How Our Agency Runs Client Content Plans in posterly

Every agency has a version of the same monthly routine. Someone builds the content plan in Google Slides so the client has something nice to look at. The captions live in a Google Doc because Slides is awful for editing text. The schedule, the formats and the status of each post live in a Google Sheet, because that's the only place anyone can see the whole month at once. Then the client replies with feedback by email, by WhatsApp, or as comments on whichever of the three files they happened to open.

And once everything is finally approved, someone on the team copies every caption and every image out of those files and into the scheduler, one post at a time.

That was us for a long time, across every client on our social media marketing retainers. This post is about what our month looks like now that the plan, the approvals, the scheduling and the analytics all live in one place: posterly, the scheduler we use for every client. (We built posterly inside this agency, so if you want the product-side version of this story, posterly has published its own write-up of how we use it.)

Where the time actually went

We don't have a stopwatch figure to share, and we're not going to make one up. What we can tell you is exactly which jobs disappeared, because each one used to have a name on it in our team chat.

• Building the deck. Laying out each post as a slide with its image, caption, platform and date, so the client could review it.
• Keeping three files in sync. A caption changed in the Doc had to be changed in the Slides and noted in the Sheet. When one of them was missed, the client approved one version and we scheduled another.
• Collecting feedback. Pulling comments out of email threads, WhatsApp messages and file comments into one list the team could act on.
• Tracking who approved what. Working out whether a client had signed off the image, the caption, or just said "looks good" about the month in general.
• Re-sending. Sending the whole deck again after a round of changes, then explaining which slides were actually different.
• Moving it all into the scheduler. The big one. Copying every approved caption and downloading and re-uploading every approved image and video.
• Rescheduling by hand. When a client wanted Thursday's post moved to Monday, changing it in the Sheet, the Slides and the scheduler.
• Building the report. Exporting numbers from each platform at the end of the month and pasting them into another Sheet.

None of these jobs is hard. That's the problem. They're slow, they're repetitive, and every one of them is a chance for the version the client approved to drift away from the version that actually goes live.

The content plan is the schedule

In posterly, a content plan belongs to a client brand and covers a period, usually a calendar month. It holds the strategy notes and content pillars we'd normally write at the top of the deck, and the channels the month is targeting.

The plan starts as a grid of slots. Each slot has a date, a content pillar and a format (image, carousel, reel, story, video, text or document). When we're ready, we fill the slot with a real post: the caption, the media, the platforms and the publish time.

That last part is the whole point. The thing the client reviews is not a picture of the post. It is the post. There is no "move it into the scheduler" step, because it's already in the scheduler.

A few things we rely on every month:

• Four views of the same plan. A list for working through slots, a grid of cards for rearranging, a feed preview showing how the month will look on the profile, and a calendar laid out in the client's own timezone. They're four views of one plan, so there is nothing to keep in sync.
• Drag to rearrange. In the grid view, dragging one slot onto another swaps their dates, and any scheduled posts linked to those slots move to their new times. Posts the client has already approved are locked, so a rearrange can never quietly change something they've signed off.
• Honest progress. Empty slots show as placeholders, and the plan shows how many slots are filled. We can send a plan for review before every slot is done, and the client can see exactly what is still to come.
• Stories included. Story images and videos go into the same plan, get approved in the same review, and can then be scheduled to the client's Instagram and Facebook accounts without uploading them again.

Approvals without the email chain

When the plan is ready, we click Send for review and tick the reviewers on the client's side. Each one gets their own secure link by email, using posterly's client approval workflow. They don't need a posterly account; they confirm their email once with a code.

What the client sees is the part that replaced our Slides deck. By default it opens as a slide deck, one post per slide, showing a preview of the post with its caption, platforms, format, content pillar and scheduled time. They can switch to a grid to see how the feed will look, or a calendar to see the month. If your clients write in Arabic, captions follow the direction of each paragraph, so right-to-left text reads properly.

On each post the client can approve, request changes with a comment, or reject. A few details here have saved us a lot of back and forth.

