Agency Guide: How to Design a Social Media Workflow

Agency owners! Do you have an effective social media content workflow in place to manage your clients' online presence?

Whether you're new to social media management workflows or a seasoned professional looking for some tricks to boost your social media efforts, read on, this one's for you! In this article, we'll explore the key elements of social media workflow management and provide actionable tips for agency owners and social media managers to optimize the following processes:

Managing your social media managers
Managing the clients
Creating an effective approvals process
Using the best tools
Outsourcing to a white label social media agency

Managing your social media managers

Social media managers are responsible for creating and curating pieces of content, engaging with followers, and analyzing data. They're there to ensure a smooth social media process and establish clear expectations and guidelines to provide seamless collaboration and creativity.

But how do you manage them to ensure social media team efficiency?

1) Provide regular communication

Schedule regular team meetings to discuss content strategy, campaign management and performance, and upcoming projects. Provide constructive feedback to help them grow professionally and creatively.

Remember, your marketing teams are the face of your agency, so nurturing their talent is key to success.

2) Give them autonomy

Empower your social media managers by giving them autonomy in their roles. Encourage them to take ownership of their projects and trust them to make decisions that align with the agency's goals. This sense of ownership can boost their morale and motivation, leading to more innovative and impactful social media posts and campaigns.

3) Invest in ongoing training

Consider investing in ongoing training and development opportunities for your social media managers. The social media game is constantly evolving and staying ahead of trends and best practices is super important for success. Whether it's a workshop, a course, or an industry event, they can all be useful to keep up to date and boost social media marketing efforts.

Managing your clients

Your clients are the lifeblood of your agency, and managing their social media platforms requires tact and a well-thought-out content marketing strategy. Start by developing a comprehensive onboarding process to gather all necessary information about their brand, target audience preferences, and goals. This will help you tailor your social media marketing strategy and social posts to their specific needs.

For a seamless workflow, you should be in regular communication with your clients. Schedule regular check-ins to review campaign performance metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. You could also use this time to discuss upcoming content ideas, and address any concerns.

To continue creating high-quality content for your clients, you need to stay updated on all things social media and marketing - it's handy for you as well as your social media managers! (One way to do this is to subscribe to our email list, Growth By Social 🌱) Attend industry conferences, webinars, and workshops to expand your knowledge. It helps to offer valuable market insights and innovative solutions to enhance your clients' online presence and social media channels.

Creating an effective social media approval process

To avoid delays in your social media workflow, it's crucial to have a structured approval process. Establish a clear chain of command for social media content approvals, involving both your agency team and the client. Set expectations early on regarding response times and feedback.

Consider implementing collaboration tools that simplify the approvals process. Use project management tools to track status updates, assign social media tasks, and share files. This will help streamline communication and ensure everyone is on the same page.

Create a standardized format for providing comments and suggestions, ensuring clarity and consistency in the feedback process. Encourage open communication between team members and clients to facilitate constructive discussions and promote a collaborative environment.

Another important aspect to consider is the integration of automated social media approval workflows. By leveraging automation tools, you can set up predefined approval paths based on specific criteria, reducing manual intervention and expediting the approval process. This not only saves time but also minimizes the risk of errors or oversights in the approval chain.

Read our full guide to go more in depth: A Guide to Creating an Effective Social Media Approval Process

Social media workflow tools

Having the right tools can make all the difference. There are numerous social media management platforms available that can help streamline your workflow and enhance productivity.

Investigate different options and choose a tool that best aligns with your agency's needs. Look for features such as content scheduling tools, analytics tracking, and team collaborative features This will help you automate manual tasks, gain valuable insights, and improve overall efficiency.

One key aspect to consider when selecting a social media workflow tool is its integration capabilities. Ensure that the platform seamlessly integrates with your agency's other tools, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software or email marketing platforms. This integration can help create a more cohesive workflow and streamline processes across different departments.

Also, look for tools that offer advanced features like sentiment analysis and social listening tools. These capabilities can provide valuable data on audience feedback and how they perceive the company. It can also help you tailor your social media strategy accordingly.

Each section of the social media workflow requires different tools - let's take a look at some recommendations for each step.

Content creation process

Hootsuite (Content creation/curation)

Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management solutions on the market, offering a comprehensive platform for managing multiple social channels and collaborating with team members. Hootsuite's social media scheduling tools, content curation features, and real-time analytics make it a valuable tool for any social media team.

The platform also uses an AI tool to help you to quickly generate content.

But of course, not all content is written - some content requires visual elements. Check out these photo and video maker tools to simplify the social media content creation process:

Canva (Photos and graphic design)

Canva is a user-friendly, cloud-based design platform that offers a wide range of pre-built templates, graphics, and fonts, making it perfect for creating visually appealing social media images with little to no design experience.

