Dawn McMullan-Cooper, Peter Piper Picked Speech & Language Therapy - Peter Piper Picked the perfect platform

Dawn McMullan-Cooper is a specialist speech and language therapist and regional makaton sign language tutor for Gloucestershire.

After working as a therapist for many years in the NHS and then in Canada, Dawn began her own independent practice, Peter Piper Picked Speech and Language Therapy, in January 2015.

Dawn now works mostly with children under 10 years old in nurseries, homes and schools across Gloucestershire and the surrounding areas to improve their confidence and communication skills.

Becoming a Faster Woman 

"I had been using Facebook for some time to promote my business and I had a LinkedIn profile but I must admit that I didn't really understand LinkedIn, and I wasn't using Twitter at all."

Dawn attended three social media training sessions from Faster Women in 2016, Social Media Strategy, Twitter for Business and LinkedIn for Business.

"The sessions were incredibly useful not only because they explained how these social media platforms work, but because they focused on how they could support my business. The presenters encouraged us to ask certain questions, who are our main customers? Where do our customers come from? What type of social media platforms do they use? What are the benefits of using that platform?"

"I realised that most of my clients find me through the professional channels such as the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and that I was actually spending too much time on Facebook when I compared how many customers it generated."

"The training taught me that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have something to offer my business, but I needed to be clear about how I approached them"

Picking the perfect approach

"As a result of attending these sessions I have developed a social media strategy and posting plan that works for my business. This has allowed me to use my time more efficiently and delivers a genuine return on my efforts."

"Even though Facebook isn't where my individual clients come from, I find Facebook is particularly useful for advertising my Sign Language groups to local people.  I've also run a paid advertising campaign on Facebook aimed at increasing awareness of my business and that has reach over 11,000 people, this is something I wouldn't have had the nerve to do before attending these courses."

"I now have a Twitter account and although I don't tweet every day I have a posting plan and clear objectives about what I want to achieve with each post and what audience I am communicating to."

"I've found that Twitter is a great platform continuing my professional development, I've created 'groups' and that allows me to keep an eye on industry developments and find out about new articles and papers."

"Overall I now feel a lot more secure in what I'm doing on social media. I have a clear set of objectives and I track enquiries so I can evaluate what works and that gives me a great deal of confidence and  allows me to refine what I was doing."

You can find out more about Dawn's business at www.peterpiperpicked.co.uk.