How to Create a Social Media Strategy That Actually Supports Your Business

A lot of businesses and professionals spend significant time on social media without having a clear plan for what they want it to accomplish. They share company news, promote events, post articles and update LinkedIn when someone realizes the page has been quiet for a while. Individual professionals often fall into a similar pattern. They post consistently for a few weeks, get busy with client work and then return to LinkedIn later wondering what they should write about. There may be plenty of activity, but that activity isn’t necessarily connected to the organization’s larger marketing and business development priorities.

I’ve worked with lawyers, law firms and businesses on their social media strategies for many years, and having a strategy makes all of this much easier. Instead of constantly asking what to post next, you have a clearer sense of the people you’re trying to reach, what you want them to know about you and what information would actually be useful to them. A good social media strategy connects your business objectives, audiences, content, platforms and relationship-building activities in a way that makes sense for your organization, your goals and the resources you have available.

Here are some of the areas I focus on when helping businesses and professionals put that kind of strategy together.

1. Start With What You Want Social Media to Accomplish

Before worrying about how often you’re going to post or what your content calendar will look like, spend some time thinking about why you’re investing in social media in the first place. For a law firm, social media might help increase visibility in a particular industry, support lawyers’ business development efforts, promote thought leadership, attract lateral talent or strengthen relationships with clients and alumni. An individual lawyer may be focused on becoming better known among a particular group of clients, prospects and referral sources, while another business may care more about generating inquiries or driving people to its website.

The more specific you can be about those priorities, the easier it becomes to make decisions about your content. A corporate lawyer who wants to become more visible among private equity sponsors and investment bankers needs a different content strategy than a law firm trying to increase attendance at its webinars or a consultant trying to generate inquiries for a particular service. Posting three times a week may be part of the plan, but the larger objective is what matters. That could be developing relationships with prospective clients, becoming more visible in an industry or creating more opportunities for the right people to learn about your work.

Focusing on two or three meaningful priorities can give your strategy direction without making it overly complicated. From there, you can determine how you’ll measure progress. Some goals lend themselves to numbers such as website traffic, event registrations or inquiries, while others, particularly those related to business development, may be better evaluated by looking at the relationships and opportunities that develop over time.

2. Get Specific About Who You’re Trying to Reach

One of the biggest reasons social media content falls flat is that it’s written for an audience that’s too broad. When you’re trying to speak to everyone at once, the content can become so general that it isn’t particularly useful to the people who actually matter to your business.

Your priority audiences might include clients, prospective clients, referral sources, alumni, recruits and industry contacts. Even within those groups, people have different interests and reasons for paying attention to you. A healthcare private equity lawyer, for example, may want to reach private equity sponsors, healthcare executives and investment bankers. Those audiences operate in the same ecosystem, but they aren’t necessarily interested in exactly the same information. A sponsor may be focused on investment trends and transaction issues, while a healthcare executive may be thinking about growth, regulation and operational challenges.

Understanding those differences gives you a much better starting point for content. Pay attention to the questions clients ask during meetings, the issues that keep coming up in conversations, what your business development team is hearing and what people in your industry are discussing online. Your analytics can add another layer of information, particularly when you look beyond how many people engaged and focus on who engaged. A post with fewer likes from several clients and prospects may be much more valuable than a post with significantly higher engagement from people who aren’t part of your target audience.

3. Look at What You’re Already Doing

Most businesses have more usable content than they realize. Articles, presentations, webinars, client alerts, videos, podcasts, FAQs and other materials can often be updated, repurposed or approached from a different angle rather than starting from scratch every time.

Looking at your existing content also gives you an opportunity to see what has actually worked. Which topics generated conversations? Which articles brought people to your website? Which posts attracted engagement from clients, prospects and other people you care about reaching? A law firm may find that its client alerts generate meaningful website traffic while its people-focused content performs particularly well with recruits and alumni. Both types of content can be valuable because they’re supporting different objectives.

It can also be helpful to look at what other organizations and professionals in your space are publishing. This can show you which conversations are already taking place, which subjects are being covered repeatedly and where there may be an opportunity to offer a different perspective or provide information that is more practical or useful. The goal is to understand the landscape while continuing to develop a voice and content strategy that are distinctly your own.

