Allison Jones
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to the Therapy Matters podcast, your one-stop resource for expert insights and advice on everything therapy and rehab.
I am your host, Allison Jones. Today, I am joined by Dr. Tom Walters, a board-certified orthopedic physical therapist and strength and conditioning specialist based in Santa Barbara, California. He is also the owner of Rehab Science.
Tom, thank you for joining me today.
Tom Walters
Thanks, Allison. I’m excited to be here.
Allison Jones
We’re excited to have you. Tom, before we dive into today’s topic, which I’m super excited to discuss with you, could you take a minute or two to introduce yourself to the audience? Please provide a little bit of background on who you are and your credentials.
Tom Walters
As you mentioned, I’m an orthopedic physical therapist, and I’ve been in practice now for about 17 years. It seems like it’s gone so fast. I grew up in Montana. I did my undergrad in exercise science at Montana State, and then I came out to Chapman University in Southern California. I was basically just tired of the cold weather in Montana, so I went to Southern California and I was at Chapman University and did the DPT there.
I pretty much knew all along I wanted to be in something as close to exercise science as possible, and orthopedic physical therapy was a natural fit for me. I was pretty much practicing the whole time in that area of physical therapy. After about a year of practice, I did an orthopedic manual physical therapy residency at Kaiser down here in Southern California.
I jumped around quite a bit. I tend to be somebody who likes stimulation. I have a hard time staying in one job. I think a lot of people think I’m a little crazy, but I only lasted two years in an insurance-based model and just realized that it wasn’t going to work for me long term. I wanted to spend more time with patients. I just really love teaching is, I think, what it boiled down to.
I had this inner drive to somehow get into teaching and had an opportunity open up where I was able to teach as an adjunct for a year at a local college here in their kinesiology department. I really enjoyed that time period. A couple of years later, the opportunity came up to actually serve as a full-time faculty member in that department. What was a one-year contract turned into ten years. For ten years I taught kinesiology full time, taught biomechanics. I had developed a pain science course for undergraduates and a therapeutic exercise course. I was still seeing patients on the side in a cash pay type of clinic. But my passion really was in education.
During that time, teaching, this was late 2016, I started an Instagram account basically just to continue educating people. I always had this desire to impact more people. The one-on-one in patient care wasn’t as fulfilling to me, and getting to the classroom was a next step, and it felt nice to maybe have 30 people in a classroom, but I wanted to be able to impact people on a larger scale. There were so many things that were frustrating to me that patients would come in and tell me, certain narratives and things like that.
I just thought, I’ll try and put content out there. I didn’t know anything about social media. I didn’t have any strategy. I just went into it. I’ve been a PT for about ten years at that point, and I just wanted to push back on some of these narratives, put out some education, and I just did it every day and stayed consistent with it. It’s amazing; it grew to where it is now. I have a little over a million followers on Instagram, my YouTube’s getting close to a million subscribers, and I’m so grateful for it because I just have this opportunity now to educate people and really with the goal of putting out content that is empowering and reassuring to people who are in pain or have injuries.
I’m just so grateful for it. I love interacting. I’m an introvert, so actually interacting with people on social media is much less draining than actually seeing patients.
Allison Jones
Okay, excellent. You touched on it. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the power of social media and how you can leverage it to support and grow your therapy practice. You have quite a bit of experience with social media. As you just mentioned, you have over a million followers on Instagram, and you’re getting close to that on YouTube. Congratulations on that, by the way.
Tom Walters
Thank you.
Allison Jones
Tell me a little bit about how you are leveraging those channels today to shape and drive your business.
Tom Walters
It’s been an interesting journey, and one for me to learn because, in the beginning, I really just thought of it as a hobby. I’d never thought of social media as a business. I guess now there’s so much talk about that. Anytime you’re on YouTube, any business podcast or content creation, creator economy, there’s so much around this now. But in 2016, I don’t think as many people were thinking about it that way. But it really has created an amazing business opportunity for me.
