March 17, 2026
Finding Your Doula on Social Media: Podcast Episode #333
In this episode of Ask the Doulas, we’re talking all about social media and doulas with Doula Darcy. Social media has become one of the most powerful ways for families to discover support during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, but it can also feel overwhelming to navigate.
Darcy shares practical tips for parents on how to find the right doula through platforms like Instagram and other social channels, including what to look for in a doula’s online presence and how to spot someone who aligns with your values and birth preferences.
For doulas and birth professionals, this conversation also dives into smart, sustainable ways to market your services online. Darcy breaks down strategies for showing up authentically on social media, building trust with potential clients, and creating content that helps families feel informed and supported.
Whether you are expecting a baby or building your doula business, this episode offers helpful insights into using social media to connect, educate, and grow.
This episode is sponsored by Cozy Earth. Use the code GOLDCOAST to receive a discount of up to 20 percent off.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am thrilled to chat with my friend Darcy Sauers today. Darcy is known as The Doula Darcy. She is a doula business coach and marketing strategist. Since 2010, Darcy has built a thriving postpartum doula business, now doula agency, in New Hampshire, with her team of postpartum doulas handling the day to day in-person clients. Darcy spends her time and energy helping other doulas grow and scale their businesses with a focus on sustainability and not burning themselves out.
Prior to having her own three children and becoming a doula, Darcy worked for ten years in the advertising and marketing world. She was able to replace her corporate income quicker than most new doulas because of her previous career and expertise. Darcy now uses this experience to help other doulas build their own thriving practices.
Welcome, Darcy!
Thank you so much for having me! I’m so excited to be a guest on your podcast. I love it.
I’m happy to have you here! Since you are the social media expert and marketing expert, we are going to talk about how to find the perfect birth or postpartum doula through social media channels, and for our listeners who are doulas themselves, we can touch a bit on how they can market themselves to families. I’m excited to hear your tips.
So my tips are, it works out. It’s the same for both parents and for doulas. I’m always saying when I’m teaching doulas about marketing that you can’t just be a TikTok star. You can’t just put two posts up on Instagram and then never go back. You have to also have a good website that really showcases your experience, your testimonials, your certifications. Your website is like your deep dive about your doula services. For parents, you want to make sure you’re finding a doula that has that, that you can go find that all when you’re ready to hire them. But first, you’re probably going to find your doulas – your clients are probably going to find you on social media or through a Google search. So you’ve got to show up. So for parents, I really encourage you to, first of all, ask your friends and family. Who are the doulas you know? Who have you used? Who have you heard good things about? And then go do a deep dive on them. Go watch their TikTok videos. Go watch their Instagram reels and videos and posts because you can really get such a good idea about their energy, their personality, their values as a doula, from watching a few videos and reading through a few of their posts and a little bit of their writing. And then when you find someone that you “make a connection” with through the interwebs, then that’s when you can go to their website and do the deep dive and make sure they’re credentialed. Make sure they’ve done the training. Make sure they have the experience you’re interested in. Read through their testimonials. So I really just think the internet is such a blessing. Hiring a doula is a very personal decision, and this is someone you’re going to work very closely with. They’re going to see you naked at your birth! Or they’re going to come into your home and take care of you two days after you’ve just had a baby. Literally, the most vulnerable time of your life. You want to make sure this is a person that you gel with, and that is so much easier to do now. I should say that I’m 51 years old. So I just look at things through the lens of how social media makes that so much easier. You can, from your couch, watch a few videos, get someone’s vibe, and then decide, okay, yeah, I’ll give them a call. Versus before the internet, you’d have to make ten phone calls, call around, chit chat without seeing the person, and then go do a bunch of interviews. It would take a lot more work to get that first impression vibe check on a doula that you can get now on the internet, which is so great.
So true. And you can get a feel for the values. Now, we both own agencies, so a lot of times, other than the sleep consultants on my team who will do videos, the videos are from me, unless it happens to be during our team photo shoot time when we get some videos taken of the doulas. But they still need to do some of – well, I do the matchmaking, but the clients may not get a feel for my entire team the way they would for the values of the business, what we stand for. And then my own personality as owner.
Yeah, that is true. I don’t know how big your agency is. My agency is kind of small. I have six to eight doulas working for me, and we all have a pretty similar vibe. And like you said, I do put pictures of them up. The other thing is, as an agency owner, you can put up – I have testimonials just about Erica. You know, I put those on the social media so that people can kind of read those, and then again, they click through the website where they can read everybody’s full bio.
