Does this situation sound familiar to you? You’ve been working hard at creating a lot of great content for your potential clients, completing blog posts that will help them with their legal problems. You’ve researched their needs and you know that the content you’re posting is high-quality.
Given how much great content you’ve been creating, you should be getting a lot of website traffic, leads, and new clients. And yet, despite all the time and effort you’ve put in, you aren’t getting much online interest.
If this is happening to you, then you probably need a social media calendar. By planning your social media posts strategically, you’ll get more followers and engagement, which will make you more successful.
But how do you get started? That’s what we’ll review in this article. Read on to learn how to create your law practice’s social media calendar.
Audit Your Current Situation
As a lawyer, you know how important it is to understand a client’s legal situation before deciding what approach to take when defending them. In the same way, you need to know what your social media posts and content situation is before creating your social media calendar.
To get started, review your audience, their personas and demographics. This will help you understand where to place most of your social media posts.
Additionally, you need to get rid of any profiles that are outdated, as well as update passwords and security as needed.
Next, you need to think about how your social media posts have been working so far. Which posts, campaigns, and pieces of content have been most successful? Are there any gaps or opportunities to improve?
Finally, think about your general goals and what KPIs you want from your content. Once you’ve compiled all this information, you’ll have an idea of where you are and what approach you need to take as you move forward.
Choose Which Social Media Platforms to Use
You might already have some social media platforms you use. However, if you aren’t getting much engagement, you might be focusing on the wrong ones. Revisit what the demographics are of each social media profile.
Then, take a look at your audience details you reviewed when auditing your current situation. Note the social media platforms your ideal clients spend the most time on—and focus mostly on these when creating your social media calendar.
Decide What Data You Want to Track
A big part of having a social media calendar is tracking data related to your social media posts. This way, as you begin posting, you can figure out what you’re doing with campaigns and platforms and which are most successful. This will help you improve your efforts over time.
When setting up what your plan will look like, you can use an Excel spreadsheet or a more complex system.
The most basic details to include about posts are the date, platform, time (as well as time zone), visual type (e.g., GIF, infographic, or video), copy, link to the published post, and link to the assets.
Depending on how specific you want to get, you can also note other details such as geo-targeting or formats that are platform-specific.
Now you know what type of content you’ll be posting. At this point, you’ll start seeing your social media calendar coming together.
It can be helpful now to create a content library where you store any content you’ll be using. This will also make it easy for other members of your team to get access to the content they need if they manage some of your social media posts.
Create Your Workflow
Now that you have all the information needed, you can start planning out your social media calendar so you know how often you’re posting on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. Think about how often you’ll be posting on each channel and at what time.
If you aren’t sure, think about your audience. How much do you want to be engaging with them? How often are they online and at what time are they most likely to come across your posts?
Once you have this information, put it all together so you know exactly what content needs to be posted, when. This will make it easier to ensure you post regularly and have the posts ready in time!
From Planning to Engagement
Once you’ve created your law practice’s social media calendar, all that planning will pay off. You’ll post regularly on social media channels your potential clients spend time on, getting more leads, engagement, and, eventually, clients.
What other strategies do you use to make your social media strategy effective? If your law firm needs help getting set up or growing on social media, schedule a consultation.