One side of it was patients actually coming to see me. I get lots of DMs and emails asking where I’m located. People want to come in and see you. Most of what I’m sharing is just standard orthopedic physical therapy. It’s a little bit of manual therapy and some therapeutic exercise. It’s not like this really revolutionary crazy. But unfortunately, there’s so many people out there that haven’t had good physical therapy, so people want to fly here. In a lot of cases, I’m probably not a great business person in that way. Sometimes I say, you could just find somebody good in your area and I’ll help them look for someone that’s got good training in their area.
I think for me, because I was so interested in education, I don’t enjoy clinical practice that much. I think even from the beginning, like I said, I was only in an insurance-based clinic for two years and I wanted to get to education. I think, to some degree, I’ve always been trying to get out of practice a little bit. It’s draining to me. I love being able to help people, but I’d much rather talk about the musculoskeletal system and different pathologies and actually treat people. I don’t enjoy that part of it that much.
Lucky for me, there are lots of other business routes you can go with social media, whether that be selling programs online, maybe creating therapeutic exercise programs that are a little bit more comprehensive than the quick few exercises I’m showing on social media. Having had my book come out, being able to educate on a platform like YouTube where there’s built-in monetization with ads and things, it really has created a unique opportunity for me to grow a business that’s more of that creator, almost like a media company type business. But I think if somebody sees patients, there’s definitely a lot of people out there that will contact you and want to come in to see you for physical therapy. I just tend to tell those people at this point, based on what I’m interested in, that I just don’t take a lot of them.
Allison Jones
Right. But for someone looking to grow their business, it’s a great way to get their name out there and potentially create a patient funnel.
Tom Walters
Oh, for sure. I see a lot of clinicians. Most of them are like this: they have in-person patients coming to them. Many of them are also creating programs and things that they can scale. This allows them to make money without spending their time seeing a patient. They can create an ACL program, an Achilles program, or something similar, and sell that in addition to seeing patients. I think there’s a lot of potential there.
Allison Jones
Excellent. For some folks, navigating social media can be overwhelming, especially nowadays with so much emphasis on becoming a social media influencer. However, it is somewhat an essential skill that a modern therapist needs to incorporate into their toolkit. Could you tell me a bit about the basics that a therapist or a business owner of a therapy practice needs to know when they’re working with some of these major social media platforms to get started with a social media program?
Tom Walters
People talk about this a lot. It’s intimidating, and getting going is often the hardest part for people. I think people worry too much about being criticized and what others might say about what they’re sharing. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard from different groups, who really spend their time educating others about building a brand on social media, is just to get going. Don’t worry about it being perfect.
My initial posts in the beginning were, in a way, easier because there wasn’t so much of this. I was one of only a few physical therapists on Instagram, so I couldn’t make comparisons. I couldn’t get into that comparison game and look at my content and feel bad about it if somebody else’s content was better. That protected me in a way, I think, because I was naive and this creator space hadn’t really gotten big yet.
I think if people can take that mindset, whatever platform it is, they’re all a little bit different. You have to learn a little bit different skills, whether it’s Instagram or YouTube. But a lot of the content, you can rinse and repeat and use on different platforms. I take my reels on Instagram and use them as shorts on YouTube. YouTube, you’re filming horizontal videos, so I think if you just try to get going, just think about what do patients come in and say to me, what are common problems and common questions?
We all know this. If you’re seeing patients, there’s a lot of the same questions and problems that people come in with. I think if you can just think, ‘How can I provide value to people and answer some of those questions?’ The nice thing about physical therapy is because of our movement profession, it’s so visually appealing, so it’s great for these platforms. If you’re a psychologist, it’s a lot harder to create visually engaging content. But as a physical therapist, whatever setting you’re in, there’s such an opportunity, I think, to teach people about their movement system and how pain and injuries can affect the movement system, then to do that in a fun, educational way that not only helps people, but also draws them to your own personal brand and whatever services you provide, whether that’s just one-on-one patient care or other online services you might have.
