[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":1056},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog:\u002Fblog\u002Fagency-roles-for-social-content":3,"blog:related:\u002Fblog\u002Fagency-roles-for-social-content":312},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"date":298,"description":299,"draft":300,"extension":301,"image":302,"meta":303,"navigation":304,"path":305,"seo":306,"stem":307,"tags":308,"updated":302,"__hash__":311},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fagency-roles-for-social-content.md","Agency roles for social content: who drafts, who approves, who releases","SelfSM",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":287},"minimark",[10,14,22,27,30,36,42,48,54,61,65,68,74,80,86,95,99,102,169,177,181,184,187,190,206,210,216,222,228,234,238,241,253,257,263,269,275,281],[11,12,13],"p",{},"Small agencies run on one person per account. That person writes, decides, sends to the client and publishes, and it works beautifully right up to the point where they are on holiday, or leave, or make one mistake at scale.",[11,15,16,17,21],{},"The fix is not more process. It is separating four things that are usually one thing: ",[18,19,20],"strong",{},"drafting, internal approval, client release, and publishing",". Once they are separate permissions rather than stages in one person's head, juniors can do real work, seniors stop being a bottleneck on every post, and no single mistake reaches a client feed unaccompanied.",[23,24,26],"h2",{"id":25},"the-four-permissions","The four permissions",[11,28,29],{},"They are worth naming precisely because most tools and most agencies collapse them into two.",[11,31,32,35],{},[18,33,34],{},"Draft."," Create and edit content. The permission a junior or a freelancer should have on day one, on real accounts. There is no faster way to train someone and no reason to withhold it, because drafting is reversible.",[11,37,38,41],{},[18,39,40],{},"Approve internally."," Assert that this is good enough to show the client: on brand, factually sourced, within scope. This is a quality and risk judgment and it belongs to whoever is accountable for the account, not to whoever wrote it.",[11,43,44,47],{},[18,45,46],{},"Release to client."," Send it out of the agency. Separate from internal approval because it is the moment work becomes visible to someone who is paying, and because the person who should own client communication is often not the person who owns editorial quality.",[11,49,50,53],{},[18,51,52],{},"Publish."," Put it on the account. The narrowest permission, and the one most agencies hand out most casually.",[11,55,56,57,60],{},"The important claim: ",[18,58,59],{},"approve and publish must not be the same permission."," A post can be approved on Tuesday and correct, and publishing it on Thursday can still be wrong because the client announced a layoff on Wednesday. Someone has to own the moment, not just the artefact.",[23,62,64],{"id":63},"the-three-roles-this-produces","The three roles this produces",[11,66,67],{},"Map the permissions onto people and you get a shape that works from three people to thirty.",[11,69,70,73],{},[18,71,72],{},"Writer"," — drafts. Junior, freelancer, or a senior on a client they know well. Has access to that brand's voice definition, fact file and forbidden list, and nothing else. Cannot release, cannot publish.",[11,75,76,79],{},[18,77,78],{},"Account lead"," — approves internally and releases to the client. Accountable for the account: the editorial standard, the factual sourcing, the client relationship. One named person per client, always, including holiday cover assigned in advance.",[11,81,82,85],{},[18,83,84],{},"Publisher"," — publishes on schedule. Often the same person as the account lead in a small agency, and that is fine. What matters is that it is a distinct act with its own check, not a side effect of approval. On larger books this is genuinely a separate role with a daily pre-publish sweep.",[11,87,88,89,94],{},"Plus the client, who approves what the account lead released. That flow is a different problem with its own failure modes — see ",[90,91,93],"a",{"href":92},"\u002Fblog\u002Fcontent-approval-workflow","the approval workflow that doesn't lose the client",".",[23,96,98],{"id":97},"what-each-stage-actually-checks","What each stage actually checks",[11,100,101],{},"Roles without checks are just job titles. Each gate is looking for something specific, and the specificity is what makes it fast.",[103,104,105,121],"table",{},[106,107,108],"thead",{},[109,110,111,115,118],"tr",{},[112,113,114],"th",{},"Stage",[112,116,117],{},"The question",[112,119,120],{},"Blocks on",[122,123,124,136,147,158],"tbody",{},[109,125,126,130,133],{},[127,128,129],"td",{},"Draft",[127,131,132],{},"Does this say something, in this brand's voice?",[127,134,135],{},"Generic content, wrong register",[109,137,138,141,144],{},[127,139,140],{},"Internal approve",[127,142,143],{},"Is every factual claim sourced and in scope?",[127,145,146],{},"Unsourced numbers, over-generalised claims",[109,148,149,152,155],{},[127,150,151],{},"Release",[127,153,154],{},"Is this the right thing to send this client this week?",[127,156,157],{},"Bad timing, scope creep, tone against context",[109,159,160,163,166],{},[127,161,162],{},"Publish",[127,164,165],{},"Has anything changed since approval?",[127,167,168],{},"News