“DoulaMatch.net” is a powerful, yet free, tool for advertising services as a doula. I spent a little time on the online directory for doulas, searching for our certified doulas to see how they compared. I came up with a short list of things that our doulas could do to have strong listings, while presenting genuine information about themselves and their services. Take a moment here to review these suggestions and see what you can do to improve your listing.
Compare, Don’t Compete
When looking for how you should best present your services, you might do well to see how others are presenting themselves. My first suggestion is this: don’t try to compete with other doula’s listings. Rather, make sure that you are not leaving out any of the details on your own service. As you review other doulas’ listings, look for ideas of service that you may already be providing but that you overlooked or forgot to make mention of. The end of this exercise is to see that you have enough information to occupy the space you have available.
Use Clean Images
A clean, polished presentation always goes a long way to sell your services. Don’t mask who you are; you need to be comfortable in your own skin. But a well lit photo of yourself, either on the job or portrait where you are smiling, will send a positive message about how you present your service.
Also, Doula Match allows you to upload a copy of your current certificate of training. Because this is a document, not a photograph of a person, I would strongly recommend a scanned image of your certificate as opposed to a quick cellphone photo. This again speaks to the presentation and the unspoken impulses that cause us to discount the unclean presentation. A scanned image allows for a unity of background color in presentation of the image, instead of the natural gradient or shading that happens with photographs.
To this end, we provide our students with a scanned copy of their certificate for them to feature where they will and how they feel is best online.
Get Client Reviews
Client reviews, when honestly collected and published, are worth their weight in gold. By my qualifying the previous statement, I’d strongly warn against the temptation to publish fake or phony reviews. Don’t do it. You’re not going to sell your services any better by lying about them.
Work hard and let others rave about your services, if they so choose to do. You can always provide them with tools to do so, but don’t try to fake it.
Polish Often
Doula Match rewards those with the most recent content the best seating at the top of listings. In that regard, review your content often. Find little things that you might improve and make those updates to your listing. It doesn’t have to be any major changes. Small, steady incremental changes will keep your listing at the top of results, and also let your clients know that you are current and active as a doula.
Using these four things, you should be able to make a listing that will help promote you and your business as a doula.
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