Almost any law firm seeking to build its brand and connect with potential clients understands that an active and compelling social media presence is essential to achieving those objectives.
Unfortunately, that understanding doesn’t always translate into effective execution.
Too many legal marketing teams still leave social media to chance, publishing to Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms without a strategy to ensure their content meets the needs of their target audience and presents their firm and its attorneys in the best possible light.
Why Is a Structured Social Media Workflow So Important?
Law firms need to post a steady stream of content to their feeds to get the most from their social media presence. No matter the format, that content should always be capable of connecting with the target audience, piquing their interest and encouraging them to follow and engage with the firm.
That’s a big ask, especially for a busy law firm or legal marketing team. Those that lack a reliable, consistent process for creating, approving and publishing posts to their various platforms most likely won’t meet their goals. They’ll instead spend their days scrambling to come up with something creative and interesting, and quickly become overwhelmed.
Taking a more structured approach to social media management can yield multiple benefits:
- Saves time by streamlining the content creation process
- Ensures content is high-quality, free of grammatical errors and other mistakes
- Eases results tracking and measurement
- Simplifies allocation of resources
- Prevents duplication or redundancy
The Content Calendar
The exact structure of a firm’s social media workflow will depend on several factors, including the size of the firm and its marketing team, which social platforms they use and how often they tend to post. According to Kate Gold, senior brand manager at Lowenstein Sandler LLP, taking the time to create a content calendar is essential to social media success, no matter the circumstances.
“We’re posting to multiple platforms several times a day,” she noted. “It’s just not manageable without advanced planning.”
The marketing team at Lowenstein Sandler uses a simple excel spreadsheet. They try to be proactive and generally set their posting schedule about two weeks in advance, while still maintaining the flexibility to react effectively to any breaking news or developments relevant to the firm and its practice areas.
To ensure they remain on track, the team meets daily and weekly to review their content calendar, update it as necessary, and begin planning for the coming weeks’ posts.
The Approval Process
Once a content calendar is in place, firms and their marketing teams can begin crafting the all-important posts.
Because social media moves quickly, every piece of content must be optimized to attract the attention of its target audience and encourage social media users to like, share and engage in meaningful ways. To keep things interesting, the team at Lowenstein Sandler tries to incorporate multimedia elements — photos, graphics, animation, video, etc. — into its social content whenever possible.
In addition to a content calendar, legal marketers should also establish an approval process to ensure all social content meets firm standards and is free of grammatical errors, typos and other mistakes. Again, the approval process will depend on the size of the firm and its marketing team. While everything Lowenstein Sandler publishes is subject to multiple approvals, Gold recommends that, at a minimum, firms plan to get at least one other set of eyes on every piece of content prior to publication.
Facilitate Ease of Publication
Because most legal marketing teams publish on multiple social platforms several times each day, a do-it-yourself approach to publication probably won’t suffice.
Fortunately, many tools are available — HubSpot, Sprout Social, etc. — that make it easy to schedule and share social media posts across multiple platforms. These tools are also usually able to track traffic and other useful analytics that allow marketers to more accurately gauge the impact of their efforts.
Firms looking to go viral, or at a minimum expand their reach, should also invest in an employee advocacy tool, such as Social HP or Clearview Social, so attorneys and staff can quickly and easily share content with their personal social networks.
Takeaway
While law firms can’t afford to ignore social media, marketing teams that take a haphazard approach are rarely able to leverage platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn to their greatest advantage.
A structured workflow that accounts for content creation, approvals, publishing and results tracking allows legal marketers to tame the chaos while helping ensure all content elevates their firm in the eyes of its audience and drives engagement with the prospective clients they need to reach.