events, client announcements, live incidents",[11,170,171,172,176],{},"The internal approval gate is where ",[90,173,175],{"href":174},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwho-is-responsible-for-a-wrong-claim","wrong claims"," get caught, and it is the gate most often skipped when the account lead is busy. If one gate has to be defended, defend that one.",[23,178,180],{"id":179},"give-juniors-real-work-not-fake-work","Give juniors real work, not fake work",[11,182,183],{},"The common failure is over-correcting: juniors get research and scheduling, seniors write everything, and the agency has a capacity ceiling equal to its senior headcount plus a training programme that produces nobody.",[11,185,186],{},"A permission model makes the safe version possible. A junior drafting on a live account with no release permission cannot cause an incident, so there is no reason to hold them back from the work that actually teaches — writing in someone else's voice against real constraints and getting edited.",[11,188,189],{},"Two things make this work in practice:",[191,192,193,200],"ul",{},[194,195,196,199],"li",{},[18,197,198],{},"Edits go back with reasons."," \"Cut this, it's puffery\" teaches; a silently rewritten draft teaches nothing and is the most common way agencies fail to develop people.",[194,201,202,205],{},[18,203,204],{},"The voice definition and fact file are accessible to the writer."," If the standard lives only in the account lead's head, the junior cannot hit it and the feedback loop is arbitrary. Writing it down is what makes delegation possible at all.",[23,207,209],{"id":208},"where-the-model-breaks","Where the model breaks",[11,211,212,215],{},[18,213,214],{},"One person is every role on eight accounts."," Common, and usually described as being busy. It is a single point of failure with no holiday cover and no second read on any claim. The first fix is not hiring — it is assigning a named second approver per client, even if that person only reads.",[11,217,218,221],{},[18,219,220],{},"The gates exist but everyone has every permission."," Then the model is documentation, not a control. Permissions that are not enforced are conventions, and conventions collapse exactly when the week is bad.",[11,223,224,227],{},[18,225,226],{},"Approval lives in chat."," The gates ran, the record did not. Six weeks later nobody can say who approved what, which is the state you are in during precisely the conversation where it matters. Approvals belong attached to the post.",[11,229,230,233],{},[18,231,232],{},"Nobody owns publish."," So it happens automatically at the scheduled time, including the morning of a client's outage. Automation is fine for the mechanics; someone still has to own the last look.",[23,235,237],{"id":236},"scaling-it-across-a-book","Scaling it across a book",[11,239,240],{},"At three clients the model is a shared understanding. At fifteen it needs to be enforced by something, because the number of people-times-brands combinations exceeds what anyone tracks reliably, and the failure is silent — nobody notices a missing gate until an incident.",[11,242,243,244,247,248,252],{},"What that requires is per-brand scoping rather than agency-wide roles: a writer added to two accounts sees two accounts, and permissions travel with the brand rather than with a job title. That is how ",[90,245,6],{"href":246},"\u002Ffor\u002Fagencies"," models it — draft, approve and client release are separate per-brand permissions, and every transition is recorded against the post itself, so the trail exists without anyone maintaining it. When ",[90,249,251],{"href":250},"\u002Fblog\u002Fhanding-over-a-social-account","an account changes hands",", that record is most of what makes the handover survivable.",[23,254,256],{"id":255},"faq","FAQ",[11,258,259,262],{},[18,260,261],{},"What roles does an agency need for social media content?","\nAt minimum three: a writer who drafts, an account lead who approves internally and releases to the client, and someone who owns publishing. In small agencies the last two are the same person, but they should remain distinct acts with distinct checks.",[11,264,265,268],{},[18,266,267],{},"Should approval and publishing be the same permission?","\nNo. A post can be approved and correct on Tuesday and wrong to publish on Thursday because circumstances changed. Someone has to own the moment of publishing, not just the approval of the artefact.",[11,270,271,274],{},[18,272,273],{},"Can juniors draft on live client accounts?","\nYes, and they should. Drafting is reversible and it is the only thing that actually trains someone. What juniors should not have is release or publish permission — that separation is what makes real delegation safe.",[11,276,277,280],{},[18,278,279],{},"How do you stop client approvals from living in Slack?","\nAttach approvals to the post rather than to a conversation. The gate running is not enough; if the record is in chat, nobody can reconstruct who approved what six weeks later, which is exactly when it is asked.",[11,282,283,286],{},[18,284,285],{},"How many approvers should a client have?","\nOne named approver with a defined tiebreak, plus assigned cover for absence. Two peers who can both comment and disagree with no stated precedence is the most common cause of stalled