So helpful. And not all doulas have websites, and I do feel like, yes, they might find you on TikTok or Instagram. Occasionally, I will get messages on Facebook or some other social medial channels, but most of the time, I’m getting a phone call or they’re going to my website. So even if they see an Instagram post and message me there, a lot of the time, they’re doing more research, and as you said, looking at testimonials of the different doulas, of the sleep consultants, and my team hovers around 25 every year, so we’re a midsize agency. It is hard to get all of the doulas to be on video or find other ways to get to know them, other than reading a bio and seeing their photo.
Yeah, and if there’s a doula out there that doesn’t have a website, I just think in this day and age, you have to because parents want to do their due diligence. Or they should do their due diligence. That’s my message to the parents. There’s a lot – and actually, Kristin, we were talking about this before we hit record. There’s a lot of doulas out there in the world now, which is great, but not all doulas are trained in the same manner. So I think parents really need to do their due diligence and not just take a doula at their word that they’re a doula. Ask them questions about their certification. Ask them questions about their training. Ask them questions about their experience. Again, do a deep dive on their website. Make sure they’re checking all these boxes before you go and hire them to come to your birth or come into your home.
Yes. Those mom groups, whether it’s Baby Center or the Facebook parenting and pregnancy groups, are a great place to ask about experience with a particular doula or agency like ours and get a feel for personal referrals, if you don’t have a friend who hired a doula or a sleep consultant or took a particular childbirth class.
Exactly. Yeah, Facebook mom groups are gold for stuff like that.
For finding a provider, a nanny, all of the things, even outside of the doula world.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
But there is a difference between influencers, and I feel like you get this with your social media consulting and marketing consulting. We feel like we have to do all the things, and post videos on social three times a day. And it’s hard. I mean, before we hit record, we were talking about all the different services my agency offers, and how I feel like we touch on everything, but it’s really challenging to tell the full story when you don’t offer one specific niche, like sleep consulting, for example. I could talk sleep consulting all day, but I don’t want to overshadow other services like overnight newborn care and birth doula support and our classes. So I feel like as doulas, our time is so limited, and we often don’t know how to focus unless we hire a professional like yourself.
Yeah. When doulas hire me, I always give them the recommendation that – really, back to the website. The bulk of your effort should be in the website because someone like you, Kristin, who has so many different services – a website can showcase all of that. You can have a different page for every different service, every class, and you have unlimited space to share all the details. That’s hard to do in a seven-second Instagram reel or a 30-second TikTok video, but I like to look at it like your website is where all your information is for the people who are ready to do the deep dive.
And then social media – you do not, as a doula, need to be posting three or five times a day or whatever big marketers want to say. Having a consistent presence there is really important because back to the parents, if I’m scrolling around – and actually, a doula I just had a consult with yesterday – I was like, well, let me bring up your Instagram. She hadn’t posted in two years, and she only had 21 posts. She had a pinned post, and then her most recent post was from 2023. So actually, three years. I’m forgetting it’s 2026. And I said, listen, if I was a parent, I would not hire you because I would think you’ve gone out of business if you haven’t posted in three years. So you have to be showing up there consistently, but it does not have to be three times a day. Once a week is fine. And again, as a parent, you ask for doula recommendations in the mom Facebook groups. You get a few names. I would probably go to Instagram first to get that personalized feel. You’re going to scroll back. In that case, Instagram and TikTok kind of turn into a website in that if someone’s interested in you because you’ve been recommended, they’re going to scroll back through your last few posts. They don’t have to have all been made this week. They’re going to scroll back through the last couple months of posts, if you’re posting once a week. Again, they’ll get an idea of your energy, your vibe, your values. And then if they’re still interested, they’ll go to your website to get the full information. But I think we can get over the idea of, oh my gosh, I have to tell every single thing about everything I do on Instagram every day.
Yeah, it’s a lot of pressure.
It is a lot of pressure! And we don’t have time for that because we’re off supporting our clients. You go to a birth, you’re there for 20 hours. You don’t have time to post on Instagram three times a day.
