How to build a seamless social media approval process

Juggling creating, getting approvals and posting on many platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook can feel like a never-ending race against the clock. Whether you’re managing a small team or working together across a large company, there’s always a chance that something goes wrong—an off-brand message, a legal issue or a post that’s not posted at the right time. A social media workflow offers a much-needed structured process by standardizing content creation and keeping your team on track.

With a well-designed process, you can say goodbye to last-minute scrambles, miscommunications and the “oops” moments that could damage your brand’s reputation.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of creating social media approval workflows, from choosing the right type for your team to setting up an automated process in Sprout Social.

What is a social media approval process?

A social media approval process is a series of standardized steps that posts or other content go through before it’s published on your company’s social channels.

It’s a checklist that makes sure everything is in order—the message is error-free, achieves a set goal and aligns with your brand guidelines including voice and style. A strong social media approval workflow will make all your posts sound like they’re coming from the same brand. It also minimizes mistakes and prevents your team from publishing‌ harmful or inaccurate information.

Types of social media approval workflows

The “best” approval workflow doesn’t exist. The ideal process for your team depends on your company size, industry and content needs.

Are you a growing mid-size creative company craving speed or a regulated financial firm prioritizing compliance? Maybe you’re somewhere in between. Whatever your situation, the right social media approval workflow can turn your social media efforts from a chaotic free-for-all into a well-oiled content machine. Let’s explore some popular options:

• Optional approval: Approvals don’t always need to be mandatory. Optional workflows are best for low-risk or time-sensitive posts, where waiting for approval would cause a detrimental delay. But, without careful management it can lead to inconsistencies or errors.
• Required approval: Every single post has to be approved by someone before it goes live. Although it offers more control and brand consistency, it can also slow down posting.
• Multi-stage approval: This approval process involves multiple levels or departments. For example, a post might need approval from the marketing team, then legal and finally, the executive team. Time-consuming, but provides thorough review.
• Parallel approval: With parallel approval, multiple stakeholders or departments review the post simultaneously. That speeds up the process since you don’t have to wait for someone to finish before starting the next iteration, but you might get conflicting feedback.
• Automated approval: Social media automation tools handle parts of the approval process like checking the post for grammar errors. Although this can provide time savings and reduce human error, it may miss subtle differences that a human reviewer would be able to detect. If you use automated approval, we advise you to include a human in your process for quality assurance.

6 steps to putting together social media approval workflow

Remember there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to your approval process. You have the freedom to build yours based on the size and needs of your team. Here’s a content approval workflow framework that can be used and personalized for agencies, enterprise marketing teams and everyone in between.

1. Assemble your team and determine your decision-makers

Begin by figuring out the key players in your content workflow.

From improving your messages to making your posts better, many people are responsible for the various parts of your social presence.

For example, your team might include any combination of the following:

• Social media and community managers
• Content creators, designers and copywriters
• C-level executives
• Team members from other departments (think: sales)

With a team collaboration tool like Sprout Social, you can define approval roles clearly. Want to add someone to your social squad? Want to include someone whose sole job is giving posts their “green light?” No matter how big or small your team might be, Sprout enables you to designate authors and create workflows that keep your content moving.

Defined roles also make team work easier because you decide who’s involved in your social media approval process. You can choose who has permission to upload content and make changes and who’s the final person who approves the content.

Here’s where Sprout’s flexibility shines. Whether you need a simple one-person sign-off or a multi-step approval process, we’ve got you covered. You can tailor permissions for each social profile, deciding who gets to post and who needs to give the thumbs up. Plus, loop in external stakeholders like agencies or clients for easier collaboration and approval.

Adding new team members or tweaking roles? Easy. Just hop into the Users & Social Profiles section to make it happen.

We recommend limiting the number of people involved in your social media approval workflow to help avoid bottlenecks and make sure that content moves from person to person in a timely manner. As a team, decide who must see your content before it gets published.

2. Organize your social assets and deliverables

Putting together a social message might seem pretty straightforward, but consider the decision-making and discussion that goes into the following:

• Crafting on-brand social captions
• Picking photos and videos for any given social post
• Providing links to relevant promotions and pages
• Responding to customer questions and concerns

And when you’re a business interacting with hundreds or thousands of customers, organizing these moving pieces is a must. That’s where tools like Sprout’s Asset Library come in handy. Rather than second-guessing where a particular photo or piece of content is located, your team can access them in one place.

But Sprout’s Asset Library does more than store your existing assets. You can also create new assets directly in Sprout or import them from popular tools like Canva, Bynder or Google Drive.

This integration enables you to edit and publish content from one place. It simplifies your production process and makes sure all team members can see the latest approved assets.

Beyond creatives, Sprout enables you to save common replies to customer questions and concerns so you can address concerns quickly without having to freestyle or risk pointing customers in the wrong direction. You can also create social media templates for frequently used responses.

3. Establish a social media approval timeline

Not having to scramble for content is one of the biggest benefits of establishing a social media approval process. Ideally, your approval process should empower you to stick to a specific schedule. You should have a specified timeline for posts (think: how many per day or week).

Also consider how long it takes for content to get approved. Doing this is especially important when you’re running time-sensitive social media campaigns.

