How should an accountant plan a month of social media posts?

The short answer

Plan a month of social media posts in one sitting, write them in a second, and schedule them all before the month starts. Start from the month's deadlines and seasons, take topics from your own service pages, add one post about the people at the firm, and give every post one job. A partner approves each post once, after a quick compliance check.

For a small UK practice, a realistic month is about eight to twelve posts on LinkedIn, four to eight on Facebook and four on Instagram, built from four or five topics. The rest of this guide shows how to set the calendar up, a worked example month, and what to do when a busy week gets in the way. The posting frequencies, the example month and the example posts are our advice and made-up illustrations, not rules.

What goes in a content calendar

A content calendar is one row per post. A shared spreadsheet is enough; the value is in the columns, because each one is a decision you no longer have to make on the day.

• Date and platform. When the post goes out and where. One topic on three platforms is three rows.
• Topic.In a few words, such as "payments on account explained".
• Job. The one thing the post has to do: remind, explain, show the team, or invite an enquiry. A post with no job is filler.
• Source. The page on your own website or the official page the post is built from. This is what the checker will compare it against.
• Link. Where the post sends people, usually one of your service pages.
• Approver and status. Who signs it off, and whether it is drafted, checked, approved or scheduled.

This is a calendar for social posts only. If your firm also writes longer articles, plan those separately; our list of blog ideas for accountants includes a blog calendar built around the tax year. When a new article goes live, it simply becomes one of the sources in this calendar.

How often to post on each platform

Post at a pace you can keep in your busiest month, not your quietest. For a small firm with no marketing team, this is the pace we suggest as a starting point:

• LinkedIn: two or three posts a week. This is where business owners and directors will see you. Our guide to what accountants should post on LinkedIn covers the weekly pattern in detail.
• Facebook: one or two posts a week. Useful if many of your clients are sole traders, landlords or local households. Reuse the LinkedIn topics with plainer, friendlier wording.
• Instagram: one post a week, or none. Every post needs an image or short video, so only add it if you can produce one weekly without strain. A simple graphic with a date on it counts.

Starting with LinkedIn alone and adding a second platform after three steady months is better than starting with three and dropping two by February. For which platforms suit which firms, and the wider strategy behind them, see our guide to social media marketing for accountants.

Plan next month in one sitting

Set aside about an hour in the last fortnight of the month before. Work through these four steps in order, filling in the calendar as you go.

1. Put the month's dates and seasons in first

Start with what is already fixed: tax deadlines, payment dates, the end of the tax year, and anything seasonal for your clients, such as the run-up to Christmas for retailers. These posts write themselves and clients find them useful. Check each date against the official source when you plan it, not from memory.

2. Take the remaining topics from your own service pages

Open your website and list your services. Each service page should already answer the questions clients ask about it, so each one can supply a post or two: what the service covers, who it is for, a common mistake it prevents. Posts built from your own pages say what the firm actually does, and they give every post an obvious link. If you run short, our list of social media post ideas for accountants has prompts sorted by type.

3. Add one human post a month

One post a month about the people: a new starter, a qualification passed, the team at a local event. People hire people, and this is the post that shows who they will be dealing with. Ask anyone who appears in it before you post it.

4. Give every post one job

Fill in the job column for every row. Most months need a mix: reminders that bring work in early, explanations that show expertise, the human post, and one or two posts that invite an enquiry. If a row has no clear job, delete it rather than posting filler.

An example month: November 2026

Here is how a made-up small practice might plan November 2026 for LinkedIn, posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The firm, the topics and the posts are invented to show the method. The dates in it come from GOV.UK pages we checked on 16 October 2026: the Self Assessment deadlines, the guidance on payments on account and the page on who needs Making Tax Digital for Income Tax.

• Tuesday 3 November (remind).Online Self Assessment returns for the 2025 to 2026 tax year, and the tax owed, are due by 31 January 2027. Ask clients to send their records by the firm's own cut-off date.
• Thursday 5 November (explain). Payments on account: what they are and why many people pay twice a year, by 31 January and 31 July. Link to the Self Assessment service page.
• Tuesday 10 November (explain). Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £30,000 in the 2025 to 2026 tax year will need to use it from 6 April 2027. Invite them to ask whether it applies to them.
• Thursday 12 November (human).A new trainee's first month, with their agreement and a photo they are happy with.
• Tuesday 17 November (explain). From the bookkeeping service page: the three records small businesses most often lose track of, and how to keep them.
• Thursday 19 November (enquire). From the landlord service page: who the service is for and how to book a first call.
• Tuesday 24 November (explain). The question the team was asked most that month, answered in a few lines.
• Thursday 26 November (remind). Just over nine weeks to 31 January, and what to send now to avoid the January rush.