I think things are changing on social media. We used to always care about how big is your following? That’s starting to change. I think people are realizing that just because you have a big following, it doesn’t mean that all those people convert and buy your services. Sometimes having a really dedicated small audience of true fans is even better.
Allison Jones
Right, quality over quantity. You talked about the different channels. Right before we actually started today’s episode, we were talking about LinkedIn. You mentioned that you don’t have a LinkedIn profile. When choosing the social media channels that are right for you, how do you identify the best medium for your practice? You mentioned that you’re on Instagram and YouTube, but not on LinkedIn. How does a practice assess where the best audience is and which channel is best for them to choose?
Tom Walters
I think that’s a great question. Nobody’s asked me that before. I fell into Instagram by accident. I don’t know why I started there. For whatever reason, I think it was really popular at that time and there was a lot of talk about Instagram. Again, I personally tend to be impulsive and will just start doing things. That has good and bad elements to it. I didn’t overthink things a lot, I just started.
But I think if you’re somebody thinking about this and maybe going into it with a little more strategy, you might think, ‘Would I rather create written content or more visual video-based content?’ I had a LinkedIn at one point, but it was probably 15 years ago before LinkedIn was the powerhouse it is now. I deleted it; I wish I still had it. I would create more written content. I think maybe if you prefer to write, that might be one way. If you prefer written content, creating education that way, maybe something like LinkedIn might be a better outlet for you.
If you like to create video content, or maybe you don’t mind being on camera, then maybe Instagram and YouTube are better options. A lot of YouTube content does involve you being in front of a camera and talking. Nobody’s perfect at that in the beginning. It feels uncomfortable to talk to a camera for a lot of people in the beginning, so it just takes reps like anything else. You just got to get the reps in and you evolve and it becomes more natural over time.
Like I said, I think our profession really lends itself to the video-based platforms because of it being a movement profession, and I think that really does help consumers of our services understand the movement system better. Of course, you have the written text. If you have an Instagram post, there’s the post description below and the same on YouTube. You will have that written text. But I think for kinesiology-based fields, seeing the movement is very powerful. I think if you were building a brand in your entire profession, I would probably lean initially towards the video-based platforms.
Allison Jones
What are some best practices for creating a professional online presence? You have a pretty sophisticated setup that you’re working with today, including the microphone and whatnot. Not everyone is going to have that when they’re first getting started. But what are some best practices you can recommend for getting started with putting together a nice, professional online presence?
Tom Walters
It doesn’t have to be super complicated. I still film all of my YouTube and Instagram posts with my iPhone. I did it at a certain point. Maybe the one thing to invest in is just a lav mic. I bought a RØDE. RØDE makes good mics. It’s like maybe $200 and it’s a really great mic. I think if you just have your iPhone and a mic like that. I do all of my own editing on my iPhone as well with an app called Videoshop. I do everything on my phone. I have purposely made it not super complicated because if it becomes too complicated on the editing side and the video side of things, I won’t do it.
You have to remove some of that friction if you’re actually going to do it, and especially if you’re seeing patients all day, it’s an extra thing to try and create this content after work or before work. So, you can totally do it with an iPhone. You can do it with different apps, like I said, Videoshop right on your phone. I think the only thing is maybe just getting a mic.
So much of the content that’s promoted these days, I think people are getting started, are the vertical or short form videos, so reels on Instagram, that platform, they really still promote those. YouTube shorts are really promoted and you can use that same vertical content on both platforms. My YouTube channel in January of last year was at about 100,000 subscribers. I had one short go viral and get 65 million views, and I gained 500,000 subscribers from one short.
If you can create something that’s visually engaging and doesn’t have to be fancy just with your iPhone and again, I think because our field allows for visually engaging material, whether it’s showing a manual therapy technique or showing a unique exercise or a certain way to cue a particular exercise, you really can grow quickly. A lot of these platforms actually are more so rewarding small creators. They’re really trying to expose audiences to small creators. I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten larger, I tend to get less reach. But I see a lot of the smaller people really catching up at this point because I think the platforms are trying to in some ways get people hooked into posting on the platform, so they’ll reward smaller people and try to get them views and things.
