I have been a Rolfing® Structural Integration practitioner for about twenty-five years, and I have supported other healing arts providers in private practice with their small business skills since 2009. The number one thing I have been hearing from practitioners for the last several years is, “I know I have to be more visible on social media to get more clients, but I hate it.” Maybe you have
said this, or felt this, yourself.
In this article, I will tackle the questions around if you need to “be more visible on social media,” or “figure out your social media strategy,” or “grow an audience,” or whatever other phrase you may have uttered at some point. (And as a side note, if you don’t hate it and you genuinely enjoy posting on social media and/or are getting good results in terms of nurturing your Rolfing practice – I am not trying to convince you to abandon something that is working for you.) I will tell you my main point right up front: if you are a Rolfer with a private practice and you are hoping to either grow that practice or just to make sure that it remains busy enough to pay yourself what you need, you really and truly do not need to be on social media to accomplish these goals. Now that I’ve cut to the chase, let me explain why this is so, and why you keep hearing from other people that you should be on social media.
Considering Social Media
Let’s define what I mean by social media: I’m talking about TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook. To a lesser extent, I am also including YouTube here, which is a gray area between social media and a search engine. What all these platforms have in common is that they are mediated by an algorithm, which is developed and altered over time by the company that created each platform. The algorithm determines what gets seen and by whom.
If the algorithm is changed to prioritize video content over written content,
videos will be shown more, influencing you to create more videos in order to stay relevant. If the algorithm is biased so that people with certain political affiliations should only be shown certain content, and you want to have your posts seen by those people, you will be influenced by the algorithm to be more of that version of politics. If the algorithm decides that you can pay to play and prioritizes those who spend the most on ads, you will eventually be influenced to pay for ads. The fact that an algorithm created by the social media platform determines what gets seen and shared is probably not news to you in 2025. I want to focus instead on why choosing to play the algorithm game does not work for those of us who are on
social media in order to ensure our private practices remain visible and viable.
In our line of work, the thing that is ‘for sale’ is a therapeutic relationship. The therapeutic relationship being at the heart of what we do is also what makes our work quite different from so many of the things that we see being marketed all the time, both on social media and in other ‘real world’ ads and experiences, like walking through the grocery store, for example. What we see marketed all around us every day are: products (for example, a new cereal, a dining table, a sneaker brand, etc.), and entertainment (for example, a new television show, a movie, a music album, or a streaming service). Products and entertainment are constantly being sold to us and promoted.
In addition to seeing what ‘stuff’ is for sale, we also see how those things are sold to us. Both of these things are about having mass market appeal. In other words, they are traffic marketing businesses. Meaning, they need a large volume of awareness and attention in order to be viable as businesses. Because we are swimming in the cultural waters of seeing how these mass market businesses are being sold to us, we think we need to grow our practices with the same types of marketing strategies that we see for products and entertainment.
But in a therapeutic relationship business, what’s required is a much higher level of genuine rapport and trust – at least enough to be willing to try an initial session with you. The bar is much lower for the level of rapport and trust that is needed to try out a new television show or a new brand of seltzer. And the stakes are even lower when it comes to the business model social media is best positioned to deliver, the business model it created itself: the influencer business model.
To have a social media presence that gets you and your work seen by the kinds of people who would become clients of yours is still a traffic game. (Photo by Edualonso Rodenas by istockphoto.com.)
To choose to scroll a feed and be willing to interact with content that is going to be engaging for anywhere between a few seconds to a few minutes is a low bar indeed! And if we aren’t trying to make a living as a social media influencer, and we just want to use these tools to give our Rolfing practices some visibility, I see why we hope and think it will deliver for us.
Social media came out of the gate seeming like an antidote to traffic marketing. Logically, especially if you’ve been around for the advent of social media as I was, when it was less of a flooded and crazy-making space, it seemed like this tool would be the perfect fit to get the word out about our types of businesses. It seemed more relationship- oriented in the first place because it’s just individuals creating their feeds after all – how egalitarian!
The logical thought is that by posting on social media and cultivating a following there, you have access to these platforms where billions of people are already gathered, and where there aren’t the traditional gatekeepers in charge of what gets seen. So it seems like it would have the effect of leveling the playing field for you, the small business owner, to get your work seen.
It also seems, at first glance, perfectly positioned as a tool to develop trust and rapport with potential clients because your posts can be personal, educational, and engaging in a way that a typical advertisement can’t. Enter the business model of being an influencer.
To have a social media presence that gets you and your work seen by the kinds of people who would become clients of yours is still a traffic game. You need to understand the algorithm, you need to post enough, and enough of the exact content that the algorithm is prioritizing, to cultivate a following. Bear in mind that many people also pay for followers (bots) or spend money on ads, and we’re right back to traffic marketing again: your posts are a needle in the haystack unless you are willing to play the influencer game.
