How to build a reliable social media approval process

Social media has become an integral part of our daily lives and is critical in a business's marketing strategy. It offers a platform for companies to engage with their target audience, build brand awareness, generate leads, and drive conversions. However, it can impact badly and can lead to reputation damage and lost opportunities if not managed properly. That's why it's crucial to have a reliable social media approval process in place. 

A social media approval process is a set of steps that a social media post goes through before it’s published on different social media channels. There are multiple team members involved in this process including content creators, editors, and managers, who review and approve the content. An approval process outside of the organization may also include multiple stakeholders or clients. 

Many steps are involved from content creation to finally posting it in a well-designed approval process. It specifies which stakeholders should be responsible for which activity and how the content should flow down the hierarchy in the organization. Finally, the content goes for final approval before being posted on the brand’s social media channels

Need for Social media approval process

A reliable social media approval process simplifies and empowers collaboration in social media teams. It helps Social Media Managers to get a viewpoint from many people with different backgrounds, product knowledge, and audience insights. It plays a crucial role in building a brand reputation as it can reach heights or fall with just a single post. Here’s how the social media approval process benefits the organization:

Flawless process- An approval process acts as a barrier that passes only the genuine content which is error-free and does not have any negative consequences towards brand reputation. When you are in the public eye through social media, even a small typo or incorrect information can impact your business. The approval process ensures that only the refined and polished social media posts go live.

Streamlines workflow- A well-defined reliable social media approval process streamlines the workflow so that the team members can collaborate more effectively. It sets clear guidelines about the roles and responsibilities of each team member what they’re supposed to do, how they should do it when they should complete it etc.

Bridges communication gap- An approval process bridges the communication gap between stakeholders and clients. As a result, the outcome is always in line with the client’s expectations does not lead to last-minute changes, and hence provides better output.

Saves time- A well-structured social media approval process saves a lot of time as you do not need to revise the posts every time they go live. It becomes stressful to make changes and modifications to the post when it has already reached the target audience. Also, it badly degrades the brand image. So an approval process helps save a lot of time and money.

Best practices for a reliable social media approval process 

In this blog post, let us explore some of the best practices for building a reliable social media approval process to ensure that the content that is going live on social media content is consistent, updated, and compliant with the company’s policies.

1. Define Roles and Responsibilities

Firstly, delegating the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in the social media approval process is important. Every organization has certain team members who are involved in creating the content and others involved in editing and approving it. This includes the content creator, social media manager, marketing manager, legal team, and any other stakeholders. It is important to be on record who is responsible for creating content, who needs to review it, and who has the final approval authority. Having a clear apprehension of roles helps streamline the approval process and enhances productivity. Generally in an organization following roles and responsibilities are defined to streamline the social media approval process.

• Content creators: The ones responsible for creating content such as Writers, video editors, designers, actors, and others involved in producing the content.
• Content editors edit the content for grammar, language, style, flow, and consistency across all social media channels.
• Social media managers are responsible for approving the content based on the value that it adds to building a brand. They also ensure the publishing of the content as per the schedule so that it aligns with the social media publishing strategy.

2. Set Clear Guidelines and Policies

Develop a comprehensive set of guidelines and policies that clearly state what is allowed and what should not be acceptable on your social media channels. You can set rules based on the brand in a promotion such as tone of voice, restriction on the use of logos and trademarks, type of content that is being published, engagement with followers, and any legal and compliance requirements. These guidelines should easily be accessible and should strictly be followed by everyone in the team who is involved in the approval process.

3. Design a Content Creation Framework

Establish a framework for the kind of content that should be posted online. This should include the tone of your brand whether it is informative or informal, the language used and the hashtags/emojis to be used. Predefined content formats or templates for posts such as promotional, educational, or entertainment ensure high-quality content and consistency across all social media channels and streamline the approval process. Not only that, a predefined content structure or style guide helps the marketing team to produce valuable content as per brand standards, follow the guidelines, and meet the deadlines.

4. Set up a content library

A content library is a pool where all the social media assets that are approved by the approval team are kept. This includes images, graphics or infographics, templates, and other resources that content developers can use directly without the need for an entire social media approval process while creating new posts. Using the stored assets from a pre-approved library makes it much easier to create posts for target audiences.

5. Design and implement a review and approval workflow

Review and approval workflow is a way to ensure the quality of content through various steps involving multiple stakeholders giving suggestions, feedback, and the final approval to post the content on the company’s social media handles. The level of review that the content goes through before getting final approval depends on the size of the organization and the complexity of the content. Generally, the social media manager reviews and approves the content before scheduling it but sometimes the content requires multiple reviews and legal or executive approvals, depending on the sensitivity of the content.

6. Leverage Technology

Several social media management tools offer built-in approval workflow features. Leveraging technology by using automated features helps in creating personalized campaigns and scheduling your social media posts for your target audiences. These built-in tools offered by social media apps enable content creators to submit their posts for review, provide a centralized location for collaboration and feedback, and track the status of the content throughout the approval process. With technology, you can also streamline the approval process, minimize errors, and ensure compliance.

7. Provide Training and Support

Provide training to the social media content creation and approval teams as it is one of the most important steps in building a reliable social media approval process. Providing training sessions and support to help understand your social media team and any other stakeholders about the guidelines, policies, and tools that they need to use will ensure accuracy and consistency. It will also help them understand their roles and responsibilities and navigate the approval process effectively. 

8. Continuous Improvement

For the error-free social media approval process, it is necessary to regularly update and evaluate your social media approval process to identify areas for improvement. To ensure that the content is consistent with brand voice and strategy, seek feedback from the team involved in the process, as well as from other stakeholders. Analyze the process in terms of efficiency, accuracy, and compliance and utilize this feedback to iterate and optimize the process over time.

Final words

Building a reliable social media approval process is pivotal for maintaining a strong, reliable, and consistent online presence. By defining roles and responsibilities, setting clear guidelines, leveraging technology, and providing training to the team members, you can streamline the approval process and ensure that all social media content aligns with your brand and complies with policies and regulations. Continuously updating the policies and seeking improvement will help you stay up to date with new trends and technologies in different social media channels. Implementing these best practices to build a robust social media approval process helps protect your brand image, generate leads, and drive positive engagement with your audience.

Managing social media content approval can be a tedious task, especially when you have multiple social media channels to handle and so many team members to provide training. Social media management tools simplify the content creation process and make it easier to build a reliable approval process. With a social media content calendar, you can schedule your social posts, create content approval workflows, and build a consistent posting schedule. Social media approval tools often come with many unique features like social media content calendar wizards, making it simpler to organize your social media existence and help build a competent approval process for marketing teams.