The Facebook plan reuses four of those topics with plainer wording, and Instagram gets one date graphic a week. One slot stays free in case a Budget or an HMRC announcement affects your clients that month; if nothing comes up, the spare post goes out the next month. Here is how the first LinkedIn post might read:

Write and schedule in a second sitting

Write all the month's posts in one go, a few days after planning, then schedule them straight away. Writing in a batch is quicker because you stay in the same frame of mind, and scheduling everything before the month starts means a busy week cannot stop the posts going out. Plan for about two hours for a month on one platform, and a little more for each extra platform, since most of that extra time is rewording rather than new writing.

This calendar is about scheduling social posts. If you also want each longer article to feed several channels, our guide to content marketing for accountants covers that, with a weekly routine for a time-poor partner.

Planning and drafting a month of posts from the firm's own pages is also exactly what Pillr does for accountancy firms: it reads your website, drafts a month of posts in the firm's voice, and schedules them to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram once a partner has approved each one. The approval and the checks below still sit with the firm.

Partner approval without the bottleneck

Approve the whole month in one go, not post by post as each one comes due. A partner who is asked to sign off one post at a time, on the morning it is meant to go out, becomes the reason it does not.

• One approver. Name one partner or senior manager per month, with a named stand-in for holidays.
• One review slot. Book 30 minutes in their diary a week before the month starts, and send the drafts the day before.
• Mark changes, not opinions.The approver corrects facts, tone and anything risky. Matters of taste can wait for next month's plan.
• Record it. Change the status to approved in the calendar. Nothing gets scheduled without it.

The compliance check before anything goes out

Check every post against its source before approval. Social posts are promotional material, so the same marketing rules apply as to an advert. ICAEW's helpsheet on marketing, updated for the code of ethics in force from 1 July 2025, says the basic rule is that advertising should be legal, decent, honest, truthful and clear. Four checks cover most of what goes wrong in a month of posts:

• Client stories only with consent.The helpsheet says using a client's testimonial is in order if the client has consented, because the relationship between a firm and its client is confidential. Get the consent in writing and note it in the calendar.
• No claims you cannot back up.Firms should not make exaggerated claims for their services, qualifications or experience, and any claim to be the leading firm in an area needs its basis made clear. "Friendly local accountants" is fine; "the best accountants in town" is not.
• Nothing about other firms. The helpsheet says firms must not disparage or discredit the practice or services of others, even if the statement is true.
• Dates and figures checked against the source.Every deadline, threshold and rate should match the official page in the source column on the day you check it. A post with last year's threshold can mislead someone who acts on it.

ACCA, AAT, ICB and the other bodies have their own codes, so check your own body's code as well. If someone outside the firm drafts your posts, the ICAEW helpsheet is clear that firms remain responsible for marketing carried out on their behalf, so the check stays in-house.

When a busy week breaks the plan

Decide now what gets dropped, so nobody has to decide in the middle of a crisis. If posts are already scheduled, a busy week usually needs nothing at all. If they are not, cut in this order:

• Skip first: the extra platforms. Keep LinkedIn, pause Facebook and Instagram for the week.
• Skip next: the general explainers. Move them to next month; they will still be true.
• Never skip a deadline reminder close to the date. It is the post clients most need, and it brings work in early.
• Never skip replies. A question left unanswered under a post looks worse than a week with no new post.
• Never post unchecked. A rushed post that skips the compliance check is the one that causes trouble. If there is no time to check it, it waits.

After the busy week, carry on with the plan as it stands. Do not post twice as much the following week to make up the gap.

What to measure, and what to ignore

Measure what leads to work: replies, profile visits and enquiries. Ignore likes on their own. A post with five likes and one message from a business owner asking for a call has done more than a post with fifty likes from other accountants.

• Replies and messages. Note which posts start conversations, and plan more on those topics next month.
• Profile and page visits.Look at your page's own analytics on each platform. A rise in visits after a post means people wanted to know who you are.
• Enquiries. Ask every new enquirer how they found you, and record the answer next to the post in the calendar if they mention one.

Review once a month, when you plan the next one: keep the topics that started conversations, drop the ones that did not, and leave the pace alone unless it is not sustainable. Social media is one channel among several; for how it fits with your website, search and email, see our guide to digital marketing for accountants.

If you want to see what a month of posts drafted from your own website would look like, paste your firm's address on the Pillr home page, or look at plans and pricing.

Questions accountants ask