approvals.",{"title":288,"searchDepth":289,"depth":289,"links":290},"",2,[291,292,293,294,295,296,297],{"id":25,"depth":289,"text":26},{"id":63,"depth":289,"text":64},{"id":97,"depth":289,"text":98},{"id":179,"depth":289,"text":180},{"id":208,"depth":289,"text":209},{"id":236,"depth":289,"text":237},{"id":255,"depth":289,"text":256},"2026-08-19","The three-role split that lets juniors do real work without release risk, why approval and release are different permissions, and how to scale it across a book of clients.",false,"md",null,{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fagency-roles-for-social-content",{"title":5,"description":299},"blog\u002Fagency-roles-for-social-content",[309,310],"agencies","workflow","eyiBKklu-EKdbjB8AgAXGqewqg7Cmv5JK7FEY6Z0SsY",[313,586,805],{"id":314,"title":315,"author":6,"body":316,"date":298,"description":579,"draft":300,"extension":301,"image":302,"meta":580,"navigation":304,"path":581,"seo":582,"stem":583,"tags":584,"updated":302,"__hash__":585},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fclient-reporting-that-gets-read.md","The client report that actually gets read",{"type":8,"value":317,"toc":570},[318,321,324,327,331,337,340,346,349,353,356,362,368,374,380,386,390,393,398,430,435,461,465,468,471,477,483,489,496,500,506,512,518,522,525,532,538,540,546,552,558,564],[11,319,320],{},"The monthly report is the most-produced and least-read artefact in social media work. Twelve slides of charts, an impressions number nobody can act on, and a client who skims for the one line that says whether this is working.",[11,322,323],{},"That skim is the whole document. Everything else is you demonstrating effort, which is a bad thing to be paid for and a worse thing to be judged on. A report is not evidence of work; it is an instrument for making the next month's decisions.",[11,325,326],{},"Here is the version that gets read, and the parts to delete.",[23,328,330],{"id":329},"start-with-the-answer","Start with the answer",[11,332,333,334],{},"The first line of the report answers the question the client actually has: ",[18,335,336],{},"is this working, and what are we changing?",[11,338,339],{},"Not \"here's what we did in March.\" Something like:",[341,342,343],"blockquote",{},[11,344,345],{},"March: the customer-story posts outperformed everything else by a wide margin, so April shifts to two of those a month and drops the industry-commentary slot. One post drove 14 profile visits and 3 inbound messages — the highest of the year.",[11,347,348],{},"Everything after that first paragraph is support for a claim already made. If a client reads only the top of the page, they have the answer, and they will trust the rest more for not having to hunt for it.",[23,350,352],{"id":351},"the-one-page-structure","The one-page structure",[11,354,355],{},"Five blocks, one page, same order every month. Consistency matters more than completeness — a report whose shape changes each month cannot be compared with the last one, which is most of what a report is for.",[11,357,358,361],{},[18,359,360],{},"1. The verdict."," Two or three sentences. Working, not working, what changes.",[11,363,364,367],{},[18,365,366],{},"2. What went out."," Volume and mix, stated plainly. \"11 posts: 4 customer stories, 3 product, 2 opinion, 2 hiring.\" This is the only place effort belongs, and one line is enough.",[11,369,370,373],{},[18,371,372],{},"3. What worked, with the actual post."," Not a chart — the top two posts, embedded or quoted, with one sentence on why you think each landed. Clients engage with their own content far more than with any metric about it, and \"why it landed\" is the part they cannot get from a dashboard.",[11,375,376,379],{},[18,377,378],{},"4. What did not, and the hypothesis."," The block most people delete, and the one that builds the most trust. A named underperformer with a specific reading — \"the two product posts led with the feature rather than the problem\" — proves you are reading results rather than collecting them.",[11,381,382,385],{},[18,383,384],{},"5. Next month, and what you need."," Three to five bullets of what you will do, plus an explicit list of what you need from them and by when. This is where the report stops being a rearview mirror and starts causing something.",[23,387,389],{"id":388},"which-metrics-to-keep","Which metrics to keep",[11,391,392],{},"Report metrics the client can act on and that are plausibly caused by the work.",[11,394,395],{},[18,396,397],{},"Keep:",[191,399,400,406,412,418,424],{},[194,401,402,405],{},[18,403,404],{},"Reach or impressions",", as context only, one number, no chart.",[194,407,408,411],{},[18,409,410],{},"Engagement rate",", because it is comparable across post sizes in a way raw likes are not.",[194,413,414,417],{},[18,415,416],{},"Profile visits and follows from content"," — the nearest honest proxy for \"people wanted more.\"",[194,419,420,423],{},[18,421,422],{},"Anything countable that touches pipeline:"," inbound messages, demo requests, link clicks to the page that matters, applications for an open role.",[194,425,426,429],{},[18,427,428],{},"A qualitative line."," Who engaged, not how many. \"Two heads of engineering at target accounts commented\" outranks a thousand impressions and no report format captures it automatically.",[11,431,432],{},[18,433,434],{},"Drop:",[191,436,437,443,449,455],{},[194,438,439,442],{},[18,440,441],{},"Follower count as a headline."," It moves slowly, it is easy to game and it rarely causes anything.",[194,444,445,448],{},[18,446,447],{},"Every chart with fewer than three months of data."," Two points is not a trend; presenting it as one trains the client to over-react to noise.",[194,450,451,454],{},[18,452,453],{},"Platform-native \"engagement scores.