Exactly. I know there are templates, and you can hire social media managers, but that gets costly, especially because you consult with a lot of newer doulas. There may be actually more time on their hands as they’re trying to build their business than money to invest in things like a social media manager or a big packet of templates. But over time, it’s better to invest services and VAs and vendors that can help make your social media work for you, basically.
Right. And my little caveat to that is that, again, as a parent, you’re going and you’re checking out a doula social media to essentially – I always say it boils down to this. You’re going there to check out their social media to see if this is someone that you’re comfortable seeing you naked. So we don’t want AI to have written our posts as doulas. We don’t want a VA to have just made some Canva graphics. We want our authentic voice and personality and our words coming through. Especially like you said, new doulas that have the time – I really encourage doulas to put the time and energy into putting their own authentic voice and views and personality into their social media.
100% and that extends to newsletters and blogs. I can tell if something is written by AI. And you and I have similar backgrounds. You and I went to college for journalism, and I’m not going to have AI write for me. It is a time saver for administrative tasks and even brainstorming. I can see some benefits. But you can certainly tell when a doula is having AI write all of their content and write their website copy.
Like you said, AI is such a great tool and such a timesaver. But I think as doulas, we are in the most human business that there is. Doula support is all about human connection. It’s not like we’re selling microwaves or something that – sure, let a robot write our newsletter or our posts about this. But we have to pour our humanness into our marketing.
There’s a great quote by Michael Hyatt. I mean, people see me coming and they’re like, oh, my God, she’s talking about marketing and social media. Ick. That’s so salesy and gross and slimy. But no. I love this quote from Michael Hyatt where he says that marketing is really just about sharing your passion, and I love to tell that to doulas because I have never met a doula that wasn’t passionate about the clients that they work for, birth in general, postpartum in general, babies, all of it.
So if you think of marketing and writing your social media posts in that way, that you’re sharing your passion, A, it gets a lot easier to do. B, it’s a lot more effective because it’s going to make a better connection with those parents that are out there looking. So if you’re a parent listening, and maybe this is just me, but if I saw posts from a doula that were obviously written by AI, that would turn me off. It really bothers me when I see doulas that are just copying and pasting and posting AI written stuff. We as doulas – our job is to show up and listen and support when no one else is doing that. So we can’t do that with your marketing, as well.
I am with you 100%, and I love that you post frequently about this because I do believe that we have to be our authentic selves. I don’t even like to look at is as competition, but that’s how we separate ourselves from other doulas, and that’s how our potential clients can find the right match. And if they’re confused by a doula’s voice, if that voice is something that is AI driven or they bought a template that every doula in their area is also using, then where is their unique vision, and what makes them different? We all have differences, whether it’s trainings or background or what our doula superpowers are.
I always say that hiring a doula is kind of like dating. You meet someone and you know within a few seconds if this is a no or a yes. And again, you can’t put a robot in there and play around with that energetic exchange. To your point, Kristin, when there’s a lot of doulas in the area, if there’s a lot of doulas in your area and they’re all writing their posts with AI, that’s a great chance for you to stand out and just write your own posts.
I was listening to a great podcast with James Wedmore, and he was saying, yeah, ChatGPT makes it easier to market yourselves. ChatGPT does make it easier to pump out content. But that just means everyone is pumping out content, and you’re actually going to stand out if you are posting quality versus quantity. And I think that just goes ten times more for doulas because again, our job is so heart-centered. Our job is so human and in person. We can’t let that go.
That is one thing. I mean, AI might be able to do some of the administrative tasks, but there’s no way AI can replace doulas. You’re not going to have a robot postpartum doula helping your family get sleep and get strong systems in their household. It’s certainly not going to happen in the birth setting, either.
Oh my gosh, no. Can you imagine having a robot listening to your birth story and reflecting it back to you? No. That’s not going to happen.
Hopefully not!
Yeah, hopefully not. I hope that’s not where we’re headed.
Yes. And one thing that we haven’t touched on yet when it comes to an overall marketing plan: we need to focus more efforts on Pinterest. Our listeners, whether they’re expecting families or birth workers and postpartum doulas – that is such a visual way to tell your story. It makes complete sense with planning for this big life moment, whether it’s nursery décor and your birth plan and all of the different templates. You did a consultation with me years back and got me fired up about Pinterest, and I’m still going strong on that platform.
