Social Media Workflow: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers

Social media management is a challenging task that involves coordinating multiple activities and people and managing the external environment. It includes processes running in parallel that need to be synchronized to successfully implement social media strategy.

Social media management workflows can streamline your social media activities to make your processes agile and scalable. In this post, we explain how you can create efficient social media workflows.

What is a social media workflow?

A social media workflow is a systematic methodological approach for end-to-end management, from content creation to publishing and distribution. The workflow maps out steps for different tasks or processes, such as creating posts, getting approval, scheduling posts for publications, measuring performance, etc. The workflow allows organizations to adapt process changes seamlessly to deliver a consistent user experience. 

Benefits of having a social media workflow

Social media marketing is a multidisciplinary activity requiring collaboration and coordination between members across and outside the organization. Social media workflows enable social media managers to synchronize the activities of internal and external stakeholders for the successful implementation of social media strategy. Social media workflows offer the following benefits to the organization.

Streamlined processes

A social media strategy includes multiple processes and activities that need to be executed in tandem for the success of your social media marketing efforts. Social media workflows streamline processes such as content creation, publication, and more to enable you to publish and manage social media posts across multiple channels efficiently.

Improved efficiency and productivity

A robust social media workflow enables social media managers to coordinate seamlessly with members of their organizations and agencies, ensuring timely decisions and minimizing errors. Social media marketing is time-sensitive, and an efficient workflow ensures flawless and timely execution of social media strategy, improving efficiency and productivity.

Optimal resource allocation

A good social media workflow helps identify skills required for different tasks and enables social media managers to organize teams with the most appropriate skills to ensure optimal utilization, limiting redundancy and reducing resourcing costs.

Uniformity in Branding

A social media workflow process ensures that your social media team produces content that conforms to the company’s brand and compliance guidelines. When all content activities are clearly articulated through the social media workflows, your team has the time and space to ensure compliance with industry-specific standards and maintain brand uniformity and consistency. 

Consistent user experience

A social media workflow ensures your content passes the necessary checks and balances to meet your target audience expectations across social channels. Your audiences have a presence across multiple social media platforms and use different devices for those social channels. An effective social media workflow ensures your social posts are customized to meet the specifications of different social media channels and devices, providing a consistent user experience.

Alignment with social media goals

A social media workflow enables you to align the activities of different teams toward key social media goals. It prevents teams from working at cross purposes and binds them together toward common objectives, helping you realize the business benefits of your social media marketing efforts.

Better performance evaluation

Social media management workflow ensures performance evaluations are performed at crucial stages of social media campaign execution. It ensures valuable insights are shared with all stakeholders at vital stages of social media marketing, enabling them to make informed decisions. 

Assignment of roles and responsibilities

The social media workflow process ensures that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and articulated to team members. It also ensures greater accountability across the team, with each member aware of their assigned tasks and deadlines. It facilitates social media collaboration and cooperation among team members, delivering quality outcomes.

Types of social media workflows

Basic social media workflow

A basic social media workflow outlines the critical social media activities sequentially. It is a simple step-by-step process highlighting the daily tasks you and your team perform for social media management.

• Content planning: You begin by ideating your social media campaign posts. You brainstorm topics, themes, and content formats that align with your goals and audience interests. AI-powered social media management platform like Highperformr makes the planning task easier by providing you post ideas.
• Copywriting: You give shape to your ideas with compelling text, visual assets, and videos that effectively convey your message and generate interest in target audiences so that they engage with your brand. 
• Review and Revision: You get the work reviewed and revised based on feedback so that the content matches your audience's expectations.
• Approval: You get the finalized content copy approved by stakeholders internally and externally.
• Scheduling: You create a social media calendar leveraging social media management tools such as Highperformr to schedule posts at an optimal day and time for maximum engagement. 
• Monitoring: Track your social media channels for comments, messages, mentions and audience engagement. Regularly monitor the performance of your social media posts by observing key metrics such as click-through rates, reach and others with the help of analytics tools.
• Analyzing and Optimizing: Analyze the performance results and optimize your content strategy, posting schedule, targeting criteria and other relevant parameters.

Social media publishing workflow

A social media posting workflow maps the activities from content creation to scheduling across multiple platforms.