In our structural integration world, our category of influencers is the wellness influencer, so let’s take a look at that a bit. Let’s say it is a best-case scenario
wellness influencer business. Imagine someone who is well-trained and credentialed to speak about what they are posting on, who truly wants to help people by getting good information out there, and who hopes that by growing a following, some of those people will want to come and see them in their practice.
Unfortunately, this person now has two jobs, wellness practitioner and now social media influencer. They would have this second job of keeping up with the algorithm. And because of that, they would also have the gauze of their
influencer persona in between them and the therapeutic relationship with their client.
I will talk about this ‘gauze’ more in a moment. Here is my main message again: Cultivating real, trustworthy relationships, outside of the algorithms, is what will grow our practices in the most reliable, effective, and quickest way, much more quickly than getting a social media following going.
Why will being an influencer take time to attract people to our offices?
Because the algorithm rewards specific qualities of videos, to succeed at growing a following large enough to bring in clients in the real world, you have to work within the context of what the algorithm likes. Here’s what it likes:
In other words, making people think they know you and your life, that they are friends with you even though they don’t know your life, and they aren’t friends with you.
These emotions keep you glued to the feed.
Things that make people feel like their minds are expanding because they finally understand something that was previously mysterious. This could be, in our cases, about the human body, fascia, or movement. But do you want to have an edu-tainment relationship with your clients? And this is not quite the kind of a-ha the algorithm prefers. It tends to like a certain kind of a-ha that is more closely related to conspiracism.
Funny things make you feel good and getting a quick giggle is a nice dopamine hit, which is what the algorithms are oriented towards because it keeps you on the platform.
None of these things are conducive to a client-practitioner therapeutic relationship. My primary care physician, my Rolfer, or my acupuncturist are people whom I think incredibly highly of, but I don’t think they are gurus, and I don’t want them to entertain me. I just think they are well-trained and effective professionals. Which is probably what you want people to think of you as well.
And so, what’s old is new again. Tending your practice by cultivating real-world relationships with people in your community is the absolute best way to grow, nurture, and sustain your practice.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Invite them out to coffee or lunch. Start a local get-together for holistic healthcare professionals to meet and socialize once a month. Support them; cheer them on when something good happens for them (like a new office, new certification, etc.). Attend their workshops, talks, and group classes.
Are people who would be a great fit to work with you already spending time at local yoga studios, gyms, meditation centers, local workplaces, theatre, or music groups? Instead of hosting an event that tries to get potential clients to come to you by offering an open house or a workshop that happens at your office, pitch these ideas in their local spaces and deliver an experiential offering that people well-suited for your work would want to attend.
Because the algorithm rewards specific qualities of videos, to succeed at growing a following large enough to bring in clients in the real world, you have to work within the context of what the algorithm likes. (Photo by Stock-Asso on shutterstock.com.)
I say experiential because people don’t want to take time out of their busy lives for an infomercial – a talk about how Rolfing® Structural Integration could help them or what the Rolfing Ten Series® is. They will take time out of their lives to experience a shift in their bodies! You could offer a one-time event or a recurring weekly event. For example, a Rolf Movement® class in a local yoga studio or meditation center. Or you could deliver it before rehearsal to a local theater company or symphony. You could run fascial mobility workshops based on the Ten Series in local corporations as a workplace wellness initiative, or at local gyms/exercise facilities where people are engaged in something physical (like tennis courts, pickleball clubs, rock climbing gyms, cycling studios, or running groups).
I know you do this simply by seeing them for sessions, but you can also let them
know that you appreciate their referrals in ways that don’t make them feel put on the spot. For example, you can add this line to your email signature, to your booking page, and to the footer of your website:
“My practice grows through word-of- mouth referrals, from kind clients like you. Thank you for letting people know about my work.”
You could run a refer-a-friend promotion that happens once or twice a year. You don’t have to offer steep (or any) discounts to do this; you can simply email your current clients and announce that it’s refer-a-friend month and that you’d be grateful to them for spreading the word that you are currently accepting new clients. Oftentimes, the reason why clients aren’t referring to you more often is because they are just plain busy, and so it’s not front-of-mind for them. These little nudges help you stay in their awareness when a friend or colleague of theirs could use your help. And none of them require pestering email campaigns or other ‘ick’ feeling things.
What all of these strategies for connecting with your local community have in common is that they are more uncomfortable and more demanding than clicking publish on a post. They require that we get a little more visible, that we stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone to reach out and connect with people. But the good news is that these strategies are so much more effective than publishing a social media post, and these local tasks don’t become a constant hustle. Try one and see how it goes!
In conclusion, if you are only on social media because you think you have to be there to get more clients, you don’t. You can free yourself of that thought and spend your time on more valuable practice-building activities. And, because these practice-building activities are connection- and community-based, they also tend to be much more nourishing and enjoyable too!
Brooke Thomas is a Certified Rolfer® who practices in New Haven, Connecticut, and Seattle, Washington.
Rolfing® Structural Integration; private practice; social media; therapeutic relationship; algorithm; wellness influencer; local community; holistic healthcare professionals; experiential offerings; word-of-mouth referrals; community-based strategies. ■
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