Oh, nice. I love it! I think it can be such a gold mine for doulas because parents are there, like you said, searching for nursery décor. And my plea to parents is, if you’re going on Pinterest or wherever, putting time and energy into making a cute energy, please put the same amount of time and energy into planning your birth and planning your postpartum and learning as much as you can. If you’re using Pinterest to plan your nursery, please also use it to find a doula or find templates about what you need to be asking to your providers and what you need to be learning about interventions in birth. Please use it as a tool. And then to doulas, know that parents are hanging out on Pinterest. Again, you’ve got to show up there. And then just from a marketing perspective, Instagram and TikTok are great, but you post something there, and it lives on your feed. And yes, parents can go back and look at it, but it kind of has a short shelf life. Pinterest pins are there forever. They just keep getting seen over and over again.
And it’s a search engine similar to the way YouTube is. And YouTube is very beneficial for sleep consultants. It’s harder for postpartum doulas. I mean, I have some videos on there. But certainly childbirth educators, and after I teach a class, I talk about going back to some breath work videos and some affirmations, if that’s something that resonates with particular students. So giving them some videos that they can utilize after a class is helpful. For doulas who are in the education space, that would be a good tool to be able to build their business and separate themselves from their competition.
Absolutely. So if you think about it, as parents or as people, we go on Instagram or TikTok when we want to distract ourselves and be entertained, and that’s fine. But we go on YouTube and Pinterest when we’re looking for something, like when we have a question. So like you said, YouTube and Pinterest are both search engines, and Instagram and TikTok and Facebook, that’s social media. So as doulas, your content needs to be different or your strategies on these platforms needs to be different. I’m starting to call it a marketing foundation. The more of a foundation you can build where you are kind of everywhere – and for the parents, to me that gives you legitimacy. I wouldn’t hire a doula that only had a TikTok channel. Not that my doula would have to have TikTok and Pinterest, but if you have a few YouTube videos up, if you have a good, solid website, if I can pin a few things on Pinterest, it gives you legitimacy, that you have been around a while. You know your stuff. You are experienced enough that you’ve had time to set up all this stuff all over the internet. So I think it’s in doulas’ best interests to spend the time to do that. And then I think it’s in parents’ best interests to scroll around to all of it and learn as much as you can about the doula you want to hire.
So are your clients or doulas you consult talking about Reddit? I have seen so much more traction in our space and questions being asked related to finding a doula or a particular class, and I don’t really know what to do with Reddit, other than I scroll and respond as needed, but it feels like it’s really trending in our industry.
Yeah, it is. Again, because it’s a search engine and people are going there for answers. And the other thing is ChatGPT. That’s a big topic we’ve been talking about in my doula village. People are starting to say, oh, my God, my last contract, they found me from ChatGPT. So learning what you need to do to be the doula that ChatGPT recommends. Like you said, paying attention to the fact that Reddit is a new platform where parents are going for information and that you have to spend a little time scoping that out, checking it out.
I find if I’ve got a few minutes to scroll, waiting for kids’ sporting events or pickup, I might check out Reddit now. LinkedIn – again, I don’t know how to fully utilize it for our profession. I find that for employer benefits and things like Carrot Fertility and interacting with brands, it’s better for me, but I don’t see a whole lot of doulas outside of agency owners in that space. And people have never found me and hired me as a doula through LinkedIn. But that’s another tool and it gives more of the professional background of someone in the birth and baby space.
Yeah, I always tell the doulas I work with, yes, create a LinkedIn profile with a link to your website, a link to your Instagram. But you don’t as a doula need to be spending much time on LinkedIn. I feel like when people are on LinkedIn, they’re in work mode. If you’re pregnant and you’re on LinkedIn, you’re on there for work. You’re going to go look for your doula and set up your nursery on Pinterest and Instagram. I don’t think people – it’s just not the logical place where you would go looking for a doula.
No, it’s more PR about what the doula has done. I post about our diaper drive and giving back and awards we’ve won, but it’s not necessarily going to be the feel-good, hire me as your doula posts that I would share elsewhere.
Yeah, exactly. I agree.
So anything else that you’re seeing as far as trends? We haven’t talked about platforms like Doula Match to find the perfect doula and understand budgeting, but what else are you talking about in your doula village community?