I think if you’re getting started, just use your iPhone. Just record some things with your phone and just put them up and maybe trim the ends off it. Just make it simple and you start posting.
Allison Jones
It doesn’t have to be of high production value. Could you tell me a little bit about that viral video? What was so special about it that made it take off?
Tom Walters
They’re interesting. The manual therapy videos for me have been my most viral content across the board, and I started posting those during Covid when everyone was at home. Essentially, they were a partner manual therapy series because I just knew people couldn’t see practitioners, and so many of the manual therapy techniques we do aren’t that special. A lot of them are massage-based things, and it’s just knowing where to work on someone, like common points of tenderness.
The one in particular that went viral, my wife is a PT and I’m working on her. It’s funny because one of our daughters, my daughters are 10 and 13, they often record the videos. Talk about low production value. There’s nothing fancy going on. I don’t have a videographer or anything like that. I was doing a soft tissue mobilization technique on Kirsten’s upper trapezius muscle. She’s laying on her side, and Taylor, my ten-year-old, is filming it. I’m just working, and the camera is just positioned so people can see what I’m working on. It was just an educational video on how to work on the upper trapezius, nothing really that fancy. But those videos across the board, that one just happened to take off.
You’re always trying to hook people and create something that when somebody’s scrolling, it catches their eye. I think manual therapy videos are good because you’re zoomed in on a body region and you see someone’s hands on it and you’re wondering what’s going on there. A lot of my videos, those manual therapy videos do much better than the exercise videos I think because of that visual hook of that first freeze frame of that when something is scrolling by, they’re like, ‘What’s going on there?’ It hooks them in.
Allison Jones
I can imagine that, considering the time and the stress people were under, a lot of folks needed help with releasing that. Even now, just thinking about it, I can feel it getting tight.
Tom Walters
That’s what we’re talking about.
Allison Jones
Yes, you’re just going to relax it out. You’ve experienced rapid growth over the years with your social media. Could you tell me about some pitfalls that you’ve run into? Could you give the audience a little insight into some common pitfalls that you see other social media folks running into?
Tom Walters
I think that probably the biggest pitfall is that people don’t understand how much of a marathon these types of platforms are if you really want to grow. If you’re just doing it for fun or you just want to experiment with it and post here and there and see if it brings in some people to your business, then I think that’s totally fine. You can just do it for fun, or if it just allows you your creative outlet and you’re okay with that. But I think if you really want to try and grow a brand and a business on social media, you have to be dedicated to posting consistently and just sticking with that and knowing that it might be two or three years before you really feel like it’s going somewhere.
That’s the pitfall I see so often is that people don’t realize that up front, or they bite off more than they can chew. They try to really up the production value, and they make the process so complicated that they can’t stick with it. I think honestly, it’s really a benefit to you to make your content really simple. What can I do every day? With the Instagram algorithm, you need to post every day. What type of content? That’s a good place to sit down and think about what is my strategy? Maybe have a content calendar. Now I don’t do this because my systems developed over time. I have a calendar, a content strategy that I just know.
If you look at my Instagram page, I have a visual strategy. I have white posts that are anatomy based and carousels with exercises, then I have two darker posts, and I go between those three, two dark, a white one, two dark, a white one, and I know, okay, this is what’s coming up tomorrow. I create my posts the day before. I have so much content now that I can go back a year and think, oh, I haven’t covered this topic, I’ll bring it back in because people don’t scroll down that far.
But I think if you’re new, just think about what’s the easiest thing that I can get started with that I could do every day and also think about maybe there are three or four different content ideas, and you think, I’m going to cycle through those and it gives me something new and fresh to do each day so you feel like I’m not always creating the same type of content. Maybe one day is a reel with an exercise, and then the next day is a picture, this is what I’ll do, like a picture of a particular condition, maybe it’s like an Achilles rupture, and then I talk about that.