The image and the caption are approved separately

This is the one we'd point to first. Clients very often love the creative and want a word changed, or like the copy and want a different photo. posterly treats the asset and the caption as two separate decisions, which is one of the things that sets it apart from other social media schedulers for agencies. The client can approve the reel and send back the caption, and a post only publishes when both are approved.

When we then edit the caption, only the caption goes back for approval. The approved reel stays approved. Nobody has to look at the whole post again because of one word.

Clients can edit the caption themselves

Instead of describing a change in a comment, a client can edit the caption directly on the review page. It shows up on our side as a tracked change, with the old wording struck through and the new wording highlighted. We accept it or reject it. Accepting it counts as the caption being approved, because both sides have already agreed on the words.

Re-sending doesn't undo anything

When we send a plan back after a round of changes, approved posts stay approved. The client gets an email listing the posts we updated, with their dates and the comments they left, and the link opens straight to those posts. We can also send a single reworked post back on its own rather than the whole month.

One summary instead of twenty notifications

The client works through the review and clicks Submit review at the end. We get one summary email with every approval and every change request in it, instead of a notification per click. When the whole plan is approved, the team gets one more email saying so.

Approval is what schedules the post

Approval doesn't just tick a box. A post can't publish until it's approved, and once it is, it publishes at the scheduled time. If a client approves something after its scheduled time has passed, it goes out straight away. We never have to remember to schedule something "once they come back to us".

Analytics in the same place

At the end of the month the same tool that published the posts shows how they did. posterly pulls analytics from the connected accounts, including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, X, Pinterest and Google Business Profile, so we're not logging in to each platform separately to collect numbers.

When a client wants a report in their own format, the analytics spreadsheet view lays it out by month or by day and exports to CSV or Excel. We start the report from that export instead of from a blank Sheet.

What our month looks like now

1. Plan. We create the month's content plan for the client brand, add the strategy notes and pillars, and lay out the slots.
2. Produce. The team fills each slot with the real post: caption, media, platforms and time.
3. Check. We look at the feed preview and the calendar to see how the month reads as a whole, and drag slots around until it feels right.
4. Review. We send it to the client's reviewers. They approve, request changes or edit captions on a single page.
5. Revise. We fix only what was sent back and re-send just those posts. Everything else stays approved.
6. Publish. Approved posts go out at their scheduled times. Nothing is copied anywhere.
7. Report. We review performance in analytics and export the spreadsheet for the client's report.

There are no Slides, no caption Doc and no tracking Sheet in that list. Each step happens on the same post, so what the client approved is what gets published.

Who this suits

If you manage social media for more than a handful of clients, the copy-paste work grows with every client you add, and so do the chances of publishing the wrong version. Content plans and client approvals are part of posterly's Agency plan, alongside client-ready reports and room for up to 30 client brands.

If you only manage one or two accounts and your client is happy with a quick WhatsApp check, a shared calendar may be all you need. Our guide to building a social media content calendar is a good place to start either way, and if you're weighing up tools, we compared posterly with Buffer and Hootsuite.

Got Questions? We've Got Answers

Does the client need a posterly account to approve content?

No. Each reviewer gets their own secure link by email and confirms their email address with a one-time code. After that they stay signed in on that device for 30 days. They only see what we've sent them for review, never our full calendar.

Can more than one person on the client's side review a plan?

Yes. A plan can go to up to 10 reviewers in one send, each with their own link. Reviewers can be set as able to approve, or as comment only, which is useful when a junior team member should give feedback but a manager makes the final call.

What happens if we edit a post after the client has approved it?

Only the part you changed goes back for approval. Edit the caption and the caption needs re-approving while the image stays approved. Swap the image and the image needs re-approving while the caption stays approved. The post won't publish until everything that was reopened is approved again.

Can we still give clients a report in our own format?

Yes. The analytics spreadsheet exports to CSV or Excel by month or by day, so you can build the report in whatever layout your client is used to, starting from real numbers rather than figures copied out of each platform.