\""," Different definitions per platform and not comparable.",[194,456,457,460],{},[18,458,459],{},"Anything you cannot explain the cause of."," If you cannot say why it moved, it is decoration.",[23,462,464],{"id":463},"reporting-a-bad-month","Reporting a bad month",[11,466,467],{},"Every account has them, and how you report the third bad month determines whether there is a fourth.",[11,469,470],{},"Three rules:",[11,472,473,476],{},[18,474,475],{},"Say it in the first line."," Burying a bad month in slide nine reads as concealment when it is discovered, and it always is. Leading with it reads as control.",[11,478,479,482],{},[18,480,481],{},"Distinguish the two kinds of bad."," \"The content underperformed\" and \"we published four posts instead of eleven because material never arrived\" are entirely different problems with different owners. Conflating them is either taking blame you do not deserve or hiding a dependency that needs fixing. Say which one it was, without editorialising.",[11,484,485,488],{},[18,486,487],{},"Bring a change, not a reassurance."," \"We'll keep at it\" is what a client hears as nothing. One specific alteration, with what you expect it to do, is what keeps the next month funded.",[11,490,491,492,495],{},"The failure mode worth naming: smoothing a bad month by finding a metric that happened to go up. Everyone can tell, and it costs more credibility than the bad month did. If the data is thin, say the data is thin — ",[90,493,494],{"href":246},"honest measurement"," survives a quarter of noise far better than a curated one does.",[23,497,499],{"id":498},"frequency-and-format","Frequency and format",[11,501,502,505],{},[18,503,504],{},"Monthly, not weekly."," Weekly reporting on social is mostly noise and turns into a treadmill that consumes bucket-four time you are not being paid for.",[11,507,508,511],{},[18,509,510],{},"One page, in the body of an email or a shared doc."," Not a PDF attachment, not a slide deck, not a dashboard link. The report should be readable on a phone in ninety seconds without a login. Dashboards fail as reports for one reason: a dashboard shows numbers, and a report makes an argument.",[11,513,514,517],{},[18,515,516],{},"Quarterly, go longer."," Once every three months there is enough data for an actual trend, and that is the meeting where you discuss strategy, scope and rate. The monthly one-pager is not the place for that conversation.",[23,519,521],{"id":520},"the-compounding-benefit","The compounding benefit",[11,523,524],{},"There is a second reason to write reports this way, and it shows up months later.",[11,526,527,528,531],{},"A year of one-page reports that each name a hypothesis and a result is an argument for your rate that no proposal can match. It is also the record that settles disagreements about what was agreed, which is the same reason ",[90,529,530],{"href":92},"approvals need a trail",". Reports written as decisions accumulate into evidence; reports written as dashboards accumulate into nothing.",[11,533,534,535,537],{},"Across a book of clients this is exactly the part that decays under load — the fifth client's report gets written at 11pm and quietly becomes a metrics dump. ",[90,536,6],{"href":246}," keeps what was published, what was approved and what it produced attached to each brand, so the monthly report is assembled from a record rather than reconstructed from memory.",[23,539,256],{"id":255},[11,541,542,545],{},[18,543,544],{},"What should be in a social media report for a client?","\nA verdict in the first two sentences, what went out, the top posts with why they worked, what underperformed and your hypothesis, and next month's plan with what you need from the client. One page, same structure every month.",[11,547,548,551],{},[18,549,550],{},"Which social media metrics actually matter to clients?","\nEngagement rate, profile visits and follows from content, and anything countable that touches pipeline — inbound messages, demo requests, relevant link clicks. Follower count and raw impressions are context at best and misleading as headlines.",[11,553,554,557],{},[18,555,556],{},"How often should I report to a social media client?","\nMonthly for the one-pager, quarterly for the longer strategic review. Weekly reporting on social is mostly noise and consumes unbilled time without improving decisions.",[11,559,560,563],{},[18,561,562],{},"How do I tell a client a month went badly?","\nIn the first line, distinguishing content that underperformed from work that could not happen because material never arrived, and paired with one specific change you are making. Burying it reads as concealment; leading with it reads as control.",[11,565,566,569],{},[18,567,568],{},"Should I send a dashboard link instead of a report?","\nNo. A dashboard shows numbers; a report makes an argument about what to do next. Clients who receive dashboard links stop opening them within about two