google Maps searches.
Example of Facebook Ad. Businesses can set a spend rate as low as $2 daily.
Paid Social Strategy
Strategy: Purchase PPC advertising through Facebook Ads and Google AdWords to drive traffic to the website and gain new clients in Portland, Maine. Your expectations should be tied to these important milestones.
Expectations for Paid Social
While expectations are important for nonprofits with limited advertising budgets and staff, there are a lot of low-cost online marketing options. One is to use long-tail keywords (checking/using Google’s free Keyword Planner). With advancements in voice-search technology, there is enough value in going to long-tail keywords. The expectation for these ads should be to grow enough for the ads, either PPC or paid social, to at least cover the cost of marketing.
Key Tactics: Create a budget for daily Instagram ad purchases, create Instagram Ad.
Paid Social Strategy
About Instagram Ads
You can create ads from Instagram once you've converted your profile to a professional account. In addition to creating ads on Instagram, you can also use Facebook tools to create ads that appear on Instagram.
There are 3 ways to run ads on Instagram:
Each of these tools can be used to create ads on Instagram. Before creating ads, you must convert your profile to a professional account. In some regions, you’ll also need to connect your Instagram account to a Facebook Page you manage to run ads directly from Instagram.
To create ads from your Facebook Page or in Ads Manager, you must connect your Instagram account to a Facebook Page you manage.
Source: Instagram.
The Rising Sun
Counseling Center
Conclusion
Husky Digital
Conclusion
For nearly 12 weeks, our team has worked with Portland, Maine-based The Rising Sun Counseling, owned by Veronica Ingrao, to address its branding, content strategy, website and social media. The original website was dark, was slow, difficult to navigate, had font problems, no calls to action, and other issues. We created a new website, based on branding guidelines and the client’s goals as a foundation.
TRSC’s social media was based on personal pages, with no business presence. We established business accounts for existing social media and created content. The client’s content was primarily focused on Instagram, so we created 12 blogs to post on other platforms. We also created a Quora page, enhanced Instagram posting with Canva, and added videos.
We have made a list of recommendations through our Roadmap that focuses on a new agency website, future content and proposed paid advertising.
We were honored and privileged to work with Veronica Ingrao. We wish the practice great success.
END