• Content ideation: It involves identifying topics or subjects for social media posts. Social media workflow tools like Highperformr help you find trending topics or top engaging posts to enable you to ideate and plan the content.

• Content Research: It includes finding relevant information images and creating videos to develop an engaging post.
• Copywriting: Content ideas are converted to engaging posts with compelling text, images and videos.
• Review and revision: This involves assessing the content for accuracy, copyediting, spell check, grammatical errors, and adherence to content guidelines. Based on feedback, the copywriter reviews and updates the content, which is then sent to stakeholders for approval.
• Approval:  A collaborative step that involves internal and external stakeholders reviewing the final copy for approval.
• Scheduling: The approved content is scheduled for publication across different social media channels through a scheduling tool. 

• Analyzing and Optimizing: Content performance is monitored through analytical tools and reported to stakeholders across the organization. Social media teams leverage report insights to adjust their scheduling plan to respond in real-time to the latest trends and post content accordingly.

Social media approval workflow

You need to have a structured approval process to ensure your social media posts meet the brand guidelines and industry regulations. A social media approval workflow ensures the content goes through the requisite checks and balances before it is published on social media platforms. The workflow comprises the following three steps.

• Content Creation: The content ideas are discussed and evaluated to identify themes and topics that align with the target audience's interests and will add value to the organization's social media presence. After the content concept is finalized, the creative team is assigned to develop the content using texts, images, and videos.
• Content Review: Editors review the content, checking it for tone, grammatical errors, and adherence to the company content guidelines. After finalizing the copy, the editor shares it with other stakeholders, such as the legal team, brand custodian, and others.  

Social media workflow tools like Highperformr enable you to collaborate efficiently with multiple stakeholders. You can share the draft with people within and outside the organization, who can all collaborate easily, saving time and effort. 

• Content Approval: After the review process is complete, the content is sent for final approval before publication. Multiple persons are assigned the approval responsibility and have the competence to ensure that the content conforms to all specifications. 

Content batching workflow

Content batching refers to the process of creating multiple content pieces in parallel and scheduling their release in a fixed time interval. It lets you plan your content publication in advance and maintain consistency for an exceptional customer experience. The workflow includes the following steps.

• Content planning: Brainstorm content concepts and ideas to decide on themes and content pillars.
• Content calendar creation: Create a content calendar highlighting content publication plans with specific days and times of the month.
• Content production: Based on the calendar, the social media team produces content using text, photographs and videos.
• Content Review: Editors and content creators review and revise the content to meet organizational norms and audience expectations.
• Content Approval: The content pieces are vetted by a multidisciplinary team of marketing, legal and branding experts before being sent for approval. The assigned authority approves the content if it conforms to all content specifications and industry regulations.

• Content scheduling: The content is scheduled for publication per the calendar on a defined date and time.
• Analysis and Optimization: The published content performance is analyzed, and insights are leveraged to optimize the content design, schedule and other aspects for better outcomes. 

Tips for creating an efficient social media workflow

Social media management consists of multiple processes: content ideation, production, copywriting, editing, approval, promotion, performance analysis, and optimization.Each process or set of processes can constitute a workflow, and multiple workflows with additional processes can exist.

You can organize your processes by following procedures aligned to your organizational requirements. You can follow the following steps for creating effective social media workflows.

Identify and map processes in your social media marketing

You must identify different processes of your social media marketing and management function. Identify and clearly define the activities within processes to create process flow diagrams that will be useful in creating social media workflow. 

Define roles and responsibilities

Define roles and responsibilities for creating an efficient social media workflow. Outline expectations from each member across different teams with clearly defined deliverables. Some lead roles who will be responsible for managing workflows are as follows.

• Social media strategist: A strategist's responsibility includes creating an overall social media strategy, including content ideation and planning. Depending on the organization's size, the strategist can also assume the role of manager.
• Content writer: The writer translates content concepts into meaningful social media posts through text, images, and videos.
• Graphic designer: The designer enhances the visual appeal of the social media content. 
• Editor:Review content created by the writer for accuracy, tone, grammatical errors and adherence to content guidelines. 
• Approver: The final approval authority of social media content before it is published on social media platforms.