For example, you might expect a post to be approved within 24 or 48 hours after it’s submitted for publication. This gives your team members a bit of breathing room in terms of their schedule but also guarantees they act on time.

Sprout’s Publishing calendar provides a birds-eye view of your content calendar (by day, week and month) at any given time. This let’s everyone on your social team and in your approval workflow know what’s up for publication and what still needs approval.

But we’re all human and sometimes things slip through the cracks. That’s where Sprout’s automated notification system comes in to support your team:

• Wake up to a daily digest of posts needing review in the next 24 hours
• Get hourly reminders for pending approvals
• Authors get a heads-up if a post misses its approval window

These smart alerts work hand-in-hand with your publishing calendar and keep your approval process humming along when you’re offline.

4. Keep your brand voice consistent with a style guide

The more collaborators you have working on your content workflow, the more important it is to pay attention to your brand voice. As a message moves from one person to the next, each person in the workflow could put their creative stamp on it. But you don’t want your brand’s tone to get lost in the process. For example, it’d be jarring for a traditionally straight-forward, professional brand to go all in on memes out of nowhere.

This speaks to the importance of having a social media style guide. Highlighting your brand’s voice and values in a document can inform team members about best practices for your organization. This also makes it easier to onboard new members of your social team or third-party collaborators who might not be familiar with your business.

5. Don’t forget about optimization

If you’re creating a social media approval process, you’re probably worried about your content’s reach. Between character limits, network culture and audience demographics, posts across social media each have different best practices and opportunities for optimization. You need to optimize every post for each social network.

Before hitting publish, make sure each post is optimized accordingly. For example, Sprout’s hashtag analytics point to popular and relevant tags for your content no matter where it’s being posted.

But optimization doesn’t stop at hashtags.

Want to turn your Instagram bio into a traffic-driving powerhouse? Enter SproutLink. This capability lets you create a custom link-in-bio page.

And for those days when the creative well runs dry, use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve your social workflow with AI-powered caption suggestions and alt-text generation. You’ll get fresh ideas while keeping your content accessible and engaging.

6. Stick to a publishing and approval schedule

The final piece to your approval workflow is publication. But how do you decide when your content gets published? Just like you have a timeline for approval, you should stick to a timeline for publishing and scheduling your content.

This is a win-win for your team and followers alike. You get into a rhythm and routine of approval as you regularly create and publish content for your customers. Consistency counts on social media. With Sprout, you can plan your content based on specific timing or use tools like ViralPost® to publish when your followers are most engaged.

Who benefits from a social media approval process?

Implementing a social media approval process may seem like an added task, but it’s an investment that pays dividends across your organization. The main beneficiaries include social media managers, social strategists and content creators. They enjoy:

• Streamlined communication
• Centralized task management
• Fewer overlooked messages
• Efficient campaign oversight

Your social team reclaims valuable time by working within a unified workflow that empowers them to manage campaigns across networks better.

Marketing teams benefit from reduced errors and better crisis management. Multiple reviewers catch issues like broken links, inappropriate content, misinformation and poorly timed promotions. This safeguards the brand’s reputation and bottom line.

Accountability benefits managers and executives too. They:

• Justify social media budgets more easily
• Recognize individual contributions
• Monitor workflow efficiency
• Analyze team dynamics
• Evaluate post-publication performance

The broader business benefits when your social media processes align with overarching objectives. For example, involving departments like sales in the approval process may help campaigns reflect current market insights and customer needs. This leads to cohesive campaigns that resonate with target audiences, ultimately delivering more relevant, timely and valuable content to your customers.

A structured approval workflow boosts efficiency, quality and alignment across your team and business. This approach transforms social media management from an isolated activity into an integral part of the overall business strategy.

How to set up social media approval workflow in Sprout Social

Social media approval tools like Sprout automate collaboration by enabling you to create multi-step, multi-user workflows for submitting, reviewing and approving (or rejecting) social media messages.

Capabilities include:

• Message approval workflows with multiple steps and users for thorough content review
• External approver collaboration to involve clients or stakeholders outside your organization
• Automated approval notifications, including daily reminders and hourly updates
• Reply approvals and templated responses for customer service messages to keep responses on brand
• Centralized Dashboard to track all approval stages and team contributions
• Mobile message approval for on-the-go team members

To set up a message approval workflow:

1. Go to Account & Settings > Settings > Approval Workflows
2. Click Create New Workflow
3. Name your workflow
4. Add steps: Enter step name and select approvers
5. Choose Any or All for sign-off requirements
6. Add more steps if needed
7. Click Save

With these personalized workflows, Sprout helps you get more done across publishing, customer care and analytics.

Future-proof your strategy with a social media approval tool

By implementing a social media approval workflow, everyone from social media managers and content creators to managers and executives reaps the benefits. Teams experience improved communication, increased efficiency and reduced errors, while managers and executives maintain better control over brand messaging.

Creating the skeleton of a social media workflow process is only the beginning. You need a dedicated social media approval tool that provides structure, automation and quality assurance. It becomes your command center and provides a holistic view of your content calendar to facilitate real-time collaboration.

Don’t let outdated processes hinder your social media efforts and cause disjointed communication. Learn how Sprout Social will improve your team collaboration.