00:02
Welcome to the Dietitian Boss podcast. I'm Libby Rothschild, creator of Dietitian Boss. After almost four years of sitting in my dimly lit, windowless clinical office, I had enough. I wanted to feel like my work mattered, so I did something about it. I created a program that empowers dietitians and nutritionists to create their own private practice from scratch, following my proprietary system. Before I did this, I had a private practice of my own while working a full-time job, and I learned a lot about building relationships, marketing and sales, and I'm so excited to be able to share my proprietary framework with you. Hello and welcome.
00:44
In today's episode, I'm excited to talk about content, content marketing and how content is king. As registered dietitians, we can use content creation practices to not only attract potential customers, but also to retain existing clients in our dietitian private practice. You might be wondering well, what are the pros and cons of content? I want to break that down for you with some examples. You might know that content is considered king, meaning in the nutrition industry. This couldn't be more true. Content creation is just such a crucial element of marketing for any business that wants to find more cost-effective ways that they can measure that they are able to get clients because content creation is under the umbrella of digital marketing.
01:41
Digital marketing strategies are considered modern modalities for client attraction versus traditional marketing. Now, traditional marketing is still a thing that works. Traditional marketing is what we're all familiar with. Maybe our parents or grandparents generation used traditional marketing to grow business. Traditional marketing includes putting up billboard ads, paying for a TV or a radio segment and in-person networking, or using doctors referrals to get clients. All of those modalities they do work, but there are limitations. You might be thinking well, what limitations. If you live in a rural area or if you're looking for ways to get clients that can lend beyond your local community, you're going to want to incorporate a digital marketing strategy. Digital marketing encompasses content creation Email marketing, which is considered a form of content creation, when you send newsletters regularly, social media marketing, videos for YouTube, blog posts that help build your level of expertise, podcast episodes, infographics any form of distribution that you're able to create or repurpose or repost on the internet, that's going to help bring traction and attention to your brand.
03:08
Whether you own a solo practice or you have a group practice or you're just trying to work with brand deals, no matter what you're trying to do, content creation is a part of a digital marketing strategy, and digital marketing is easier to measure than traditional marketing. It's more cost-effective and digital marketing will help you scale your business because you can lay down stronger foundations that have a greater opportunity for you to make more impact. That's what we believe here at Dietitian Boss. That's a fact. If you look up the difference between traditional and digital marketing Now, I explain this with tactical action steps that you can take inside of our library. So I do invite you to join the library. That is our monthly membership, where we support and show you how to not only start but grow a business that can help you live a flexible life, specifically as a registered dietitian. We walk you through how to create different income streams and, most importantly, how to market your products and services in a way supports your lifestyle and also in a way that helps you focus, because a lot of dieticians do think that content is king, but they're not sure how to make it work. So we hold your hand, not only in our program, with giving you access to our curriculum, but also through live calls. So let's get into it in terms of content is king and how content creation can help you with your dietician private practice.
04:40
Well, the first step of any good strategy with digital marketing, as a dietician, starts with defining your audience. You're gonna wanna know who is it that you're talking to. Now, this process is tricky for a lot of our clients because they feel it's challenging to identify your ideal client or your audience, and I wanna help you realize that this is a process and you might have a vague idea of who you're serving, and then, with time and conversations, you can get more clear. So it's important to know who you're creating content for, so that your content creation process can be more targeted to support the needs of the person that you're creating content for. So think about it. If you're looking up information about budget friendly meals to serve a family of five that honors a dietary lifestyle for cultural preference, you're gonna wanna look at specific content, not just general content online. So you wanna make sure that you're not creating content for everybody. Now, when you're starting, you probably will have more general content, but as you develop a more clear content marketing strategy that works, your content has to be written and created and illustrated for a particular type of audience, like those with diabetes, those with chronic kidney disease, those trying to lose weight, those trying to find food freedom, or those who are trying to feed picky kids to help them grow. There's so many examples and we've had so many of our clients as guests Come on Air and talk about this process. But I wanna remind you that, defining your ideal client and if you have a pen and paper, I want you to write this down Think about what is the problem that your ideal client has that you're solving through your business, right? Are you solving for lower in blood sugar by helping them choose my plate or half a plate vegetables meals, right? So what is it that you're doing? And then how can you think backwards of the problem you solve and create content to support the messaging that you're communicating and that will help you stand out, and that's what makes content effective.