Canva also includes basic photo editing features such as filters, cropping, and resizing, allowing you to make necessary adjustments to your images before incorporating them into your designs.

With its simple drag-and-drop interface and affordable pricing, Canva is a popular choice for individuals and small businesses.

There is a free version that gives you more than enough features to get you started with photo editing. But if you want to access advanced features, you can pay for its premium packages.

Animoto (Video)

What we like about Animoto is that it caters for everyone. Whether you’re just starting out in video or if you’re a fully-fledged social media video creator, Animoto is a quick and easy app to make your video content come to life.

You can use it to edit your existing visual assets or to use its video templates to make your videos and reels pop off!

While the free plan allows you to create unlimited videos and is easy on the wallet, all published videos will come with the Animoto watermark - maybe not the greatest professional finish on your marketing content though.

To combat this, you can upgrade your account. Of course, this comes with a price but compared to others, Animoto is pretty reasonable.

Approvals & feedback

Planable

Planable is a social media collaboration platform designed to help marketing teams plan, create, review, and schedule social media content more efficiently. It aims to streamline the process of social media management by providing a centralized space where teams can work together on content.

The platform supports an approval workflow, ensuring that content is reviewed and approved by the necessary team members before it is published. This feature is particularly useful for maintaining brand consistency and quality control.

Scheduling & Posting

Buffer

Buffer is a popular social media management tool that simplifies the process of bulk scheduling and publishing content on multiple social channels. With Buffer, teams can create and schedule posts in advance, ensuring a consistent posting schedule. Buffer also offers a browser extension that allows users to add content to their queue while browsing the web.

Buffer's analytics tools provide valuable and deeper insights into post performance and level of engagement from audiences. Teams can track the number of clicks, likes, comments, and shares their posts receive and use this data to refine their social media strategy.

Engagement

SproutSocial

SproutSocial is a comprehensive social media management and optimization platform designed to help businesses and organizations manage their social media presence more effectively. It offers a wide range of features aimed at improving the efficiency of social media marketing, customer engagement, and performance analysis.

Its community engagement tool helps track and manage audience interactions including comments, mentions and direct messages. Super handy for maintaining a strong and responsive social media presence!

SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a social media management tool that includes a robust analytics feature to help businesses and marketers measure the performance of their social media campaigns.

The tool provides detailed performance metrics - including likes, comments, shares and clicks - across various social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. You can create customizable reports tailored to your specific needs and goals and they can be white-labeled so they're suitable for client presentations too!

It also offers audience insights, content performance, competitor analysis and engagement metrics to help you make informed decisions on how to tweak the strategy.

Alternative solution: Outsourcing to a White Label Social Media Agency

Following and ensuring a smooth workflow for social media requires a lot of work and resources to make a success of it. If you'd rather not go through all of it on your own, here's an alternative!

If you're an agency looking to take your social media workflow to the next level, white label social media management can be a game-changer. This allows you to leverage the expertise and resources of a specialized white label provider to deliver top-notch social media services to your clients.

By partnering with a white label provider, you can focus on your core competencies while ensuring your clients receive high-quality social media management. This collaboration can help streamline operations, increase scalability, and boost overall client satisfaction.

White label social media management providers often offer a range of services, including content creation, community management, social media advertising, and analytics reporting. This comprehensive approach can save you time and resources, as you can rely on the expertise of the white-label provider to handle various aspects of social media management.

Furthermore, white label social media management can also provide you with access to cutting-edge tools and technologies that you may not have in-house. These tools can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of social media campaigns, allowing you to deliver even better results for their clients.

Without further ado, we'd like to introduce ourselves... We're MixBloom (hello 😊👋) - the white label social media agency that helps you continually provide top-quality content to your clients so you can scale your agency.

By partnering with us, you can hand over social media content creation to our team of native-English-speaking content creators so you can focus on other areas of your business - whether it be admin, marketing, client acquisition, customer service... You get the picture.

You can resell our white label content creation services under your agency brand so your client doesn't even need to know you've used a third-party provider 🤫

We'll provide the content and share it with you via our dashboard - all feedback, approvals and revisions (they're unlimited btw!) will go through there so that all posts that go out are perfectly crafted for the right audience.

Sound good?

Experience MixBloom's easy-to-use platform and streamline your agency's social media processes. Save time and resources with our onboarding, review, and scheduling features.

Start your free 7-day trial now!

Conclusion

Designing an effective social media workflow is crucial for agencies today. By prioritizing effective management of social media managers and clients, creating an efficient approvals process, leveraging the right tools, and considering alternative solutions like white label social media management, you can optimize your workflow and deliver outstanding results for your clients.

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