4. Focus on the Platforms That Make Sense for Your Audience

The best platforms for your organization depend on where your audiences spend their time and what you’re trying to accomplish. For lawyers, law firms and many B2B professionals, LinkedIn is often the natural priority because clients, prospects, referral sources, recruits and other industry contacts are already using it for professional networking and information.

Other platforms can play important roles depending on the organization. Instagram may make sense for culture, recruiting or businesses with strong visual content, while YouTube can be useful for interviews, webinars and educational videos. The right mix also depends on the time and resources available to maintain those channels consistently.

Content can also work across multiple platforms and formats. A substantive article might become several LinkedIn posts, a short video, part of a newsletter and talking points for a webinar or presentation. Repurposing content gives you more value from the ideas and work you already have while allowing you to present the information differently depending on the audience and platform.

5. Develop a Few Core Content Areas

One of the most common things I hear from people who want to be more active on social media is that they don’t know what to write about. Having a few core content areas makes planning much easier because you have a framework for generating ideas instead of starting with a blank page every time.

These content pillars are the subjects you want people to associate with you and ideally sit at the intersection of your expertise, business goals and what your audience cares about. A healthcare private equity lawyer might focus on healthcare M&A, regulatory developments, portfolio company growth and transaction planning. A marketing consultant might focus on business development, social media, personal branding and client relationships. A law firm’s pillars may be broader and include legal developments, client education, lawyer insights, firm culture and community involvement.

Each of those areas can generate many different kinds of content. You can comment on a current development, answer a question you frequently hear from clients, explain something people misunderstand, share a practical tip, interview someone or use an experience from your own work as the starting point for a larger discussion. The content pillars provide consistency while still leaving room for timely developments, personal experiences and other ideas that make the content more interesting.

6. Build a Content Calendar That Fits the Way You Actually Work

I’m a big believer in content calendars because they remove a lot of the last-minute pressure that comes with social media, but the most useful calendars are usually the ones people will actually use. A four- to eight-week calendar can be enough to organize ideas, coordinate with colleagues and make sure the content reflects what’s happening in the business.

Start with the things already happening in your organization. There may be events, conferences, articles, webinars, awards, new hires or industry developments that belong on the calendar. From there, you can add evergreen content from your core subject areas and create a reasonable mix of topics and formats. When several people are involved, the calendar can also track who’s providing information, drafting, reviewing and approving each piece.

I also like leaving room for things that come up unexpectedly because some of the best content isn’t planned months in advance. An industry development may happen that you want to address quickly, a client conversation may spark an idea or something already on the calendar may no longer feel relevant by the time its publication date arrives. A running list of ideas is useful here too. Questions from clients, conversations with colleagues, presentations, articles and everyday observations can all become future content.

7. Make Content Creation Easier for the People Involved

A strategy can look great on paper and still be difficult to execute if the content creation process doesn’t fit the way people actually work. This is especially true in law firms and other professional services organizations where the people with the subject-matter expertise are also managing demanding client responsibilities.

Some lawyers will happily draft their own articles and LinkedIn posts, while others are much more comfortable talking through an idea. A 15-minute conversation after a client meeting, a few questions following a conference or a voice note about a development in their industry can give the marketing team enough material to develop useful content. Giving people different ways to contribute often results in better participation and more authentic content.

Clear responsibilities also make the process much smoother. It helps when everyone understands who identifies topics, who provides the substantive information, who drafts the content, who reviews it and who handles publication. Templates can streamline recurring content such as new hires, events and company announcements, while a practical approval process can help keep timely content moving.

8. Think About Where People Are in Their Relationship With You

The people seeing your content are at very different stages of their relationship with you. Some may have worked with you for years, while others may be encountering your name for the first time because someone in their network engaged with one of your posts. Your content can help both groups learn more about you, understand your expertise and stay connected with you over time.

This is particularly important in professional services because business development often happens over a long period. Someone may read your articles for months without ever liking or commenting on them. Later they may attend a webinar, meet you at a conference or hear your name from a mutual contact. When a relevant need eventually comes up, the content they’ve been seeing may be one of several reasons you’re already familiar to them.

