Every social media team that consists of more than one person needs a social media approval process.
Content approval processes are not unique to social media. For example, you probably already have an approval process for your blog or website. But the speed and reach of social channels makes the approval workflow even more important for your social media posts.
Here, we’ll explain how to set up a social media approval workflow that allows your team to collaborate effectively while ensuring your content is clean, correct, and branded.
The social media approval process is a workflow where content moves from one stakeholder to another until it’s finally published.
A well-designed approval process governs all phases of your social media activity, from content creation to posting to the social media platform. It also creates a clear path for your content from person to person through your organization. It documents which stakeholders are involved and when. Finally, it specifies who has the final authority to approve content for publication on your brand’s social media.
Before you can write your policy, you need to do some preparation. Here are all the tools and parts you’ll need to get started:
Step 1: Define your social media strategy
If you regularly read the Hootsuite blog, you know that we talk a lot about strategy. We strongly believe in planning and goal setting. Without knowing where you want to go, you are unlikely to get there.
Why do you need a social strategy before you can set up an approval process?
A clear strategy makes it easier for content creators (graphic designers and content marketers) to create content that meets the expectations of senior stakeholders. This allows everyone to be on the same page and saves time by reducing the number of clicks needed at the individual post level.
A clear social media strategy also lets you know if your approval process is in line with your goals. For example, if your strategy is to be at the forefront of trending topics, you need to set the number of stakeholders and their time frame accordingly.
Step 2: Define the roles and responsibilities of the team and stakeholders
More than 20% of Hootsuite’s midsize business customers have multiple teams using social media. To create an effective social media process, you need to clarify all the people and teams that use social media and who is involved in approving each one.
What it looks like is up to you. Maybe each team has its own channels and its own approval processes. Or maybe a couple of senior stakeholders are the gatekeepers of all social content for your brand.
The main thing is that all this is recorded.
For example, you should write:
- Who creates and plans social media content?
- Who edits the content to maintain quality?
- Who approves and publishes content?
In a mid-sized company, the social media content approval process might include the following roles:
- Content Creators: Writers, designers, video editors, and anyone involved in content creation and planning.
- Content editors who edit content for language, style, and consistency across social media accounts.
- Social media managers who approve content and make sure the posting schedule is consistent with the overall brand strategy and optimal posting time.
Step 3: Create a social media style guide
What content does your brand publish? Do you use British spelling or American? Or a completely different language? Is your brand tone playful and fun? Or informative and serious? How do you feel about hashtags and emojis?
All of these need to be considered to ensure that your brand’s social media content is consistent, high quality, and always in line with the brand.
Make sure your company has created a style guide. This is a detailed document describing what your social networks should look like. This can include everything from tone and writing style to branding colors, use of photos, and font.
When everyone on the marketing team works from a solid style guide, approval is a lot easier. Content creators use this document to guide their work. Meanwhile, editors and managers can refer to the document to ensure that brand standards and guidelines are followed.
Step 4: Create a Content Library
The content library is an existing pool of approved social resources. This may include graphics, templates, and other resources that your content developers may use when creating new posts.
Using assets from a pre-approved library greatly simplifies the approval process. Senior stakeholders can be sure that many elements have been approved before the post has even been created.
Step 5: Set deadlines and deadlines
Your social media approval process should be tied to a timeline that gives everyone enough time to complete their part of the process.
Start by determining how long it takes your content creators, on average, to create a given number of posts. Then determine how long it will take to edit that content, schedule it, and approve it.
Then work backwards to set up a timeline that works for everyone. This will help avoid last-minute panic or content bottlenecks.
Also set regular deadlines and a schedule that makes everyone accountable for delivering on time.
For example, an ongoing social media approval process might include:
- Creators deliver finished content by the 15th of each month.
- Editors deliver final content by the 20th of each month.
- Managers plan edited quality content for the next month before the end of the current month.
Of course, this timeline only works for evergreen content or content that isn’t exceptionally timely. You may need to create a second set of deadlines or deadlines that allow your brand to respond to social trends as they arise.
Step 6: Define your workflow and notifications
Your social media approval process is a workflow where content moves from one person to another until it’s finally published. You have already defined roles and deadlines for everyone. Now it’s time to use this information to customize your workflow and notifications.
