Everyone needs an approval process, because generally, more people focusing on one task and making sure that everything is as perfect as it can be, means better results. Companies should strive to have a social media content approval process, to make sure that all the content they share with audiences looks as good as possible.
Without an approval process, a company’s social media content strategy can go in one of two directions. Either the content team doesn’t see any sort of progress for the company and the content doesn’t receive feedback, which also means no improvements to the content, and that ends up happening over and over again, in a circle; or the company ends up in a PR crisis because some piece of content was overlooked and no one caught on that it wasn’t right because it contained sensitive information, and the public becomes outraged.
Although everyone is moving fast these days, especially in terms of social media platforms, it’s still not a good excuse to avoid having a social media content approval process. There are plenty of tools available to make things flow a lot faster and get team members involved in the process from start to finish.
Companies looking to create an approval process for social media content should first start thinking about the people that are going to be involved in it. The easiest thing to do would be to make a list of every member on staff that frequently has feedback. This is a shortcut that should be avoided, and instead, businesses should focus on the people that are really providing value to what they’re trying to achieve with social media.
Businesses need to work through all the steps every piece of content needs to go through before it’s published. Starting from brainstorming ideas, copywriting, design, tweaks, approval, editing, and finally, publishing.
Then, the people that were included on the list from the first step, should be assigned to each step of the content creation map. This list should have their names on it, their roles, and the reason for their involvement in that particular step.
The final thing is to make sure the content is able to get from one step to the next, from one person to another, with ease. This helps to make sure that none of the content gets stuck in one step, with one person, for whatever reason. To build a seamless content approval system, think about what content needs whose approval, and whose is going to be optional.
It’s smart to have a multi-level content approval process and add relevant people from different levels that work in the business, so that as many people as possible can see the piece of content before it’s published. If they catch on to anything that seems a bit off, they can make a comment about it, and it can be changed before it reaches the public.
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