Let’s face it: social media is rarely a one-person show in today’s business landscape. From crafting content to its distribution and beyond, collaboration is essential for any successful social media campaign. Who’s in charge of optimizing your social content? Who handles scheduling? And who ultimately decides what gets posted?
However, while teamwork is crucial for marketers today, aligning everyone’s efforts can be a challenge. That’s precisely why establishing a social media approval process is crucial. In this guide, we’ll outline how to develop a workflow that unites your team and boosts efficiency.
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6 Steps to Crafting a Social Media Approval Workflow
It’s important to note that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building your approval process. Fortunately, you have the flexibility to tailor it to your team’s size and needs. Below, we’ve outlined the key steps to creating a content approval workflow suitable for agencies, large marketing teams, and everything in between.
1. Gather Your Team and Identify Decision-Makers
The first step is to identify the key players in your content workflow. From refining your messaging to ensuring post optimization, various individuals play a role in managing your social presence. Your team may include:
- Social media and community managers
- Content creators, designers, and copywriters
- C-level executives
- Cross-departmental team members (e.g., sales representatives)
Using a collaborative tool like Adorack, you can clearly define these roles. Need to add someone to your social team? Want to designate someone solely responsible for approving posts? Regardless of your team’s size, Adorack enables you to assign authors and workflows to keep your content flowing smoothly.
Defining roles is a crucial aspect of the approval process. Determine who participates in approving social media content and who has the authority to upload content and make revisions. When deciding how many individuals should be involved in your approval workflow, aim to keep it streamlined. This helps prevent bottlenecks and ensures that content moves swiftly from person to person. As a team, identify who genuinely needs to review your content before it goes live.
2. Arrange Your Social Assets and Deliverables
Crafting a social message may seem straightforward at first glance. However, consider the decision-making and deliberation involved in tasks such as:
- Crafting on-brand social captions
- Selecting photos and videos for specific social posts
- Including links to relevant promotions and pages
- Responding to customer inquiries and concerns
For businesses engaging with hundreds or thousands of customers, organizing these components is essential. This is where tools like Adorack’s library prove invaluable. Instead of scrambling to find responses or locate specific content, your team can access everything they need in one centralized location.
In addition to creative assets, Adorack allows you to save commonly used responses to customer inquiries and concerns. This streamlines the process of addressing issues promptly and accurately without the need for improvisation or the risk of providing incorrect information.
3. Establish a Social Media Approval Timeline
One of the major advantages of implementing a content workflow is eliminating the need to rush for content. Ideally, your social media approval process should enable you to adhere to a specific schedule.
Not only should you define a set timeline for posting frequency (e.g., how many posts per day or week), but you should also establish the time it takes for posts to undergo approval. This is particularly crucial for time-sensitive social media campaigns.
For instance, you might set an expectation for posts to be approved within 24 or 48 hours of submission for publication. This provides team members with flexibility in their schedules while ensuring that they take prompt action when necessary.
Adorack’s publishing calendar offers a comprehensive overview of your content calendar by day, week, and month. This feature enables every member of your social team to stay informed about scheduled publications and pending approvals.
4. Maintain Brand Voice Consistency with a Style Guide
As the number of collaborators involved in your content workflow increases, it becomes increasingly important to maintain consistency in your brand voice.
Consider this: as a message passes from one person to another, each individual in the workflow has the opportunity to impart their own creative touch. However, it’s crucial to ensure that your brand’s tone remains consistent throughout.
For instance, a sudden shift to using memes may seem out of place for a traditionally “serious” brand. This underscores the significance of having a comprehensive style guide. By outlining your brand’s voice and values, this document serves as a reference point for team members. It facilitates the onboarding process for new social team members or third-party collaborators who may not be familiar with your brand.
5. Ensure Optimization
If you’re investing time and effort into establishing a social media approval process, it’s evident that you’re concerned about maximizing your content’s reach. Therefore, it’s crucial not to overlook the importance of optimizing each post according to the specific network on which it will be published.
Given the distinct character limits and audience demographics across platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, each post presents unique opportunities for optimization. Before hitting the publish button, ensure that every post is optimized to align with the best practices of its respective platform.
6. Adhere to a Publishing and Approval Schedule
The final component of your approval workflow is publication, which may seem like a no-brainer. However, determining the timing of your content’s publication is just as crucial as its approval. Similar to having a timeline for approval, it’s essential to adhere to a schedule for publishing and scheduling your content.
This approach offers benefits for both your team and your followers. Establishing a consistent rhythm for content creation and publication ensures that you maintain engagement with your audience. With Adorack, you can plan your content based on specific timing or leverage features such as ViralPost to publish when your followers are most active, thereby maximizing engagement.
Stop the Social Media Oops! Why an Approval Process is beneficial
Imagine this: you’ve crafted the perfect social media post, a hilarious meme that’s sure to go viral. You hit “post” with a flourish… only to realize later it accidentally used a competitor’s logo!
Been there? We’ve all had those social media “oh no” moments. But fear not, there’s a superhero in the fight against social media mishaps: the social media approval process!
Here’s why an approval process is your secret weapon for awesome social media:
Like a Safety Net:
Think of it as a friendly double-check before hitting publish. It catches typos, factual errors, or anything that might not quite land the way you intended.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work:
Maybe you’re a one-person social media team, but with an approval process, you can tap into the collective wisdom of your colleagues. A designer can check visuals, a marketer can ensure brand alignment, and everyone can brainstorm to make your post even better!
Consistency is Key:
Ever feel like your social media voice is all over the place? An approval process helps ensure your posts maintain a consistent tone and style, reflecting your brand personality perfectly.
No more Approval Anxiety:
Feeling nervous about hitting post? An approval process can take the pressure off. Knowing someone else will review your work can boost your confidence and let you focus on creating amazing content.
Keeps Everyone on the Same Page:
Social media is a team effort. An approval process ensures everyone involved is aware of upcoming posts and their purpose, fostering better collaboration and avoiding any surprises.
Empowering, not Stifling:
An approval process isn’t meant to micromanage your creativity. It’s there to support you and ensure your fantastic content shines through, polished and error-free!
So, ditch the social media stress and embrace the approval process. It’s your partner in crime-fighting the good fight against social media blunders. Now go forth and create content that rocks!