Some content can introduce your expertise to people who are just getting to know you, while more detailed articles, webinars and resources can be useful to people who already understand what you do. Existing clients are another important audience. Sharing information that is relevant to their businesses gives you additional opportunities to stay connected and demonstrate that you’re paying attention to the issues affecting them.

9. Make Relationship Building Part of the Strategy

Publishing content is one part of social media. The conversations and relationships that develop around that content are just as important, particularly when business development is one of your goals.

LinkedIn gives you an easy way to stay connected with clients, prospects, referral sources and other people in your network between meetings and events. Commenting on a client’s post, congratulating someone on a new role, paying attention to company announcements or continuing a conversation that started at a conference are all small ways to remain visible and engaged. Responding to people who comment on your own content can also lead to conversations, introductions and opportunities that extend well beyond the original post.

Content and engagement work particularly well together. Your content helps people understand what you know, what you do and how you think, while your interactions with other people help build the relationships around it. Over time, those repeated touchpoints can make it much easier to stay connected with people who matter to your business.

10. Measure the Results That Matter to Your Business

Social media platforms provide a lot of data, but the most useful metrics are the ones connected to what you’re trying to accomplish. Followers, impressions, likes, comments, shares, saves, clicks and views can all provide information, but they tell different parts of the story.

If visibility is one of your goals, reach, impressions and relevant audience growth may be important. If you’re trying to drive people to your website, look at how much traffic social media is generating and what visitors do once they arrive. When business development is the priority, conversations, meetings, referrals, inquiries and opportunities may tell you much more than the number of likes on an individual post.

Social media also influences relationships in ways that aren’t always easy to attribute. Someone may read your content regularly without engaging publicly and contact you months later when they need help. An article may receive relatively modest engagement but prompt a conversation with a general counsel or another important prospect. Asking new clients, prospects and referral sources how they heard about you can sometimes reveal connections that analytics alone won’t show.

11. Keep Refining the Strategy

A social media strategy works best when it changes along with your business, your audience and your priorities. Certain topics may become more important, new services may need greater visibility and the way people use individual platforms will continue to evolve.

A regular review gives you an opportunity to see which subjects are resonating with the people you want to reach, whether your publishing schedule is realistic and whether your content is contributing to your larger marketing and business development goals. When one topic consistently generates useful conversations, there may be an opportunity to expand it into additional posts, articles, videos or programs. When another type of content requires significant effort but isn’t reaching the right people, the format, topic or approach can be adjusted.

These reviews are also a good opportunity to revisit successful older content. An article from two years ago may become relevant again because of a new development, while a strong LinkedIn post might be expanded into a longer article or presentation. Looking at what you’ve already learned from your audience can help make the next phase of the strategy stronger.

A Practical Social Media Strategy Checklist

A useful social media strategy can be relatively straightforward as long as it connects the time you’re spending on social media with the people you want to reach and the business priorities you’re trying to support.

• Identify the two or three things you most want social media to help you accomplish.
• Define the clients, prospects, referral sources and other audiences you most want to reach.
• Review your existing content and identify what’s working and what can be repurposed.
• Focus on the platforms that make the most sense for your audience and resources.
• Develop a few core content areas that reflect your expertise and your audience’s interests.
• Build a realistic content calendar while leaving room for timely opportunities.
• Create a process that makes it easier for busy people to contribute ideas and expertise.
• Develop content for people at different stages of their relationship with you.
• Make networking and engagement part of your regular social media activity.
• Track results that connect to your business goals.
• Review the strategy regularly and use what you learn to improve it.

Putting Your Social Media Strategy Into Practice

If your social media efforts feel scattered, start by looking at what you’re trying to accomplish, who you want to reach and which parts of your current approach are already working. From there, you can identify the subjects that make sense for your business, decide where to focus your time and put together a manageable content plan for the next month or two.

As you publish and engage, pay attention to the people you’re reaching and the conversations that develop alongside the analytics. Notice which topics lead to messages, meetings and other interactions, keep track of the questions people ask and continue building on the content that resonates with the audiences that matter to you. Those signals can tell you a lot about where to focus your efforts next.

I’ve seen how much easier social media becomes when there’s a strategy behind it. Having a clear sense of what you want to accomplish, whom you want to reach and what you can consistently share gives your content more direction and makes social media a much more useful part of your larger marketing and business development efforts.

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