Marketing an online course for psychologists part 6: Creating inclusive online marketing and education resources. Guidance for psychologists and therapists Psychologists and therapists usually care a great deal about inclusivity and we spend time in training and service planning thinking about how we can make sure our work is accessible to those who need it. However, in my experience we often don’t put as much thought into our marketing and teaching. Many mental health accounts on social media fail to fully represent the people following that account and most haven’t yet learned how to make their content accessible to those with visual or hearing impairments. Similarly, online courses are often totally inaccessible to people with learning difficulties like dyslexia or colour blindness. This is completely unnecessarily exclusionary as there is awesome guidance available all over the web to let us know how we can make our content accessible. Since much of our marketing and teaching is now being done online it is well worth spending some time thinking about how we can make sure anything we put out there that is intended to provide psychoeducation is inclusive and accessible to all that could benefit from it. In this episode I am going to outline some basic principles and link to the best resources I have found to support you in making your marketing and educational materials as inclusive as possible.
It was actually while researching for my new online course for our membership “The roadmap to a successful online course” that I came across the resources I am going to link to today. I am always looking to try and make sure that the materials I create are as inclusive and accessible as possible and I wanted to make sure that we had a module dedicated to that in the course.  So if you are planning to add an online course into your psychology or therapy practice then do https://psychologybusinessschool.com/complete-roadmap-to-a-successful-online-course/ (come and check out the roadmap). It sits at the centre of our monthly membership and will take you from your very first idea for a course right the way through to getting it in front of all the people who need it.
Create inclusive marketing and educational resources that your audience can relate to Images that reflect the range of people you are serving and stories that allow people to see themselves in what you are teaching. I’ve talked in previous episodes about the idea of having a representative group of ideal clients in mind when you are creating your marketing and educational resources. If you haven’t listened to the https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-business-of-psychology/ideal-client-avatar-psychologists-therapists-marketing (Ideal Client Avatar episode) then it is worth going back to that one. I try to have different members of this group in mind as I create my resources and try to make sure that there are images and stories that help each of those people to see themselves in what I am teaching or talking about. If you are training professionals this could include sharing relevant stories from the different groups you have in the room (for example mental health nurses, psychotherapists and psychologists) as well as the characteristics you would usually think about when talking about inclusivity like race, gender identity and socio economic background. https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-business-of-psychology/self-disclosure-online-for-psychologists-and-therapists (In this episode )I talk about a test that I use before I include stories in my resources and that includes an inclusivity check.
I like this https://sproutsocial.com/insights/brand-diversity-in-social-media/ (blog from Sprout social) that gives some ideas for making sure your content is anti racist in a helpful way. 
Amnesty have also produced a simple guide to creating resources that are respectful of all gender identities that I think is useful. One tip I have picked up that