I think it makes it easier to keep going in terms of that marathon idea where if you have a few different content themes and you alternate between them. It’s just a straight framework, a strategy, but I do think the biggest pitfall is that people, they don’t realize how long you need to be in it to really grow a brand, and the content is too complicated, so they burn out. You really have to make your processes really simple. Especially if you’re someone who is seeing patients all day and you already have a full-time job and you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to this, and you’ve got other obligations outside of work, you’ve got to figure out how to make the content creation part really simple so that you can do it every day, something like YouTube.
Then you consider platforms too because YouTube, you only really need to post once a week, maybe twice. YouTube is honestly a lot more manageable if you have some other full-time job. I’m so looped into the hamster wheel, it’s hard for me to get out, but if I’d known what I know now, back then, I probably would have started on YouTube instead of Instagram. Both of them have their benefits, but Instagram, you have to really keep up with it and sometimes that can burn people out and they end up quitting.
Allison Jones
It’s crucial to assess the amount of time you have available in your schedule and then choose the platform that best fits that. A couple of things popped into my mind. When you’re putting that content together, remember that perfection is the enemy of progress. Don’t try to make it perfect; just get the content published and get started. You want to start and then be consistent with your publishing schedule, based on what the best publishing cadence is for that platform. Then, give it time. Allow it to percolate and work for you. Not everybody’s going to become an overnight social media influencer sensation. You have to be patient, build your brand, and establish your presence. It’s going to take a while. Is that a fair assessment?
Tom Walters
That’s really fair. That’s a great summary.
Allison Jones
There was something that you said. For those that are not familiar or just getting started with social media, you said two dark, one white. Can you explain a little bit about what that means?
Tom Walters
Yes, that doesn’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t spent some time on Instagram. On a platform like Instagram, you have a grid of all your posts. They run three across, and then it just goes all the way down, and people can scroll down. For me, the theme that’s worked well for me in terms of having different ideas of content has been to have this two dark, one white, and basically what that means to me is that the two dark are usually video-based or anatomy type posts where whatever’s shown in the image is just darker in color. Then the white post will be an anatomy one where I’m taking in an anatomy image and the background is white, and it’s just the illustration of that part of the body region.
When you look at my page, you’ll see this whole column of white anatomy posts, and then you’ll see these two dark ones next to each other, and each row is like that. Sometimes I get off. I am a little OCD, so I try to stick to it. It works well with social media, but it’s not always perfect. But for me, that essentially has just become three rows of types of content.
If I only had to do the white ones and it was only anatomy illustrations and talking about conditions, I think I would feel like I’m running out of ideas. It’d be harder for me to ideate. But when I know today I did ankle stability exercises and that was a white post–it showed an anatomy illustration of the ankle going into an inversion sprain–I know tomorrow that I’m on a darker one again, so that’s going to be a reel or some kind of video. It could be an anatomy dissection, just something that’s darker in color. It could be a biomechanics video. It definitely won’t be another white condition-specific one. It just opens up other options. I know I’m on to this other theme category, and that I think allows me to get into different compartments in my brain. For me, it just makes it easier to keep producing content.
Allison Jones
It helps you with your content calendar, but it also creates a really consistent experience for your viewers. They have a clear understanding of almost what to expect from you as well. You’re setting them up for understanding what they can expect from you, which can be very valuable with marketing and branding your practice.
Tom Walters
Exactly.
Allison Jones
The last area that I want to talk about is, and you touched on it earlier in the episode, you talked about the opportunity to bring your entire practice online using social media, essentially. You talked about how you’re not so fond of the clinical aspect. You like helping people and talking to people in that social media realm. There’s the opportunity there to just take your practice and essentially make it virtual, and reach people, treat people, help people just in the social media atmosphere. Is that fair to say?