months.",{"title":288,"searchDepth":289,"depth":289,"links":571},[572,573,574,575,576,577,578],{"id":329,"depth":289,"text":330},{"id":351,"depth":289,"text":352},{"id":388,"depth":289,"text":389},{"id":463,"depth":289,"text":464},{"id":498,"depth":289,"text":499},{"id":520,"depth":289,"text":521},{"id":255,"depth":289,"text":256},"Most social media reports are dashboards nobody opens. A one-page structure built around decisions, which metrics to drop, and how to report a bad month without losing the account.",{},"\u002Fblog\u002Fclient-reporting-that-gets-read",{"title":315,"description":579},"blog\u002Fclient-reporting-that-gets-read",[310,309],"CrLO_ehJZApOOOzw8VupnuRkE2sS4yfJ_xh4qMLQZ-I",{"id":587,"title":588,"author":6,"body":589,"date":298,"description":799,"draft":300,"extension":301,"image":302,"meta":800,"navigation":304,"path":250,"seo":801,"stem":802,"tags":803,"updated":302,"__hash__":804},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fhanding-over-a-social-account.md","Handing over a social account without losing the voice",{"type":8,"value":590,"toc":791},[591,594,597,600,604,607,613,619,628,634,637,641,644,647,677,680,684,687,693,699,705,711,717,721,724,734,740,743,747,750,756,759,761,767,773,779,785],[11,592,593],{},"An account changes hands. The new strategist reads the last three months of posts, the brand doc if there is one, and starts writing. Nothing obviously breaks. Six weeks later the client says something vague about the posts not feeling like them lately, and cannot point at a single one.",[11,595,596],{},"They are right, and the cause is structural. Reading published posts teaches you the output, not the reasoning: which angles were rejected, which words are banned, what the client reacted badly to in March, why the account stopped doing the Friday format. All of that lived with the person who left.",[11,598,599],{},"Voice does not survive a handover by default. It survives because someone captured the part that was never written down.",[23,601,603],{"id":602},"what-is-actually-lost","What is actually lost",[11,605,606],{},"Four categories, in rough order of how much damage their loss causes.",[11,608,609,612],{},[18,610,611],{},"1. Rejections."," The single most valuable and least recorded artefact. Every angle the client killed, every phrasing that came back marked up, every topic that turned out to be sensitive. The published archive shows what passed; it says nothing about what was tried. A new writer without the rejection history will re-propose the same rejected ideas within a month, which is what a client experiences as \"they don't know us.\"",[11,614,615,618],{},[18,616,617],{},"2. The forbidden list."," Claims they cannot legally make, competitors they will not name, words banned internally. Usually held in memory after the first time someone got told off.",[11,620,621,624,625,94],{},[18,622,623],{},"3. Fact provenance."," Which numbers are current, which were true in March, which need legal review. Undated facts in an old post are how a stale claim gets recycled into a new one — the second-order version of ",[90,626,627],{"href":174},"publishing a wrong claim",[11,629,630,633],{},[18,631,632],{},"4. Relationship texture."," Who actually approves versus who comments, how blunt you can be, whether they want to be consulted or informed. Not voice exactly, but it determines how much friction the next three months carry.",[11,635,636],{},"The published posts capture none of these. That is why \"read the last quarter and you'll pick it up\" fails reliably.",[23,638,640],{"id":639},"capture-it-before-you-need-it","Capture it before you need it",[11,642,643],{},"The only version of this that works is continuous. A handover document written during a handover is written by someone already mentally gone, under time pressure, from memory that is already degrading.",[11,645,646],{},"Four artefacts, maintained per account as a matter of course:",[191,648,649,659,665,671],{},[194,650,651,654,655,94],{},[18,652,653],{},"The voice definition",", concrete enough that two writers produce similar posts from it. Three real sample posts beat any list of adjectives — the standard is in ",[90,656,658],{"href":657},"\u002Fblog\u002Fmanaging-multiple-brand-voices","keeping several brand voices straight",[194,660,661,664],{},[18,662,663],{},"The fact file",", with dates. Every citable number, when it was true, where it came from.",[194,666,667,670],{},[18,668,669],{},"The forbidden list."," Claims, comparisons, words, customers who may not be named.",[194,672,673,676],{},[18,674,675],{},"The rejection log."," One line per killed angle, with the reason. This is the one nobody keeps and the one that matters most. It costs ten seconds at the moment of rejection and is unreconstructable afterwards.",[11,678,679],{},"If these exist, a handover is a week. If they do not, it is a quarter, and the client pays for the difference in quality without being told.",[23,681,683],{"id":682},"the-two-week-handover","The two-week handover",[11,685,686],{},"Assuming the outgoing person is still available. Compress it if they are not, and accept a worse result.",[11,688,689,692],{},[18,690,691],{},"Days 1–2 — Written transfer."," The four artefacts above, updated to current. Plus one page the outgoing strategist writes from memory: what the client actually cares about, what they say they care about, and where those differ. That page is worth more than the rest combined.",[11,694,695,698],{},[18,696,697],{},"Days 3–4 — The walkthrough."," Go through the last