WebHealer &bull; Blog

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Something exciting is coming..

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We’ve had a message from Samaritans that they’re about to confirm the details of the 2014 Feel Good Friday event. They’re still being rather cagey about what and when, but they do say it will be quite different to the events they ran in 2012 and 2013. Timing wise we’re looking at mid year. They did give us a clue though. “most of you will find it really hard to part with your little friend.”, so our guess is something to do with mobile phones. Any other suggestions anyone?

We’ll post more when we have it, and all indications are that we may hear something further in the next 2 weeks.

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Feel Good Friday 2014 - Change of Date

Samaritans have confirmed that they are changing the date of their annual Feel Good Friday event, normally held on the first Friday in February. Of course WebHealer will be supporting the event in 2014, as we have done ever since Feel Good Friday was launched in 2012, in fact we’re determined to top our fund raising total of almost £3,000 achieved in 2013.

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Press release issued jointly with Samaritans

The summer holidays are drawing to an end, and we’re just catching up with blogging some of the final actions from the 2013 Feel Good Friday that were actually concluded a few weeks ago. We were proud to issue a press release jointly with Samaritans which confirmed the total raised by WebHealer and clients, and included some of the client stories that we’ve previously shared on this blog. Here’s a link to the press release on the WebHealer site. An exciting innovation we added for 2013 was to help our clients raise some awareness in their local communities by mass customising press releases that our clients could distribute to local newspapers.

All clients who took part are naturally proud of their contribution, so its in everyone’s interest (including Samaritans) to get as much media coverage as possible for this campaign and the role of the individual therapists. Issuing press releases is not something that most therapists are familiar with or confident about however, so we felt that we needed to do as much as possible on their behalf, which is where the idea of automatically creating press releases that could either be sent by our clients as-is or used as the basis of a modified version. Its always easier to make adjustments to something than to start with a blank sheet of paper. We also sent a simple guide to explain how to create a mailing list of local media contacts who would be interested in receiving such a press release. As a new concept we’re a little unsure how well it will work, but as with everything, we plan to learn from client feedback, and keep on making improvements like this year after year. The other thing we were pleased about is that we secured the approval of Samaritans for the pro-forma for this press release, which enabled us to include personalised quotes by Rachel Kirby-Rider, Director of fundraising for Samaritans. This is something that our clients individually would find very difficult to obtain.

Here’s a link to an example press release created for one of our clients, Catherine Scanlon a Shiatsu, Yoga and Chi-Kung therapist.

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Feel Good Friday 2014 - Date confirmed is February 7th

Samaritans have confirmed that they will be running their successful Feel Good Friday event again in 2014. The first Tuesday in February is the rule, so February 7th it is.

WebHealer are already gearing up for a better-than-ever contribution. We’ve got yet more ideas to help our clients participate, raise funds for Samaritans and raise the profile of their therapy practices at the same time, whilst demonstrating their integrity and compassion to their local community. In 2013, we had over 150 clients participate, and we raised almost £3,000. This year our goal is to have 200-250 clients on the map, and to raise proportionately more. We’re also working even harder on PR. Since hiring Eaton Creative for our press work, the aim is to get the Feel Good Friday Therapy Map some prominent mentions in the national press.

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Feel Good Friday - Thanks from Samaritans

Thanks again to our clients who took part in Feel Good Friday 2013. We’re about to put out a press release jointly with Samaritans to confirm the total raised by WebHealer and WebHealer clients (£2,962) but in the meantime, Samaritans have sent us this thank you email. As a recap, over 150 WebHealer therapists took part in Feel Good Friday 2013, which represents a 50% increase in participation compared to our support for the 2012 event. The largest individual amount raised was £150 by a therapist in the Guildford area, which resulted in a total donation to Samaritans of £300, taking into account WebHealer matching funds. In total over 60 WebHealer clients made payments directly to Samaritans, and we know that some clients made payments directly to local branches, and over half the donations were for £20 and above. Overall we are delighted with the result from this event, and are motivated to work even harder to make 2014 better still. Our goal is a big mention in a Sunday supplement just prior to the event, which will be great exposure for the campaign itself and for the activities that our clients are involved in, and for our clients themselves. We’re rather partial to win-win outcomes at WebHealer!

