Keeping Content in Check: How to Create a Content Marketing Calendar for Law Firms

We’ve got plenty of posts spelling out the magic of content marketing. They’ve let you know time and time again what a great tool it is for brand awareness, repeat business, recruitment and distinguishing your law firm from the competition – and that’s just to name a few of the benefits. 

Now that you’re well and truly sold on content marketing for law firms, it’s time we got into the nitty-gritty: content marketing calendars. 

What is a content marketing calendar for law firms?

A content marketing calendar is an overview of your upcoming content posts that’ll be going up on social media. It can be organized in the form of a spreadsheet, Google calendar or interactive dashboard (if you’re using a social media management app).

Each entry in a social media calendar usually includes some combination of these elements:

  • The exact date and time the post is going live
  • The social network and account where the post will be published
  • The post’s copy and creative assets (i.e. photos or videos)
  • Links and tags to be included in the post
  • Any additional relevant information (e.g. is this an Instagram feed post or a Story?)

Depending on the scope of your social media strategy, your social media calendar can include one or many social networks.

Content Calendar

Perks of using a content marketing calendar for law firms

1. Saves time and stress

There’s a lot going on when you commit to a content marketing strategy for law firms. It takes 

effort and attention every single day to keep it running smoothly. It’s not just an ‘if I’ve got time’ or after you’ve waited around for inspiration to strike. To keep such a tight ship, planning your content ahead of time helps you to stay on track.

Maintaining a content marketing calendar allows you to plan ahead, create your work, avoid getting in a muddle, and keep track of all your content ideas for later.

Essentially, it’s the best way to make sure you’ll never find yourself staring at a blank screen and willing it to create something amazing by itself.

You might be putting out a post once a week, or maybe you’ll be posting every day. Either way, you don’t have to worry about constantly checking your feeds. Certain social media calendar tools allow you to schedule social media posts ahead of time, and, just as important, manage audience engagement from one place.

2. Ensures you’re posting consistently

Whether you’re trying to increase your LinkedIn likes, your YouTube subscribers, or you’ve implemented social media KPIs, the first tip from experts will always be “post consistently.” There’s just no way around it.

Popping up constantly in your audience’s feed is the key to engaging them on social. Impressive engagement increases your organic reach via the platform’s algorithm, so your posts get shown to new eyes, and new people start following your brand. And making genuine connections with a growing audience is the one true path to lifting your conversions.

Populating your social media calendar with posts ahead of time allows you to post consistently. So whether you’re having a dry week or you’ve had a creative brainwave, you’ll always have something ready to go out.

3. Catch slip-ups before they go out

There’s nothing quite as bad as the sinking feeling you get when you realise a stellar post has been knee-capped by a typo. When you plan your posts ahead of time, you can build mechanisms into your workflow to ensure mistakes are caught before it’s too late. Having a second pair of eyes on something and doing rigorous editing is always a lot easier to do when you’re working far in advance.

4. Laying down the basics so you can go beyond

There are agencies out there (hey, like us!) that run multiple campaigns at once. To keep things running smoothly, content calendars are essential. They run so smoothly that, after a while, you can start to shake things up and try something new. When you’ve been using a content calendar for a while, you start to discover what your audience responds to. From there, you can build a more ambitious strategy. Maybe you’ll start up a podcast. Or reach out to legal influencers. Whatever strategy you come up with, it’ll be much easier to weave in the more ambitious projects when your basics are covered. 

5. Keep track of what’s working (and do more of that!)

Your social media analytics has a lot of insights for you. A content marketing calendar provides the opportunity to schedule your experiments for improvement. Plan out your A/B tests until you find the right recipe for the type of content, format, post frequency, and the best time of day to post for each social platform.

The best professional service content strategies

How to Create a Content Marketing Calendar for Law Firms

With so many great reasons to create a content marketing calendar, we bet you’re absolutely raring to go. Well, luckily enough, we’ve got 8 easy steps to get you started:

1. Scope out your current content

By taking stock of your current content, you’ll be able to identify areas for improvement and opportunities for new efforts. A thorough scoping is key to perfecting your content strategy and maximising your ROI. You’ll be able to see what your audience is responding to, what they’re less fond of, and which platforms are doing well.

2. Select your social platforms

As a law firm, you’re going to have your own unique audience that sits within your niche. You might want to stick to the classics like LinkedIn and Facebook. Or you might want to get creative and start trends on Instagram and TikTok. If you’re looking to stir up some conversation, Twitter might be the place for you. 

You should take a minute to make sure you’re clear on each social media platform’s user demographics and review best practices for your content marketing strategies. 

3. Outline what details your content calendar should include

Your content calendar should include these key details:

  • Date
  • Time (and time zone)
  • Copy
  • Visuals (e.g., photo, video, illustration, infographic, gif, etc.)
  • Platform
  • Link to assets
  • Link to published post

And if you’re feeling a little ambitious, you could include these broader details:

  • Location targeting
  • Paid advertising budget
  • Post sign-off
  • Post scheduling
  • Analytics and results

4. Make sure you can store your content assets

You need to make sure you’ve got access to your assets at all times. One cup of tea splashed onto your laptop and before you can say ‘oh sheesh’… All your content is gone. To avoid that catastrophe, you can use Dropbox, Google Drive, your company’s internal network, or made-to-purpose database software. A social media content library has a few key features:

  • It’s spacious enough for large files;
  • It’s accessible from your phone as well as your computer (trust me on this one);
  • It’s easily shareable with team members, but you can trust its privacy features;
  • It provides links to individual files so that you can plunk them into your calendar (or perhaps it interfaces with your calendar natively).

5. Start scheduling!

The time has come! You’re ready to put your posts up on your platforms. Each individual social platform will have its own means to schedule. Alternatively, you can use a platform like Hootsuite to keep track of your content all in one place.

Ambitious content marketing

If you’re looking for help creating a content marketing calendar, get in touch today to organise your free consultation with one of our digital marketing consultants or head over to our dedicated social media marketing for law firms page to discover the services we can offer to take your firm to the next level.

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