Doula Match is great, and the thing is – here’s what I tell my doulas in my doula village. There’s a new doula directory website popping up, like, every month, I feel like there’s a new one. And we can go crazy trying to get on all of them, and I just think it’s a waste of time, honestly, because if we as doulas don’t know about the doula directory sites, that means parents sure don’t. Like, parents are going to Google it. Parents are going to go to Pinterest. Parents are going to look on Instagram. They’re going to ask ChatGPT. They’re not going to Google “doula directories.” But then there are certain cities where Doula Match or things like that are really popular. So if you know in your community, if you hear parents talking about it or other parents talking about it, absolutely, yes, go make a profile. But I think your time is better spent working on the SEO, search engine optimization, of your website so you’re ranking in Google searches. “Doula near me” on Google is going to get you so many more leads and inquiries than spreading yourself thin on all these doula directory sites. So that’s my take.
For sure. And for families who are searching, “doula in New York” or Grand Rapids is going to give you more options than trying to find the directory that is relevant to your area. Because as you said, there are many of them popping up. But that doesn’t mean that as doulas we want to pay for a membership or trust that it will be around a year from now.
Right, exactly. The only other thing that I’m hearing murmurings of in the marketing world is Substack, but I don’t know if that really does make sense for a doula that’s promoting their local in-person services. Maybe it is, if you love writing and are really artistic and want to put up beautiful pictures and make a Substack, but yeah, that’s the only other thing I’m really hearing murmurings about. As you said in my intro, my background is in marketing and advertising back in the ‘90s and early 2000s, so I really encourage doulas to stick with the basics. A good website with good SEO, presence on Instagram, a presence on Facebook, a little bit of a presence on Pinterest. Get yourself out there. At the end of the day, marketing always comes down to, where are parents hanging out? Where do you have to position your business so that they find you easily?
I agree. And it’s harder to get together in person. I feel like some events don’t perform the way that they used to that I still invest in. And so yeah, even though that in-person relationship and connection is important, the attendance at events since the pandemic hit have declined for some reason. So it’s almost like you have to do a little bit of everything, as you mentioned. I do put a lot of weight on sharing blog content and newsletters. You can’t control if TikTok is going to get shut down or you can’t get on your Facebook account, but if you’re able to send a newsletter with your audience, or for our expecting families that want good information, to subscribe to a newsletter or take a look at blog content or a podcast like yours or mine to get more of a feel. Because we don’t know if TikTok is going to get banned or if Facebook is down for the day, and if that’s your only source for your business or how you find a practitioner, then yeah, we’re all in trouble.
Right. That is such a good point. At the end of the day, as a business owner, you really have just your website and your email list. Everything else is owned by Mark Zuckerberg.
Right, and it’s harder to find unless you pay to buy ads.
Right. Today, a friend of mine just got out of Facebook jail. She doesn’t know what she did, but for a week, she couldn’t post on Facebook, and she was like, this is really exposing how much she depends on Facebook for her business. Like you said, she had no control.
Right. You can get hacked or get in some violation you didn’t mean to do. A flagged post for breastfeeding or something.
That’s such a good point, to make sure you have the blogging, the emails, so that you can still stay in contact with your people.
Absolutely. Any final tips for our listeners, Darcy?
I think we covered it all. I think my final tip for parents is to do your due diligence. Don’t just hire a doula based off of friends’ recommendations. Really check them out. Make sure their training is legit, their certifications are up to date, they have the experience. And then this is what I tell people who call my agency: interview a couple different doulas, because it comes down to that connection. So interview a few and see who you really connect with. So put in the work to find the best doula for you, and it will pay off in making your birth and/or postpartum experience so much better.
I agree. It’s all about connection. Not only in feeling confident with their background and training, but their personality and approach.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Kristin.
Thanks, Darcy. I could talk to you forever. How can our listeners get in touch with you?
I have a website at thedouladarcy.com. That’s all geared towards doulas. If you happen to live in Dover, New Hampshire, and need a postpartum doula, my agency website is doverdoula.com. But I have a great quiz for doulas on my website. It will tell you which trimester your doula business is in and then give you some personalized marketing tips based on the quiz results. That’s really fun.
And you’re on Facebook and Instagram?
Yes, and everywhere I’m just @thedouladarcy. So yes, send me a DM on Instagram if you heard this. I have my own podcast, which is The Doula Darcy Podcast. So I’m pretty easy to find!
One of my favorite podcasts! Thank you so much for your time, Darcy, and we’ll have to chat again soon.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
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