06:57
When dieticians say content doesn't work, it's challenging. Usually, the reason is that their content is not clear in terms of who they're talking to. Now, the second tip I have in terms of how you can use content to attract and retain clients online would be through choosing the right content format. So you might know especially you know, in recent as social media and online marketing has gone through so many changes and updates at the speed of lightning right. There are so many different types of content that you can create, and you might really like blog posts because you enjoy writing, or you might like videos because you like being on camera or at least explaining something visually. You might enjoy podcasts because you like speaking, or social media posts, and there's even more options as well. You can create free guides that people can download. That's a form of content.
07:55
So I want to ask you to choose one format that supports your target audience, that they prefer, and also has to align with your strengths. Now, I think a lot of dieticians overthink the right content format. I want to tell you that getting started matters more than anything, and being consistent with one format is going to help, meaning, if you say, okay, you know what. I'm going to actually go ahead with social media. I'm going to commit to a strategy for social media on one particular platform for six months. I'm also going to combine that with some in-person marketing. That's a great idea, and we actually have a suggestion and a rubric for how you can combine two different ways, two different formats, right.
08:43
One might be content format. One might be something like traditional marketing that you might feel more comfortable with to help you get clients, but you are going to have to stick with that. So we show you how to do that in the library and it's an affordable membership. When we walk you through each step of the way, with exercises and live calls and access to our curriculum, so that you know what to do next. Because that's the biggest concern dieticians have is that they're like okay, I want to attract and retain customers using content, but I'm not sure where to start, what to do next, how to keep it consistent, what to say, how to improve my content, how do I know? I'm not talking to ghosts, right? So, as a recap, the first answer would be get started, know that there's power in content marketing as a form of digital marketing, and then I want you to think about your audience and that and serving them and what's in their best interest, and then think about the right format. So choosing one at a time, or one or two, is the most effective way for you to be consistent.
09:43
I want to tell a little story. When I first started my dietician private practice, I focused on traditional marketing and it worked really well for me. I make connections and networked with doctors and they hired me to do teaching and speaking. These doctors asked me to teach about nutrition for other allied healthcare professionals. More specifically, I was teaching doctors nutritional science. I created multiple curriculums and I also got hired to speak about medical nutrition therapy and various different outlets in New York City. And so, because of my efforts to talk to other doctors and talk to people in educational institutions about nutrition, my name got out and so my name, libby Rothschild, was a name that people knew I would be a speaker. So I built a reputation, and that is a form of traditional marketing and that does work, and it worked really well for me. The reason that I wanted more than that after four years of consistently teaching and speaking is that I wanted to find more flexibility, and I knew that working so many hours wasn't going to fit my personal preferences right, my strengths and weaknesses, so I got into content creation on the side and my life was transformed. I started sharing my story through Instagram marketing and that helped me build a following, and then I learned the needs of my audience and created a course for dietitians to help them as well find a way to use content.
11:14
So I've been doing this for five, six years, showing dietitians how specifically they too, can use content effectively, but I don't want you to think that you have to use every single format at once. If you remember my story, I first started with traditional marketing, then I segued into Instagram, and then I went into podcasting, and then I went into animal marketing, then I went into video marketing not all at once. It took years for me, one year at a time, to add a new content format into the mix here at Dietitian Boss. And when you listen to our client interviews here, you'll learn our clients are pretty similar. They might take one or two years to master let's say Instagram, and then they add a podcast, and then two, three years later they add YouTube into the mix, or a blog. You know blogging and blog posting.
12:03
So I want you to critically think about your strengths and weaknesses and, if you're not sure, just choose one thing and stick with it, because the consistency matters more than your choice. So, yes, it is ideal if you pick a format that lends to your strengths. Right? If you're a writer, then blog posts make sense. If you love video, then videos might make sense to start with, but ultimately you have to choose what you're going to stick with. The third tip would be and this is pretty obvious to provide value.
