Your first reviews, and how to earn them honestly

The hardest part of a new profile is not the text or the photos. It is the empty space where reviews should be. Someone choosing a therapist looks for confirmation from other people, and when there is none they either take a risk or go to whoever already has feedback. The good news is that the first five reviews change the picture almost completely, and you can gather them within a few weeks if you go about it deliberately.

Start with the people who have already been to you. Almost every therapist has a handful of returning clients who never thought to write anything, simply because nobody asked. A request does not feel pushy when it is specific and easy to act on. The best moment is right after a session, while the person still feels the result, or the next day in a short message. Say it plainly: I have just started working through the portal, and it would really help me if you wrote a couple of sentences about how it went.

Shorten the path to the text. Send a direct link rather than a three-step instruction. If someone does not know what to write, offer three prompts: what brought you in, how you felt afterwards, and who you would recommend this to. Do not dictate wording or send a ready-made paragraph, because the value of a review lies precisely in sounding like a real person. Two uneven, specific paragraphs work better than ten smooth identical ones.

Do not buy or invent reviews. This is risky not only because platforms detect it, but because readers sense it. Five identical five-star praises with no detail raise suspicion faster than one middling review that mentions a small drawback. Trust grows out of authenticity, and authenticity includes minor imperfections.

Reply to every review, including the good ones. A short, human answer shows the next reader how you communicate. A thank you plus one specific note, such as being glad the exercises helped, is entirely enough. Avoid identical copied replies, because they make you look like an automated system rather than a practitioner.

A critical review is not a disaster but a test. Wait until the first wave of reaction passes, then answer calmly: thanks for the feedback, an apology for what did not work, and one sentence about what you will do differently. Do not defend, do not argue, and never disclose details about the client's health or the content of the session; confidentiality applies just as much when you are being criticised. Future readers judge not the existence of a complaint but how you handled it.

Remember that reviews are also a working tool. If several people mention that the room was chilly or the entrance was hard to find, that is not nitpicking, it is a free audit. Fix it, mention that you have, and the next reviews will be about something else. The first ten come slowly, but once they are there new ones start arriving on their own, because people join a conversation far more willingly than they start one on a blank page.