Other roles, such as analyst and legal, are responsible for different processes and accountable for workflows. The workflows will intersect, so there is a need for collaboration among members from different teams. You must create an SOP(Standard Operating Procedure) to ensure your social media workflow is easy to understand and follow. 

Assess industry regulations and compliance requirements

Different industry regulations must be considered while creating workflows so that you can include appropriate checks for compliance. Financial services industry regulation restricts companies from offering investment advice without proper accreditation and similarly health industry regulations prevent doctors from advertisement in any medium.

You must assess disclosure requirements for sponsored posts, maintain digital audit trail maintenance requirements, and determine legal implications for using influencers and user-generated content. All these guidelines will be part of your social media workflows.

Build scalability in social media workflows

Your social media workflows must be repeatable across clients and social media platforms. You must also ensure modularity in your workflow design so that you can scale it quickly.

Besides, social media constantly evolves, so workflow must be flexible and adaptable to adjust to new requirements. 

Leverage AI(Artificial Intelligence) for automation

You must leverage AI technologies to automate repetitive tasks to save time and effort and improve quality. While creating workflows, you must consider leveraging AI-powered social media management tools such as Highperformr. It enables you to automate scheduling, generate post ideas, and perform other tasks, allowing you to focus your time and effort on other valuable added tasks.

Shared workspace for collaboration

You must have a shared workspace to enable your team and client to collaborate seamlessly. You must facilitate feedback sharing among the stakeholders and allow team members to tag others for instant notification. 

Use social media calendar

Social media content calendars help you plan and schedule content in advance, ensuring consistency in social media posts. They remove the drudgery of content posting, enabling you to focus your efforts on value-added activities such as content creation and engaging with audiences.

Clear Posting Guidelines

You must have clear posting guidelines to ensure quality content that meets company policies and brand guidelines and complies with industry regulations. Your guidelines should include:

• Content types
• Voice and tone
• Post frequency
• Audience engagement rules
• Social media etiquette that team members must follow.

Social media workflow tools 

Some of the best social media workflow tools to help you create efficient workflows for your organization are.

Highperformr

Highperformr is an AI-powered platform built to help businesses elevate their social presence. It offers a full suite of social media management tools that help to create, manage and approve posts. You can use Social AI to create relevant content consistently, plan your social media calendar, schedule posting on LinkedIn and X and automate tasks such as reposting, cross-posting and tweeting threads. The team collaboration features enable you to work with team members to edit or review post drafts, add comments and suggestions on drafts, and share posts with others for approval before posting. The analytics module provides you with insights into your social media performance.

Airtable

Airtable is a cloud-based project management tool that blends spreadsheet, database and collaboration software features into one platform. You can use it for various tasks, including social media management. Its social media planning and design template enables you to collaborate effortlessly with team members to create and manage social media content. Its social media calendar template allows you to manage content creation, approval, scheduling, and analytics from one platform.

Common mistakes to avoid when designing your social media workflow

You must create social media workflows diligently, avoiding common mistakes that can otherwise undermine your social media efforts. It would help to avoid the following mistakes while designing your social media workflows.

A clear delineation of roles and responsibilities is critical in social media workflow, and any ambiguity can prevent you from achieving the desired results. It helps you establish accountability for your organization's social media goals and ensures you realize the intended business outcomes of your social media efforts.

The second mistake to avoid is inconsistency in publishing social media posts and engaging with your audience. Your social media workflow must incorporate advanced social media management tools like Highperformr, enabling you to maintain consistency by leveraging its social media calendar. 

The third mistake to avoid is failure to use advanced analytics to optimize your social media campaigns in response to external market changes. Your social media workflow must be flexible to enable you to create and publish real-time content. It will help you mitigate risks and address your audience's concerns quickly, an essential element of any social media strategy.

Conclusion

Social media is a constantly evolving medium that requires organizations and individuals to leverage modern processes, systems and technologies to stay ahead of the curve and realize its advantages.

Highperformr is a comprehensive platform that blends cutting-edge analytics with AI-driven insights to help you manage end-to-end social media activities. The centralized platform lets you implement your social media workflows and simplify processes. Highperformr AI tools enable you to efficiently create, schedule, and publish content on social media platforms.