Whether you are a small or large law firm, you need to be producing content to support your online presence. The legal industry is one of the most competitive markets, and if you aren’t seen as an authority online, you might get lost in the crowd.

But figuring out where to start and which marketing efforts to put your time and money into can be challenging. Here are some tips for how your law firm can create a content marketing calendar that actually works.

Figure Out Your Content Marketing Strategy

First and foremost, you need to start off by figuring out what your law firm’s goals are. What do you hope to accomplish in producing new content? Of course you want to drive leads to your website, but are you focusing on social media content, guest posts, building up your website’s landing pages, your practice area pages, or are you interested in blogging to keep your website fresh and updated?

You also need to consider how you are going to produce this content. You’re a lawyer, not a content marketer. Do you have someone on staff who is going to write your content? Or are you going to hire a ghostwriter to handle your law firm content?

Using this information, you can then develop your content marketing strategy and gather the materials and tools you will need to write effective and compelling law firm marketing content. It’s recommended that you publish content a minimum of every other week, although every week is better.

Decide How Far in Advance to Build Your Content Calendar Out

Once you’ve started work on your content marketing strategy you need to start to consider how far out you want to build out your content calendar in place. If you want to be as efficient as possible, consider building out at least two to three months of materials. That way you are able to get your law firm content writer the materials they need well in advance.

It is also a lot easier to do keyword research on what topics are going to be most relevant for your law firm to focus on in bulk. Quarterly content scheduling is a great way to keep your content as up-to-date and on-trend as possible— which is going to be the best way to drive organic traffic to your website.

For example, if you’re a family law attorney, you know that you frequently see an increase in the number of divorce cases that come in at the start of the new year. When you’re working on your content marketing strategy for the final quarter of the year, you might want to focus more of your content on divorce amid the holiday season.

Be cautious when building your content calendar out too far in advance, however. You might want to consider keeping a database of topics you want to cover over the course of the next year. But when strategizing when to cover which topics, it is critical to keep an eye on the trends of your ideal client.

Take Keywords and Seasons into Consideration

When you’re thinking about what types of content you want to produce, whether it be for your website, a social media post, or another type of content, it is important to keep your targeted keywords in mind.

Let’s say you’re a personal injury attorney who focuses a good portion of their practice on motor vehicle accidents. If you don’t already have blogs on how insurance works, who is at fault for car accidents in your area, offering resources to accident survivors, and answering other important questions car accidents victims have about filing an insurance claim or lawsuit, these are the types of topics you’ll want to cover. No matter what area of law you focus on, you need to be producing content your target client is going to want to read and engage with. At the same time, this content highlights your experience and knowledge.

You should also take into account seasonal considerations and holidays. Around the New Year, that same personal injury attorney might want to put out a blog on the importance of driving safely on New Year’s Eve and the dangers of drunk driving.

Criminal defense attorneys might also focus on drunk driving content around New Year’s Eve, in the hopes of targeting those who have been charged with a DUI. There are several tools available online that you can use to keep an eye on these trends and determine which are going to be worth your law firm’s content marketing efforts.

Keep Your Content Calendar Balanced

One mistake many law firms make when devising their content marketing strategy is not balancing their content. If you’re an employment law attorney, don’t spend every week blogging about retaliation. You’ll need to cover a wide variety of information across your platforms. Make sure to weave these topics, and types of content intricately throughout your content calendar.

You don’t have to blog every week on a different topic. Maybe you have a plan in place to release a blog on sexual harassment in the workplace one week, and the following week offer a downloadable how-to guide that targets those who have been wrongfully terminated.

You might also want to vary up your styles of content. Not every piece of content you produce needs to be transactional. Informational content can help you build your law firm’s web authority and give your audience the answers they’ve been looking for. They’ll stay on your web pages longer, which tells Google that your website is giving them the answer to their search query.

In the digital age where everyone is searching online for their legal representatives, you need to set up your content calendar in a way that helps these search engines recognize that the content your law firm is the one users need to see when they are searching for a particular topic.

Building a strong content marketing calendar doesn’t have to be difficult. But you do need to take the time to figure out what your content goals are, research your market, and prioritize your topics and types of content in order to see results from your law firm’s content marketing campaign.