If your law firm has great legal marketing content ideas, but they never come to fruition, know you’re not alone, and there is a solution!
Content calendars help law firms organize content pieces, keep the team on track, allow for easy collaboration, and move the process along. Legal marketing content calendars work for solo attorneys and large teams that include attorneys, in-house marketing professionals, and outside marketing vendors — and every size in between. They are an excellent tool whether the team is all located in one brick-and-mortar office or working remotely across the globe.
What is a Legal Marketing Content Calendar?
A legal marketing content calendar maps out all the content pieces that are in development or will be developed. A content calendar, sometimes called an editorial calendar, can be used across the entire firm, for a specific practice group, or in connection to a legal marketing campaign.
There are many ways a legal marketing content calendar can be built. A simple Google spreadsheet or calendar is a free, easy way to begin. There are also plenty of online platforms that offer templates for free or as part of their services, including websites and contact relationship management, project management, and team chat programs. Just be sure the calendar is shareable and accessible to everyone who needs to see it. It should not be an Excel document stored on one person’s local hard drive.
Before you begin, create a legal marketing strategy. This ensures messaging, scheduling, and resources are consistent with the law firm’s marketing goals. Once the strategy is complete, boil it down further with a legal content marketing strategy. A legal content marketing strategy includes the goals and an inventory of the content marketing activities already in place — with an opportunity to analyze what works and what doesn’t.
Any type of content can be included on the legal marketing content calendar, including:
- Blogs
- Articles for outside publications
- Videos
- Press releases
- Social media posts
- Webinar invitations
- Infographics
- Case studies
- Firm news
- White papers
- Speaking engagement notifications
- Legal journal submissions
- Advertorials and advertisements
Legal Marketing Content Calendar Benefits
Ultimately, a legal marketing content calendar’s biggest benefit is it keeps a law firm’s content marketing plan moving forward. Within that, though, are other benefits that eliminate redundancy, reduce confusion, and create consistency. They include:
- Clear Deadlines: Noting deadlines for steps along the content creation process as well as the final due date, keeps content on track and allows for planning.
- Defined Expectations: When deadlines and tasks are visible, the team's expectations are clear. This includes everyone from the attorneys who are writing the content or reviewing the work of others to the marketing coordinator responsible for posting the content to the website.
- High-level View: Seeing all the legal marketing content mapped out on a calendar gives the marketing staff, attorneys, and firm leadership a look at past, present, and future marketing activities. This information is beneficial for planning, measuring, and resource allocation.
- Planning: From promoting a big webinar to ensuring three white papers on the same topic aren’t published in the same week, a legal content marketing calendar has many planning purposes.
Legal Marketing Content Calendar Elements
A legal marketing content calendar can be as detailed or simple as you prefer. The amount of information to include will depend largely on how much content is being generated. To get you started, here are the typical legal content marketing calendar elements:
- Title: This can be a working title or even a few keywords to identify the content
- Type: Note if it’s a blog, article, webinar, video, etc.
- Publication Location: Where the content is being published, i.e., firm website news page, an outside publication, LinkedIn only, media distribution, etc.
- Promotional Activities: Where the content, once published, will be promoted, i.e., the firm e-newsletter, social media (see below), printed handout, intranet, etc.
- Author: Whose name(s) will be on the published content
- Creator: If the person creating the content, like a junior associate or a marketing ghostwriter, is different than the author
- Reviewer(s): Anyone who is responsible for reviewing the content before publication
- Due Dates: Include the final deadline, as well as those that are part of the process, i.e., first draft, partner review, accompanying images, promotional activities after publication, etc.
- Publish Date: This is important since it will launch additional promotional activities
- Status: Depending on how the legal marketing content calendar is built, this might not be needed as a separate element
Other Elements: Some legal marketing content calendars may also include the following
- Meta Data for SEO
- Budget
- Links to the Published Content
- Practice Categories
- Links to source material
- Notes
A note about social media calendars: Depending on the size of the law firm, its content marketing team, and the amount of content the firm is generating, a social media calendar can be incorporated into the legal marketing content calendar. Otherwise, it can be a separate calendar. There are many social media planning platforms that include social media calendars. These are helpful for scheduling posts in advance, managing multiple channels, and sharing content.
Getting a Legal Marketing Content Calendar Started
Once the legal marketing content calendar is built, take these steps to complete it:
- List all content ideas/upcoming topics to be developed into content
- Decide on a cadence, i.e., one piece of content a week or two to three a month
- Plan out at least six months of content
- Fill in the legal marketing content calendar with the information
A legal marketing content calendar is a living document and should be referred to and updated very often.
Other Legal Marketing Content Calendar Tips
- Assign specific owner(s) who are responsible for updating and maintaining the calendar, but ensure it is accessible to everyone, including the marketing team, attorney authors, and firm leadership.
- Don’t delete old entries, as it’s good data to understand the process and help plan.
- Include a place to list upcoming ideas so that they are recorded together and easy to incorporate into the calendar.
- Be sure to include special events and holidays on the calendar.
- As always, be sure to review analytics and insights to always improve the legal marketing content process.