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We’ve just heard from Samaritans that in total, our support for the Feel Good Friday 2013 campaign has raised £2,962. This represents £1,481 donated directly by WebHealer clients, matched by another £1,481 from WebHealer. Many many thanks to all our clients. This is a great result, and much better than last year, when we didn’t even manage £500, so instead of only being able to fund a few hours of Samaritans running costs, we’re funding a whole day and a little more. Samaritans will be issuing a press release shortly, which we’ll post a link to. They have also sent us a breakdown of donations received, and it was great to see that money was donated by over 60 WebHealer clients. The largest donation was £300 which is fantastic, and over half the donations were of £20 or above, which is very generous.

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As it happens, i didn’t get any extra appointments on Feel Good Friday. I will be making a donation anyway. It did give me the opportunity to raise the issue with regular clients. And I have noticed a marked uptake in enquiries, so the Google placement thing definitely works.

- We’re still getting the odd item of feedback from clients who participated in Feel Good Friday this February. This is from Elizabeth Compton, a reflexologist based in Whitstable, with the website www.therapybythesea.co.uk. We were pleased to hear that Elizabeth was also noticing an improvement in Google ranking, as a side effect of participating in Feel Good Friday. This was in fact no accident. Google likes websites that “get involved”, and the reference to client websites on our WebHealer Feel Good Friday Therapy Map was always intended to provide a boost to their search engine ranking. In fact its very much part of the preparation we put into this event, and we are currently carrying out some in depth analysis of the search engine benefit to our clients, of having participated in Feel Good Friday. Those who participated in the 2012 campaign showed a mark benefit of four or five places of improvement up the rankings compared to our clients who did not list themselves on the 2012 WebHealer map. Its still early days for those who listed on the 2013 map, as we have noticed that the benefits tend to accrue over a few months. Already though we’re seeing that clients on the 2013 map are 1 place higher on Google on average, compared to those who did not join the map.

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How the Money Helps - WebHealer target is to pay for a day

It won’t be long now. We’ll get the final total raised for Samaritans through WebHealer’s support of Feel Good Friday very soon, and we will post the information here first. In the meantime, its worth remembering what’s behind all this. Every 6 seconds, someone calls Samaritans for help, and it costs £10 million every year, just to keep the telephone lines open, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 96 per cent of this comes from voluntary donations. It costs £3.88 to pay for one call to be answered by a volunteer, and £100 to recruit 5 new volunteers. Overall, keeping the service running costs £1,000 every 12 hours. Our aim is that in 2013 WebHealer and our clients will raise over £2,000, so we can keep the service running for a day.

Click here to see some WebHealer client stories and feedback on Samaritans feedback page

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Samaritans showing WebHealer stories on Feel Good Friday website

We were very pleased and somewhat flattered that Samaritans chose to put some of the stories and feedback from our clients on their own Feel Good Friday website. We did push the boat out this year, and put a huge amount of effort into making our campaign a successful fundraiser for Samaritans, so it is nice to see this recognition, not only for the individuals who provided the testimonials, but for all our clients who took part.

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We’ve had an email from Lara at Samaritans who’s working on the Feel Good Friday fundraising event. So far they have registered over £700 raised via WebHealer clients, which with the matching funds WebHealer is giving already makes a total of over £1,400 for 2013. We know that there are other clients still to send their money so a total of £2,000+ now looks very likely.

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Thank you for presenting this opportunity to support Samaritans. I know that they help so many people who never make it to therapy and save lives all the time. Tragically, I recently lost a loved one and am sure he felt he could not turn to anyone, in spite of being surrounded by loving family and friends. Any work that can be done to raise awareness of emotional pain and how to notice it in others will be money well spent in addition to the critical work of talking to those who are in despair. Caring and taking time means so much in giving someone a chance to ‘holding on’ while also having this maybe 'new’ experience. I am a huge fan of Samaritans who do the work that never makes it to the consulting room.

- Patricia McEntee of www.lifeconcerns.co.uk sent us this heartfelt message after taking part in this year’s Feel Good Friday fundraiser for Samaritans. Although this is a very personal story, she was more than happy to give us her permission to show it publicly. Patricia is a counsellor and psychotherapist working in Clapham and Victoria, SW4. This is the first year that Patricia has participated in the Feel Good Friday campaign, with a place on WebHealer’s therapy map.