What to ask a social media client before publishing

Social media client onboarding prepares the agreement and context a team needs to start managing a client’s accounts. It covers goals, tasks, access, assets and owners. Before drafting, you need to know who the brand is speaking to and which information it can share. Before publishing, you also need approval for the final version and confirmation that its claims and assets are cleared for use.

A completed questionnaire is only a start. Give each answer an owner and a status: ready for production, waiting for confirmation, or blocked from publishing. That lets the team make progress where it has enough context without filling gaps with guesses.

Define the work before you ask for assets

List the social networks and profiles in scope, the formats the agreement covers, and the tasks the service includes. “Manage Instagram” might mean writing captions, designing posts, scheduling, publishing, moderating comments, or replying to messages. Record exclusions too, such as ad spend, sales inquiries, or weekend coverage.

Next, agree on the main outcome social should support for the period: bookings, qualified inquiries, visits to a page, awareness of an offer, or another action. Ask whom the brand wants to reach and what that person should understand or do after seeing a post. Choose one signal to review and note its source. A calendar tells you what will go out; the goal helps you decide what belongs in it. See this guide to social media KPIs by goal for help translating the goal into measures. For a way to develop recurring themes, see these content pillar examples.

Gather facts, boundaries, and approved material

Ask for a current description of the products or services, prices, offer terms, locations, dates, and destination links. Find out who can verify each detail and how to check it. If a post says “free delivery through Friday,” record who confirmed the price, delivery area, and end date. Leave a claim out of the draft or mark it as pending until someone confirms it.

Ask which topics, promises, comparisons, testimonials, or terms need an additional review. In health, finance, education, or another regulated field, agree on who reviews sensitive claims and which client policy applies. The social media manager can make a message clearer, but should not invent specifications or decide for the client whether a commercial promise is valid.

Request the brand guide, recent examples that sound right, and examples the team wants to avoid. For photos, video, music, logos, and customer content, confirm who approves their use, on which accounts, and for what period. Having access to a shared folder makes a file available to the team; it does not by itself confirm that the brand may publish it. Avoid putting names, phone numbers, or other personal information in a working sheet when a role or status will do.

Confirm the account and permissions you need

Build an inventory by network: display name, profile link, owner, person authorized to grant access, and the task the agency will perform. Agree how you will check that the invitation reached the right account and how the client will revoke access when the engagement ends.

Ask the account owner to grant access through the platform’s own business tools, with permission that matches the agreed work. Do not put passwords, verification codes, or recovery codes in a brief or spreadsheet. Meta distinguishes full or partial Facebook access to a Page from task access; LinkedIn separates roles such as content admin and analyst; TikTok Business Center assigns permissions to accounts and assets. Names and capabilities vary by platform and setup, so check its current documentation: Facebook Page access, LinkedIn Page admin roles, and TikTok Business Center permissions.

If the role includes publishing, verify the allowed workflow with an approved piece on the correct account. Analytics access does not prove that a profile can publish; an accepted invitation does not confirm that a format or action is enabled. Record any limitation before promising dates.

Make the approval route clear

Name the client’s approver and a backup by role. Agree where the final version will be reviewed, how long the client has to respond, and who follows up if that window passes. A reply in another channel or on an earlier draft should not be mistaken for current approval. If the window passes without recorded approval, mark the post as blocked and agree on a new date. Do not treat silence as approval.

Ask the client to approve the text, images, price or promotion, call to action, destination account, and date in writing. If a condition changes after approval, send the affected version back for review. Agree how to handle an error after publication too: who can request a pause or correction, who responds, and which channel to use.

Put community work in scope explicitly. For example, the agency might sort comments and forward buying questions while the client answers questions about availability and complaints. Decide whether paid promotion and its budget are included. If nobody knows who has the final say, the operating agreement still needs an answer before you design another post.

Separate ready to produce from ready to publish

A task can be ready for production before it is ready to publish. This matrix shows the basic checks. The social media onboarding CSV adds criteria, owners, statuses, and a next step for each check. Its rows use a fictional example; replace them with your team’s roles and leave out credentials and personal data.

Swipe the table to see all columns.

A fictional example of a useful block

Imagine that “Bruma Roasters” is a fictional coffee business commissioning a carousel for a seasonal box. The agency has a design and a first draft. At kickoff, the client has not confirmed the price or whether a collaborator’s photo can be used. The Instagram access invitation is also waiting for the account administrator.

The agency can develop the structure and mark those three items as pending. It cannot send the carousel for publication yet. The client confirms the price and photo permission; its administrator accepts the invitation with a suitable role; then the approver reviews the final carousel, destination link, and account. The agency records the approval and continues on the agreed schedule. This is an invented scenario, not a client result.

The spreadsheet uses simple statuses: “Pending,” “In progress,” “Validated,” and “Blocked.” Mark “Yes” in the publishing-blocker column when a missing item prevents publication, then name the responsible role and the next step. Update the status as the conversation progresses instead of sending another copy without context. You can open the CSV in Sheets or Excel; it is an independent editorial resource with no automatic platform sync.

Share responsibility

In our proposed division of work, the client supplies current facts, clears its materials for use, grants and removes account access, and approves claims that affect its business. The agency turns those answers into clear instructions, prepares the agreed work, flags missing information, and keeps the approved version identifiable. Both sides agree on timing, owners, incidents, and measures before they assess the work.

After publishing, record the post link and date, then review results against the agreed goal. If your plan uses campaign links, follow the guide to social media UTM tracking to document them consistently. This social media report template for clients shows how to connect observations to a decision without treating reach as a business outcome. To review the starting point across profiles, use this social media audit template.

To assign access by task and check a team member’s handover, use the social media team roles and permissions matrix. Record every account and access path you need to review.

Sources and scope

Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok’s references describe access options and roles on their own platforms. Check the permission name and scope on the account before requesting it. The checklist and scenario are HeyMark editorial work, and the example is fictional. The cover is an AI-generated illustration.