quarter's posts together, outgoing person narrating: why this angle, what got cut, what the client said. Record it. This is the reasoning layer that the archive does not contain, and an hour of it saves a month.",[11,700,701,704],{},[18,702,703],{},"Days 5–8 — Shadow drafting."," The incoming writer drafts; the outgoing one edits with reasons attached. Nobody sends anything new to the client yet. Three or four rounds is usually enough for the register to transfer, and the edits themselves become additions to the voice definition.",[11,706,707,710],{},[18,708,709],{},"Days 9–10 — Introduce, deliberately."," Tell the client, before they notice. Frame it as continuity with a name and a date, not as an apology. Clients handle a planned handover well and an unannounced one badly, and the difference is entirely in whether they found out from you.",[11,712,713,716],{},[18,714,715],{},"Days 11–14 — Supervised solo."," Incoming writer runs the account; outgoing person reviews before release. Then stop.",[23,718,720],{"id":719},"the-drift-check","The drift check",[11,722,723],{},"The failure is gradual, which is why it is caught late. Two cheap checks catch it inside a month.",[11,725,726,729,730,733],{},[18,727,728],{},"The blind test."," Take three new posts, strip the logo and any product names, and ask someone who knows the brand which client they belong to. If the answer is \"could be any of them,\" the voice has already flattened toward the writer's default. This is the same check that catches ",[90,731,732],{"href":657},"voice bleed across clients",", and it works for the same reason.",[11,735,736,739],{},[18,737,738],{},"The rejection replay."," Pull five angles from the rejection log and ask the new writer whether they would propose them. If they would propose three, the reasoning did not transfer, and the client is about to feel it.",[11,741,742],{},"Run both at week two and week six. After that, drift is usually the normal kind that any account has, not handover damage.",[23,744,746],{"id":745},"why-this-keeps-happening","Why this keeps happening",[11,748,749],{},"Because the artefacts live in the wrong place. A brand doc in a shared drive gets updated during onboarding and never again; a rejection log in someone's notes app leaves with them; the fact file is a spreadsheet three versions behind whatever the client last confirmed.",[11,751,752,753,755],{},"The structural fix is that brand knowledge should live attached to the brand rather than to the person, and it should be updated as a side effect of the work rather than as a separate chore nobody does. That is what ",[90,754,6],{"href":246}," holds per brand: voice profile, confirmed facts with their history, constraints, and the record of what was proposed, edited and rejected. The next strategist inherits the account rather than reverse-engineering it from published posts.",[11,757,758],{},"It also removes the incentive that quietly damages agencies — when knowledge lives with a person, the account is hostage to their retention, and everyone knows it.",[23,760,256],{"id":255},[11,762,763,766],{},[18,764,765],{},"How do you hand over a social media account to a new manager?","\nTransfer four written artefacts first — voice definition, dated fact file, forbidden list and rejection log — then walk through the last quarter's posts with the outgoing person narrating why each angle was chosen, then shadow-draft for a week before the new writer sends anything to the client.",[11,768,769,772],{},[18,770,771],{},"Why does a brand's voice change when the writer changes?","\nBecause published posts show the output, not the reasoning. A new writer cannot see which angles were rejected, which words are banned or what the client reacted badly to, so they default toward their own register within a few weeks.",[11,774,775,778],{},[18,776,777],{},"What is a rejection log and why does it matter?","\nA one-line record of every angle a client killed and why. It is the most valuable handover artefact and the least commonly kept — without it, a new strategist re-proposes rejected ideas within a month, which clients experience as not being understood.",[11,780,781,784],{},[18,782,783],{},"Should you tell the client the account is changing hands?","\nYes, before they notice, framed as planned continuity with a name and a date. Clients handle announced handovers well and unannounced ones badly, and the difference is almost entirely in who told them first.",[11,786,787,790],{},[18,788,789],{},"How long should a social media account handover take?","\nAbout two weeks with the outgoing person available: two days of written transfer, two of walkthrough, four of shadow drafting, then a supervised solo period. If the brand artefacts were maintained continuously it is closer to a week; if they were not, expect a quarter of degraded quality.",{"title":288,"searchDepth":289,"depth":289,"links":792},[793,794,795,796,797,798],{"id":602,"depth":289,"text":603},{"id":639,"depth":289,"text":640},{"id":682,"depth":289,"text":683},{"id":719,"depth":289,"text":720},{"id":745,"depth":289,"text":746},{"id":255,"depth":289,"text":256},"When the strategist who ran an account leaves, the voice resets to whoever writes next. What to capture before it happens, a two-week handover plan, and the drift check that catches it