I’m often asked how to develop a social media strategy that is aligned to your business development goals, which is absolutely critical to ensuring that your content supports your big picture growth efforts, so I thought I’d share a few ideas that I hope inspire you:

  • If you are a communications person, you should regularly meet with your business development colleagues to understand their priorities and how you can support their efforts
  • Review practice plans with your business development team so you really understand your firm’s practice and industry goals. Make sure you know who the top clients in each practice/industry are.
  • Become well versed in your firm’s strategic plan so that you know the bigger picture (hopefully your firm has a strategic plan!)
  • Focus on supporting the key rainmakers at your firm and the up-and-coming star associates and junior partners.
  • With the practice and lawyer points noted above, be strategic in choosing on which ones on which you focus. This may change each year based on firm and practice goals. This is why it is so important to be closely aligned with business development.
  • Define your audience, plan your approach and set clear, measurable goals for your social media and content strategy
  • Select your platforms (for example, most firms want a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram) but your firm should ONLY focus on those where you know your clients and target audiences are. It’s better to narrow down the focus and do those well.
  • Adjust your content for the medium. What I mean by this is don’t post the same content on each platform – one size doesn’t fit all
  • Build an editorial/content calendar to manage mix of posts
  • Train employees on how to use social media to tap into their valuable networks (especially when it comes to LinkedIn)
  • Create timely, client-centric, educational content and always explain and anticipate what developments mean to your readers
  • Make your content work harder and smarter for you by:
    • Reusing and repurposing it
    • Creating once, publishing it everywhere (adjusting for the social networks)
    • Taking the time to create visuals to accompany your posts – they increase not just your brand awareness on social but also clickthroughs
    • Sprinkling in timeless, evergreen content when you have content gaps (I call these the content gifts that keep giving)
  • Effectively use visuals, hashtags, calls to action, and consider folding in more interactive content such as videos and podcasts
  • Your content must always be client-centric, and written in your clients’ language (no legalese!)
  • Don’t wait – create and distribute content while the topic is hot (good is often good enough)
  • Incorporate paid/sponsored content and using LinkedIn Navigator for targeting
  • Understand how SEO works and then use it to your advantage
  • Use analytics and data to refine your strategy

Remember, only create and share content based on your strategic business development goals – everything else is ancillary.