Tom Walters
For sure. Yeah, totally. There’s so much potential. I’ve seen so many people take their practice and go fully virtual. You don’t need to see as many patients because if you’re working in an insurance-based clinic, the rate that you’re making per hour for your salary is probably less than you can charge per hour just running your own business and seeing people virtually online.
I’ve seen a number of people slowly get started on social media. As their accounts grew, they started teaching courses, they started selling programs, a bunch of them have created apps where their followers can come in and do consultations with them, access different programs, and then a bunch of them just signed up on virtual telehealth platforms, and they just fill their schedules, seeing people, they’re making more or they’re making the same and having more free time.
I just think there’s a lot of opportunity here, and you can reach all these people in the world that maybe normally wouldn’t have access to your specialty area or your particular experience. I saw so much of this, and I think anybody who is in this space during Covid, that was a unique time, but you just really saw these telehealth platforms grow. There’s so much opportunity around this now because of people being stuck at home and accessing services in this virtual environment. That groundwork was all laid so that now there’s just a lot of options if you’re interested in going in this area.
If you’re at all an introvert like I am, I find that virtual sessions are much less draining than in-person. I don’t know what it is. There’s a lot to be said for seeing somebody in-person. I think there’s a lot of that human connectedness that goes on when you’re close to somebody. Of course, with virtual, you lose the ability to palpate and touch and some of that assessment component, but it is pretty amazing to see how much you can figure out about someone’s situation just by listening to them in a virtual consultation and then helping guide them, because I really think at the end of the day, most of us in physical therapy are like coaches. We’re helping people navigate their conditions and so much of that navigation process you can do virtually just talking to someone, and then you can send people movements and exercises to do via email, something like that, videos.
That’s another great thing for me, honestly, of creating content is that because of all these years of creating content on Instagram that was video-based of me doing exercises, I have this amazing library on my phone now, so whenever I do a consultation with someone, I can just email those videos. I think what you create for content purposes also can be used if you decide you want to have a virtual practice because you can email all that video content to patients.
Allison Jones
You have it available at treatment. I would imagine too, it also maybe fills a gap for folks that just are not going to come in for an in-person visit for whatever reason. They don’t feel comfortable coming in. They physically can’t come in because they’re not able to leave their home or they don’t want to leave their home. So, it opens up other opportunities to treat a population of patients that wouldn’t be treated otherwise, so we’re extending the patient care circle.
Tom Walters
It is less threatening, I think, for a lot of people to get on a video call because there are people, whether it’s a physical issue where just getting to the clinic is difficult or they just don’t feel comfortable in that setting. It can be a lot less threatening, I think.
Allison Jones
Tom, you mentioned that you have a book. You published a book. Tell me a little bit about your book.
Tom Walters
Thank you. It’s been so fun. The book came out and I just surpassed a year. It came out on May 30th of 2023, and it’s called ‘Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal from Injury’. It’s a 500-page book, so it’s textbook size, it’s quite large. But the problem with social media is that it is great for teasing people and educating them a little bit on what we do as physical therapists. But of course, it lacks a lot of the nuance that would go into an actual patient visit.
I was really excited. I really wanted to create a resource that went deeper into the science of pain, the science of injury rehabilitation, how pain and injury are different from each other, and then to really create a more comprehensive program. There’s probably just a little over half of the book are programs broken down by joint region, so like a shoulder chapter or a hip chapter, a knee chapter. I went through and thought, what are the 50 most common orthopedic conditions I’ve seen in my years of practice? Then I created programs for those. Other programs have pictures of me doing the exercises.
It’s basically in a way I wanted to take what I’ve been doing on Instagram, but just make a much more comprehensive version of that so somebody can have one resource that they could use to self-manage less severe pains and injuries. Of course, if somebody’s had surgery, I didn’t include post-surgical conditions. If somebody’s had something really traumatic, we tried to put a lot of guidelines in there. This isn’t a replacement for care, but it could be a great complement to your care. Maybe your insurance ends and you have a side joint pain, and you want a resource to figure out some exercises you could keep doing once your PT’s over, or it’s a pain thing you’ve had before that’s not real severe, but you wake up and your neck hurts and you want to know what are some things I could do. That was the idea.
