Society has changed. Communities don’t physically exist in the way they used to. Communities exist online. The biggest sign of this is in the growth of online dating. I found the following passage on the internet earlier.
According to PARSHIP, Europe’s largest premium online matchmaking service, which uses a rigorous personality profiling test to determine compatibility, the Internet has become a mainstream way to meet someone special: there’s now a 50:50 chance that any single person you know is currently logging on to find love. In 2007, 7.8 million single Britons used some form of online dating service to find romance, compared to the 5.4 million who used a mixture of offline and online services in 2005.
And so it is clear to me, that everything else we do needs to adapt to this new society.
I am particularly thinking about my Cognitive Hypnotherapy business right now.
At the time of writing this I have somewhere around 2000 followers on Twitter and around 150 friends on Facebook. When I talk about the things I am doing with my therapy practice people often respond with “I wish I lived closer!”
But that’s not how society works these days. It’s not about geography it’s about connectivity.
So I have to adapt rather than expecting people to fit around me.
As a first step I have developed a series of downloadable products that are available on my website right now. Things you can listen to that help with relaxation, pain management and even hayfever and cold remedies. These are MP3 files that don’t need my presence to work.
Next I will develop a series of YouTube instructional videos for how to apply some of the Cognitive Hypnotherapy techniques that can be taught so that you can use them yourselves.
And lastly I need to develop a model for therapy that can work over a video conferencing facility such as Skype.
If my potential clients occupy the online world, then I must meet them there.
