When you’re managing social media accounts for big name brands and companies, you’re not going to tweet or post that Facebook status and hope for the best. This is why you should have a social media approval process, especially if you are working with a social media marketing agency.
However, getting approval for all your content is a time consuming process and not conducive to the social media marketing medium. What you’re going to want to do is have a process in which everything is streamlined and optimized to make sure your content goes out without hitting any speed bumps.
Pre-Approval Of Content Sources
When you begin researching and putting your digital marketing game plan together, you should be listing top publications in your industry and that your target customers are consuming. By reviewing these content sources and getting general approval, this will allow the social media marketing team to be able to act quicker on a day to day basis and provide valuable, curated content to the social audiences.
Top Of The Chain
Start at the top of the chain. The person that you’re going to want to get your approval from will usually be the company’s marketing manager. Be sure to get their information and update it when necessary. Also, be sure to find out what the most effective method of communication is for that person, should you be emailing, calling, texting?
Another helpful thing to do is create a checklist internally for your company. By creating a checklist, you’re going to want to document the steps of the approval process for each client. It could start from the social media manager, to another team member to help proofread, then to your manager, and finally, to the person that’s in charge of marketing for the client. In this checklist, you should also put in other important information such as deadlines and average approval time for each step of the process.
Responsibilities
It’s also important to note what everyone’s responsibilities are. This is very helpful in keeping everyone in the loop. You’re going to want to do this so that each person that is involved in the social media approval process knows what they’re supposed to be doing.
Do you also have mission statements, brand guidelines, media kits, and/or other checklists?
Distribute these documents to the right people. It’ll help clear up any confusion and also help speed up the social media approval process. An important part of the social media approval process is to always improve upon it. If anything changes within these documents, you’re going to want to keep up with any revisions and make sure that they’re being sent to the right people.
Organization
Are all of your documents scattered around everywhere or are they in one central location that can easily be found?
A good recommendation is to have some sort of team task manager and a centralized location for all your client’s documents. This is where Google Drive can come in handy. By being a place where your team members can go to that’s easily accessible with all your documents, it’s a great tool to help streamline your social media approval process.
Another team task manager is Podio. With Podio, it streamlines everyone’s tasks into a “workspace” in which you can use to manage daily or weekly tasks to help keep track of what needs to be done.
What Is Your Team Doing To Help Streamline Your Social Media Approval Process?
Let us know in the comments below with how you stay on top of your social media!