But it’s been such an amazing journey to have the book out and see it go around the world. I get pictures from people every day from Tanzania, from Pakistan, different countries where people have the book, and for me, it’s so neat to see because in all these places, physical therapy isn’t as developed from an educational standpoint as it is in the US, the UK, and Australia and things like that. I think it’s one of the huge benefits of things like social media, a book, things you can get to places in the world, and I think it helps to catch the whole world up a little bit in terms of what are best practices within our field.
Allison Jones
Excellent. What’s the title of the book?
Tom Walters
The book is called Rehab Science. It’s just a big red book. It’s called Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal from Injury.
Allison Jones
Excellent. We’re going to do a special giveaway for our podcast listeners. We’re going to give away three of the books. If you are interested in getting a copy of Tom’s book, all you have to do is DM Tom. What’s your DM?
Tom Walters
My account on Instagram is @rehabscience. The first three people who DM me there, I’ll send a hard copy to them.
Allison Jones
If you’re not on Instagram, you can also email. What’s your email.
Tom Walters
The email is rehabscientist@gmail.com
Allison Jones
Excellent. The first three folks that take advantage of that are going to get a free copy of ‘Rehab Science’. We hope that you take advantage of that. I’m excited to check out the book and learn a little bit more about how I can make myself feel a little bit better. Tom, how can people connect with you? We just heard your Instagram handle and your email, but are there other ways that people can connect with you and learn a little bit more about Rehab Science?
Tom Walters
Instagram and YouTube are both great. It’s just @rehabscience on both of those. The YouTube videos are a bit more comprehensive because I’m talking through the conditions rather than just somebody seeing exercises. I started a podcast as well. My first episode was published on April 2nd. I just got out my 10th episode, which I know is getting to ten episodes on a podcast, a lot of people stop before that. It’s that marathon mindset.
Allison Jones
Congratulations.
Tom Walters
Thank you. I’ve been trying to keep my marathon mindset going. The video versions of the podcast are on my YouTube channel. There’s a podcast playlist on my YouTube channel. But then of course, the audio version is on Apple, Spotify, and all those places.
Allison Jones
Excellent. All right. We’ll definitely have to check that out. Tom, any final thoughts for our audience today?
Tom Walters
I thought this was great. Like I told you before, all these podcasts I’ve done over the last year, nobody’s talked to me about social media. I think it’s such an area of interest for so many people right now. I spent so much time learning from creators who are in this branding area, and I just think there’s so much power. We all have our own personal brand. We might have our business brand. I just think there’s so much potential to start putting out content and teaching other people what you know.
A lot of us, I think, as physical therapists, we think, what I know is just commonplace, everybody knows this. But it’s what you know you take for granted. Other people don’t know that. Even if it’s just the simple things, just start teaching what you know or things you’re passionate about within the field, things that patients ask you, the common questions or the frustrations that you have with things or harmful beliefs they might have, things like that. Just start putting out some of that content and trying to help people just make it easy.
If you want to grow that brand online, just be consistent, figure out what you can do that’s not overly complicated. I think there’s just so much potential whether it’s getting more patients to come into your practice or creating an online offer that you could scale and makes you money while you’re sleeping. I just think there’s a lot of potential out there. I hope people will try some of the strategies we talked about.
People can always DM me or email me. If they have questions about any of those topics or getting started, I’m happy to try and get people going in the right direction.
Allison Jones
Thank you so much for joining us today and talking a little bit about your social media journey and sharing these wonderful tips and tricks with us. We really appreciate it. It’s been awesome talking with you. I want to thank our audience for tuning in to the Therapy Matters podcast, your one-stop resource for expert insights and advice on everything therapy and rehab. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thank you so much.
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