early.",{},{"title":588,"description":799},"blog\u002Fhanding-over-a-social-account",[309,310],"4-PllwzsnCCa4EsTMXRWOcblfK2h5kKGj7ee3GcEeGQ",{"id":806,"title":807,"author":6,"body":808,"date":298,"description":1049,"draft":300,"extension":301,"image":302,"meta":1050,"navigation":304,"path":1051,"seo":1052,"stem":1053,"tags":1054,"updated":302,"__hash__":1055},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fpricing-social-media-management.md","How to price social media management when half the work is invisible",{"type":8,"value":809,"toc":1040},[810,813,816,819,823,826,853,861,864,868,871,897,900,904,910,916,922,928,931,935,938,948,954,960,964,967,970,987,990,994,997,1004,1006,1016,1022,1028,1034],[11,811,812],{},"Ask a freelance social media manager what they charge and you get a monthly number. Ask what it works out to per hour and the conversation gets uncomfortable, because the number that gets quoted covers writing and posting, and writing and posting is roughly half of what actually happens.",[11,814,815],{},"The other half — chasing material, waiting on approvals, rewriting after a comment, reconstructing what the client agreed three weeks ago, the \"quick question\" on Slack — never appears in a proposal and never gets billed. It is not overhead. It is the job.",[11,817,818],{},"Price without counting it and you take on a fifth client to fix an income problem that was really a pricing problem, and end up worse off.",[23,820,822],{"id":821},"count-the-invisible-half-first","Count the invisible half first",[11,824,825],{},"Before choosing a model, measure. For two weeks, log every minute spent on one client in four buckets:",[827,828,829,835,841,847],"ol",{},[194,830,831,834],{},[18,832,833],{},"Production."," Writing, editing, sourcing images, scheduling.",[194,836,837,840],{},[18,838,839],{},"Input gathering."," Chasing the client for material, interview calls, digging through their site or old decks because nothing arrived.",[194,842,843,846],{},[18,844,845],{},"Approval and revision."," Sending, waiting, chasing, rewriting after feedback, re-sending.",[194,848,849,852],{},[18,850,851],{},"Account admin."," Reporting, invoicing, meetings, the Slack thread that took forty minutes.",[11,854,855,856,860],{},"Most people who do this exercise find production is 40–60% of the total. Buckets 2 and 3 together are usually larger than anyone expects, and they are the buckets that scale worst — they grow with the ",[857,858,859],"em",{},"number"," of clients, not with output.",[11,862,863],{},"Now your real hourly rate is the monthly fee divided by all four buckets, not by bucket one. That number is the one to act on.",[23,865,867],{"id":866},"why-per-post-pricing-loses","Why per-post pricing loses",[11,869,870],{},"Per-post looks fair and behaves badly.",[191,872,873,879,885,891],{},[194,874,875,878],{},[18,876,877],{},"It prices the cheapest part."," Writing is the commodity; knowing what to write and getting it approved is the expertise. Per-post pricing sells the commodity.",[194,880,881,884],{},[18,882,883],{},"It punishes efficiency."," Getting faster at writing means earning less, which is a strange incentive to build a business on.",[194,886,887,890],{},[18,888,889],{},"It invites scope creep with no meter."," Revisions, calls and \"can you also look at\" are outside the unit, so they arrive free.",[194,892,893,896],{},[18,894,895],{},"It makes clients optimise the wrong thing."," A client paying per post asks for more posts. A client paying for an outcome asks whether the posts are working.",[11,898,899],{},"There is one situation where per-post is right: overflow work for another agency where you receive an approved brief and return text. That is genuinely piecework, and it should be priced as such.",[23,901,903],{"id":902},"four-models-and-what-each-one-causes","Four models, and what each one causes",[11,905,906,909],{},[18,907,908],{},"Monthly retainer, scoped by deliverable."," \"12 posts a month, 2 rounds of revision, one call.\" The default for good reason: predictable both ways, and the scope line makes overage a conversation rather than a resentment. Its weakness is that it still anchors on output volume. Mitigate with an explicit revision cap and an explicit response-time expectation from the client — most retainer losses come from bucket 3, not bucket 1.",[11,911,912,915],{},[18,913,914],{},"Monthly retainer, scoped by outcome."," \"We run your LinkedIn presence.\" No post count. Higher trust, higher margin, only workable once you have a track record with that client, and dangerous early because an unscoped promise with an unresponsive client is unbounded work.",[11,917,918,921],{},[18,919,920],{},"Day rate or hours."," Honest, easy to explain, caps your income at your calendar, and encourages clients to treat you as capacity rather than judgment. Useful as a strategy or audit offer alongside a retainer, less good as the main model.",[11,923,924,927],{},[18,925,926],{},"Value or performance-linked."," Attractive in theory. In practice, attribution in social is weak enough that you will spend the relationship arguing about what caused what. Workable only where the outcome is countable and clearly yours — inbound demo requests from a single channel, for instance — and only with a floor retainer underneath.",[11,929,930],{},"For most freelancers the answer is model one, priced against all four buckets, with a hard scope line.",[23,932,934],{"id":933},"price-the-things-nobody-prices","Price