12:33
Now I'm going to tell you a little story about one of my private coaching clients, who is an amazing, talented dietician, but she still struggles with providing value. So let me explain a little bit about what I mean and then I'll go back to this particular client. Let's call her Angela I'm not going to share her real name. So your content should always aim to provide value to your audience, right, and this can be done by offering helpful tips, sharing your expertise and addressing common questions or concerns that your audience might have. So you might be thinking well, what about Angela? What's her deal? So here's Angela's deal. She is a fantastic dietitian who only wants to create content that she likes. She only wants to post stuff that she believes in and that she thinks is valuable. And here's the thing we have to marry the two, between our values and what folks meaning particularly our ideal clients want to learn. So what I mean by that is that it is not doing a service to our audience to help attract and retain clients using content marketing if we're only creating content for ourselves. So we have to have some unification between what we believe in, our values, or maybe our philosophy is all foods fit, so absolutely incorporating our philosophy and our values into the content strategy. But we also have to prioritize that we're making content that we know solves problems that they have.
14:04
Now, if you don't have an audience yet which is totally fine it's an opportunity for you to start searching, looking online, having conversations, going on threads. There are so many conversations that people are having about nutrition every single day on so many different platforms. You can start general and then get specific. What I mean by general is start participating in some water cooler conversations and learn what people are saying about nutrition until you decide you want to get more specific and maybe you want to focus on something like nutrition for athletes, so nutrition for diabetes, for chronic disease, or nutrition for gut health. So if you're starting general and then getting specific, your process of being a part of these conversations, joining them online, joining them in person that's going to help you learn how to adjust your content strategy.
14:53
So your content is not to make you smile and giggle. Your content is truly there as a means to provide value for the needs of your customer, and that is one of the hardest lessons for our clients to learn. Once they learn it, it becomes a transformative experience. But again, the content is to be created to serve your ideal clients. That's why the first tip about knowing your audience is so important. My last tip today would be that consistency is key. So if you're saying, oh gosh, libby, I have been trying content I think content's king. I've been posting Instagram images or reels or carousels and stories, but it's been three weeks and I haven't had anybody DM me for a sale and I'm feeling frustrated. I want to remind you that good things don't happen overnight, so it's a process.
15:47
When I first started Instagram, I didn't even think about making money right away. I thought about how can I truly learn the wants and needs of my peers? How can I really understand about the opportunities and dietetics to live a flexible lifestyle and make more money? I was very interested in that, and so I had conversations shared. These conversations added value to our community, and that was my focus for six to 12 months. With that, to my delight, came folks asking me if I could help them learn how they, too, could make money in alternative ways. But my first and foremost, I knew who I was talking to. That was registered dietitians that wanted to make money, and I provided value by sharing my experience and sharing the experience of dietitians willing to talk about their experience. So, inherently, every time someone visited my platform on Instagram specifically, they would learn and be part of a community of dietitians who wanted more than just that clinical, traditional trajectory, and so I want you to think about doing the same with your strategy, your digital marketing strategy.
16:52
So consistency, even when you're having a difficult time, is gonna help you build relationships and trust with your audience. Now, of course, if you're not feeling well, if you have a medical reason, you fall pregnant something you have to take care of your family something happens. Of course, you need to take a break. I'm not saying to never take a break, but I want you to think about some pacing and some consistency that you can stick with so that your audience trusts you. So what this looks like is a six month plan.
17:22
So it might be. You're committing to being active and posting a certain amount of times per week on average, most weeks for six months, and that consistency is gonna be a metric of success not the amount of sales, but thinking about you having a process in place. Okay, I'm gonna commit and create a smarkel. Right, I'm gonna commit to posting, let's say, two or three times a week on, and then the platform you've chosen let's say Instagram, for this example, although it could be another platform for six months and in doing so, that's the first goal. And then the second goal, once you've done that, would be to improve your content strategy as you learn more about the needs of your ideal client.
18:05
So the focus is not on the outcome of what is your content bringing you right away. The focus is you learning how to create content that's more valuable. You participating in conversations with people who are interested in nutrition, and those interests are related to what you do and what your brand messaging represents. I would love to invite you to join the library where we can walk you through how to tactically take action on making content king for your business, so that you can develop a digital marketing strategy that works, just like the thousands of clients that we've been able to help and transform their business as registered dietitians. If you're looking for support to start, grow and scale your dietitian private practice, I wanna invite you to work with me and my team. We have a few different options Head over to dietitianbosscom and apply to have a conversation with somebody from our sales team to discuss your options for your budget and stage of business. Head over to dietitianbosscom and we look forward to connecting.
