The legal profession has always had the reputation of requiring long hours and a sharp eye for detail. With the advent of digital times, however, a wide-reaching social media presence has become important for several reasons, from winning new clients to brand authority. The problem is how to find time for it. Billable hours and casework usually leave very little room for handling consistent social media management.
Now, enter the magic of batching. Batching your social media means that you plan, create, and then schedule your posts in advance for a period of time, like a week month, or even 6 months at a time. So, by doing this, an extremely powerful solution is provided to the busy lawyer for maximizing efficiency and saving precious time.
Why Batching Works for Lawyers
Efficiency is king: Just imagine the time you would have to actually focus on creation, free from breaking consciousness. You’ll be in a flow state, and ideas and visuals just keep popping up.
Powerhouse of planning: Batching gives you a view advanced of your strategy for content. This will ensure consistency across all platforms and get rid of the hassles that last-minute posting brings around.
Content Cadence: Getting into a cadence of posting regularly is important for audience reception. A firm posting advice of value regularly will resonate more with prospective clients.
Quality Control: Now you don’t have to be concerned about hitting publish every single day, ensuring the quality is better. You have time to compose great captions, find appropriate graphics, and ensure your posts meet the ethics set for your profession.
How to Start Batching
Now that you are sold on the benefits, let’s dive into the practical steps to implement batching:
1. Define Goals and Audience: Yes, take a step back before you start cranking out content left and right. What are your goals for social media? Is it brand awareness, attracting new clients in a specific practice area, or thought leadership? Your objectives will help point your content strategy in the right direction.
First, who is your audience? Are you trying to attract new clients or reach other attorneys, or maybe both? If you know what they want and need, engagement will follow.
2. A Content Calendar is Key: Make a content calendar for the period that you’re going to be covering — it might be a week or even a month. You can find many free templates around or just use a spreadsheet. Here’s how to fill out your calendar:
DateTime: Schedule posts at those times when maximum numbers are online according to algorithms and audience activity. This may include:
Platform: Which platforms will be used, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
Content-Type: Mix up your formats of content. What inhabits your feeds? Images, infographics, short-form videos, or informative blog posts?
Topic: Brainstorm relevant topics that resonate with the audience; set goals.
Caption: Devise draft captions that are catchy to get users to read more and drive conversations. Using AI for ideas is great here.
3. Batching Content Creation: After getting the calendar up, it’s time to block out some content creation. For extra platform-specific tips, see below:
Visuals — Book a photoshoot for team headshots or design eye-catching graphics with free online tools from Canva.
Video Content: Take a day for batching the filming of the following: short explainer videos or client testimonials. Just use your phone on a simple tripod or ring light.
Written Content: Write a bundle of related blog posts, customized for the different platforms.
4. Easy Scheduling: The majority of social media platforms now have scheduling functionality within their applications. Use these to produce your already designed content over the period of time set up. Third-party scheduling apps such as Hootsuite or CaseLoad AMP can combine all of your multiple platforms for easy management.
5. Monitor and Analyze: Batching doesn’t mean going completely hands-off. Keep checking out the engagements on your social media posts once in a while to know what kind of content works for them. That is a good piece of information that may help you refine this for future batches.
By adopting batching, lawyers can begin to change their perception of their social media presence from that time-sucking burden to an indispensable marketing tool. With only an hour’s worth of planning and a little efficient content writing, you’ll be showing up consistently online, engaging with your potential clients, and saving hours of time to practice the law — and focusing on what will bring in the most revenue: practicing law.
Marilyn Jenkins, Founder
MJ Media Group, LLC | Law Marketing Zone®