Ideally, your workflow should automatically transfer content from one person to another, notifying each person when it’s their turn to start working. Keeping everything in one system ensures that everyone knows where everything is in the approval process. It also ensures that only one person is making changes to the content at a time.
So how do you make sure everyone is notified when it’s their turn? You can use email, Slack notifications, or other project management tools.
When designing a workflow, it’s a good idea to include tools and apps that will make it easier to create content and identify content issues.
Some great tools for your workflow:
- Grammarly to support spelling, grammar, and writing clarity.
- Visme for design support.
- Pictographr to support photo editing.
Step 7: Monitor and review as needed
Try the social media approval process for a while and see how it works for your team. Then bring everyone together to discuss any glitches or things that could be improved.
The goal is always to make life easier for the team, not harder. If a process becomes unwieldy, it doesn’t work. Get regular feedback from team members so that everyone feels valued and involved.
You’ve probably already reaped some of the benefits of creating a social media process. But there are a few that we want to name explicitly.
1. Make sure the content is in line with your brand’s voice and strategy.
We previously talked about creating a social media style guide to help manage your content and approval process. This is a good way to keep your content recognizable.
But nothing beats the combined experience of your team. Working through the process ensures that everyone can share their experience, both in their core skills and their knowledge of the history and style of the brand.
Implementing a review process also gives you the best chance of catching any bugs before the content is published. Even the best editors sometimes skip broken links or missing commas. The more hands on the deck, the more chances to get it right.
2. Avoid password sharing and control access
Sharing passwords both within teams and with external consultants and contractors is a security nightmare.
The social media approval process, combined with good social media management tools, allows everyone to do their job on the same system without having to share passwords.
The approval process should also allow you to control how much access each team member has. You want multiple people to be able to create content, but probably only a few have approval permissions.
The approval process tools also allow you to exclude someone from the process if they leave your team or organization, so you’re never exposed to unnecessary external risk.
3. Collaborate more effectively
The constant looping of the entire team—with multiple stakeholders—can be burdensome. If you do this via email or transfer documents, it reduces efficiency, slows down your workflow, and can impact your social media content calendar. The approval workflow simplifies the process and improves productivity.
For example, a global real estate marketing project manager spoke to Forrester Consulting about the challenges of working without an approval workflow:
“When employees wanted to post, they had to email their assets, and then it was a multi-step process with someone posting on their behalf or coming back to review the published content afterwards on their behalf.”
It’s much more efficient to keep everything on one platform for creating, viewing, and publishing. When specific requests arise, employees know who is responsible for each step of the process. This means that employees can collaborate directly and effectively.
In addition, the approval workflow helps employees stay on schedule. This prevents content from being created, forgotten or unpublished. Notifications inform everyone about what needs their attention.
A Forrester report found that improving social media approval process management could save $495,000 in time and effort over three years. It’s a lot of time and effort.
Source: Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic Impact™.
4. Maintain version control and trail editing
Submitting files via email may result in feedback from different stakeholders in different versions. Someone may be viewing a file that is already out of date. Or someone might have to gather feedback from multiple stakeholders and compile it into one document.
It’s not the best waste of time. And this creates the risk that the wrong version will go through the approval process or even be published.
The social media approval process also lets you track changes so you can see who changed what and when. This is a good educational resource for anyone involved in content creation.
Here are some of our favorite tools to help you build your social media approval process and workflow.
1.Hootsuite
You have already seen how Hootsuite can help with the social media approval process.
Using Hootsuite means that all parts of the workflow can run on the same platform. Content can be created, edited and approved from the Hootsuite dashboard.
Here’s how seniors on your team can use Hootsuite to approve posts created by social media creators:
These top-level approval features are available in the Hootsuite Business and Enterprise plans.
Designed for small teams, the Group Plan also includes many features useful for maintaining a social media approval workflow.
Senior team members can manage team access and roles, and assign posts and comments to specific team members.
2. Slack
Slack is a powerful messaging platform that helps teams collaborate. The Slack app for Hootsuite allows you to share on social media directly in Slack without leaving Hootsuite to make it easier to send messages between teams.
This tool helps keep teams organized. Organize and color-code tasks on cards and Trello boards. Assign tasks to a team member and mark your task as completed when your task is done. And with the “mention”feature, you’ll know that your team member will be alerted to the progress of the process.
3. Trello
The drag and drop feature makes Trello user-friendly. It visualizes the workflow and the whole team can be aware of the approval process.