the things nobody prices",[11,936,937],{},"Three items belong in every proposal and are usually given away:",[11,939,940,943,944,94],{},[18,941,942],{},"Onboarding as a separate fee."," The first week is disproportionately expensive: interviews, voice definition, fact-gathering, access, calibration drafts. Charging it separately does two useful things — it recovers real cost, and it makes the client take onboarding seriously enough to actually send the material. The week itself is laid out in ",[90,945,947],{"href":946},"\u002Fblog\u002Fsocial-media-client-onboarding","social media client onboarding",[11,949,950,953],{},[18,951,952],{},"Revision limits."," Two rounds included, then charged. Not to make money on round three, but because unlimited revisions are how a profitable client becomes an unprofitable one without anyone noticing.",[11,955,956,959],{},[18,957,958],{},"A client-responsiveness clause."," The most underused line in the industry: if material or approvals do not arrive by the agreed day, the work slips and the fee does not change. Without it, the client's delay becomes your unpaid overtime, every month.",[23,961,963],{"id":962},"the-rate-raising-problem","The rate-raising problem",[11,965,966],{},"Rates go up when scope changes or when you have proof. The mistake is raising them quietly in month eleven with an apology attached.",[11,968,969],{},"Two things make it straightforward:",[191,971,972,978],{},[194,973,974,977],{},[18,975,976],{},"Announce increases at a fixed point"," — annually, or at renewal — so it is a calendar event rather than a negotiation you initiated.",[194,979,980,983,984,94],{},[18,981,982],{},"Attach it to evidence."," Not \"my costs went up\" but \"here is what the last six months produced.\" Which requires that you have been reporting on something more meaningful than impressions all year — see ",[90,985,986],{"href":581},"the client report that gets read",[11,988,989],{},"If a client will not move at renewal, that is information. The clients who resist a modest annual increase are almost always the ones consuming the most of buckets 2 and 3.",[23,991,993],{"id":992},"the-structural-fix","The structural fix",[11,995,996],{},"Pricing better raises the ceiling. It does not change the fact that buckets 2 and 3 grow with client count, which is why the fifth client so often produces less profit than the third.",[11,998,999,1000,1003],{},"The structural fix is to shrink the unbillable half rather than bill for it: keep every brand's voice, facts and constraints somewhere durable so drafting does not start with reconstruction, and put approvals on the work itself with a recorded trail so nobody relitigates what was agreed. That is precisely what ",[90,1001,6],{"href":1002},"\u002Ffor\u002Fsocial-media-managers"," is built to do — the drafting is the part that was already fine; the context and the chasing are what eat the week.",[23,1005,256],{"id":255},[11,1007,1008,1011,1012,1015],{},[18,1009,1010],{},"How much should I charge for social media management?","\nWork backwards from your real hourly rate: divide the monthly fee by ",[857,1013,1014],{},"all"," the time a client consumes, including chasing material, approvals and admin, not just production. Most people find production is only 40–60% of the total, which means an apparently healthy monthly number can be half the rate they think it is.",[11,1017,1018,1021],{},[18,1019,1020],{},"Should I charge per post or a monthly retainer?","\nA retainer, in almost every case. Per-post pricing sells the cheapest part of the work, punishes you for getting faster, and leaves revisions and calls unmetered. Per-post makes sense only for overflow work where you receive an approved brief and return text.",[11,1023,1024,1027],{},[18,1025,1026],{},"How many revisions should be included?","\nTwo rounds, stated explicitly, then billed. The cap matters less as a revenue line than as a signal — unlimited revisions turn a profitable client into an unprofitable one gradually enough that nobody notices until renewal.",[11,1029,1030,1033],{},[18,1031,1032],{},"Should I charge for onboarding separately?","\nYes. The first week costs disproportionately more than a typical month, and a separate onboarding fee also makes clients take the process seriously enough to actually send their material and grant access on time.",[11,1035,1036,1039],{},[18,1037,1038],{},"How do I raise rates with an existing client?","\nDo it at a fixed annual point rather than ad hoc, and attach it to evidence of what the work produced rather than to your costs. That requires having reported on something more meaningful than follower counts throughout the year.",{"title":288,"searchDepth":289,"depth":289,"links":1041},[1042,1043,1044,1045,1046,1047,1048],{"id":821,"depth":289,"text":822},{"id":866,"depth":289,"text":867},{"id":902,"depth":289,"text":903},{"id":933,"depth":289,"text":934},{"id":962,"depth":289,"text":963},{"id":992,"depth":289,"text":993},{"id":255,"depth":289,"text":256},"Why per-post pricing loses money, how to find your real hourly rate including the unbillable half, and four pricing models with the client behaviour each one causes.",{},"\u002Fblog\u002Fpricing-social-media-management",{"title":807,"description":1049},"blog\u002Fpricing-social-media-management",[310,309],"bbgenV_pQ3_4uJmsQCvUDcg5J6AxNr2sVcR2KATWVCE",1787133212525]