Building a Social Media Plan: Your Guide

When it’s used correctly, social media can be a valuable marketing tool. It allows you to showcase your services and connect with potential clients.

But as with any marketing activity, social media marketing works best when there is an effective plan in place.

In this guide, we’ve set out the steps you should take when building a plan for your firm’s social media activity. This will include:

• Deciding on the type of content you’ll post
• Determining the platforms you should upload to
• Building a social media calendar
• Monitoring your social media performance

Before you get started on your plan, we’d encourage you to consider what it is you want to achieve through your social media activity. This might be generating new leads, increasing awareness of your firm, or driving website traffic.

Identifying your goals early will help to inform your social media plan. It will also make it easier for you to measure your social media performance, so you’ll know where to make any changes as time goes on.

Deciding on the type of content you’ll post

One of the most important elements of a social media plan is deciding on the type of content you’ll upload.

Think about what your firm does best. If you place an emphasis on making legal support accessible, you could focus on ‘explainer’ posts, linking to helpful resources and guides.

If your firm is involved in regular charity or community work, consider posting ‘behind the scenes’ content with photos of your team members at these events.

Other types of social posts include polls and quizzes. Or you may decide to upload commentary-style posts based on news headlines – just make sure that the news is relevant to your services, and that you take a sensitive approach when it’s needed.

Social media posts will usually perform better when they have an image or video attached to them. This helps to grab people’s attention as they scroll, and can help to improve reach and engagement.

There are benefits to both image and video posts. But social media users are increasingly favouring video content. According to Sprout Social’s 2024 Content Benchmarks Report, about 42% of consumers want companies to create more short-form videos.

If you have the resource available, a mix of image and video posts is usually the most effective approach. But this will also depend on the platform you’re uploading to.

Determining the platforms you should upload to

When you’ve worked hard on a piece of content, it can be tempting to share it everywhere in the hopes that it will attract more attention. But it’s important that you consider the nature of your post before selecting the platforms you want to post it to.

For example, a long-form authoritative video might work best on a platform like LinkedIn, whereas a short video is more likely to perform well on Instagram.

Each social media platform will bring in a different audience. So think carefully about where your content will be best placed.

It can help to take a look at where your competitors are posting and how they’re performing on various social media channels. The aim with this isn’t to imitate what other firms are posting, but it should give you a better idea of where you should be uploading your content.

Building a social media calendar

Once you’ve identified your social media goals, the type of content you want to post and the platforms you’ll upload to, it’s time to start building your social media calendar.

One of the first things to consider when you’re making a social media plan is how frequently you’ll post to each platform. There is no right or wrong answer to this, as it will depend on several factors – the main one being your resource capacity.

Although you’ll likely want to hit the ground running, it’s important that you don’t over-schedule posts. If your team are unable to keep up with the rate of posting, you could find yourself in a position where you quickly run out of content to share.

Remember that you can always incorporate repurposed content into your social media plan to lessen the time and effort involved. For instance, you might have an existing video that could be broken down into shorter reels for Instagram.

The best way to keep track of the content you’re posting is by using a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social. Both of these platforms offer free 30-day trials so you can get an idea of how they can help you before committing to a paid plan.

If you’d prefer not to use a third-party tool, you could also use a shared document to plan your social posts. Just bear in mind that you will need to manually upload posts to each platform separately if you go down this route.

Monitoring your social media performance

A social media plan can be extremely useful for organising your online activity. But it doesn’t have to be set in stone. It’s important that you analyse your social posts’ performance and make changes to your plan wherever necessary.

Often, you’ll be able to track your social media performance through third-party scheduling platforms like the ones we mentioned above. Or if you don’t have access to these tools, most social media networks offer basic analytic insights.

Think back to the goals you set when you were first building your social media plan and use these as a benchmark. For example, if one of your objectives was to increase engagement and this hasn’t happened yet, you could try changing the time of day you post.

The social media landscape is always changing, so don’t be afraid to alter your plan over time. There will always be an element of trial and error. The most important thing is that you monitor and adapt when it’s needed.

For more help boosting your marketing efforts, get in touch with us today.