When you're a team of marketers trying to push out only the best content on your social media channels, it's helpful to have a Content Approval system in place. Not only can an Approval setup pipeline your content, and get it from Point A to Point B for editing and approval, but it ensures that your content is optimised, and is part of a systematic publishing process.  This gives a new dimension to your social media strategy and also saves a lot of time spent going back-and-forth over discussing content.

 

The Approvals framework within Zoho Social has two key aspects: Roles and Workflow.

The Portal Admin on Zoho Social will be able to add and decide the Roles of all the team members inside each Brand on Zoho Social. During the setup stage, the Portal Admin is given the option to segregate members into the following roles which will decide their Content-level permissions. These are: Admins, Approvers, and Limited Publishers. 

A Portal Admin by default will have the "Approver" privileges and can approve, update, and reject posts sent for approval. They can assign other members as Portal Admins or Brand Admins and they will have Approver privileges for either the entire Portal, or the specific Brand, respectively. 

"Approvers" roles are assigned by either Portal or Brand Admins, and they can approve, update, and reject posts that are sent for approval. They have full publishing permission within their designated Brands.

"Limited Publisher" roles are assigned by Admins for members who's content is to be sent for approval before publishing. Limited publishers cannot schedule or publish content directly, and can only save content as Drafts and send for approval.

To add members as Approvers, follow the steps given below.

1. Click on the gear icon (Settings) followed by Brand Settings.

2. Now, under Brand Settings click on Publishing.

3. Under Publishing Preferences hit the Add Approver button.

4.  Pick team members from the list you want to add as Approvers and finally hit the Add button.

If you want to remove Approver status for team members, you can do this anytime from the Settings tab.
1. Head to Brand Members under your Brand Settings, and here you'll see a list of all the team members inside your Zoho Social Brand.
2. Here you simply uncheck the Approver checkbox next to the team members name to remove Approver privileges for them.
3. This will modify their publishing permissions automatically.

Now let's look at how a typical content approval workflow chain happens on Zoho Social. 

1. Click on the New Post button on your dashboard.

2. Type in the content, and you can choose to schedule it for a specific date and time based on your preference.

3. Finally hit the Send for Approval button on the publishing window.

Though portal and brand admins can publish posts on their own without the need for any approval, there might be cases where as admins, you need to cross-verify the content with someone from the team or check for correctness. In such cases, you can also send your posts for approval to other approvers in the same brand by clicking on the toggle next to Send for approval in the compose window.

If there are no approvers listed for the brand, you can add an approver right from the compose window and then proceed to send the post for their approval.

To monitor the status/position of your post sent for approval,

1. Go to the Posts tab on your Dashboard and click on Approvals on the left-hand side menu.

2. Click on the post you want to check the status for. On the "Post Activity" column you can see the following:

     -> View if the post you created is sent for approval or not.

     -> View the list of comments made by the Approver if any.

     -> View the list of any status updates added to your post by the Approver. For instance, feedback added to a post that was sent for approval.

1. Approve - To approve the post a user sends for approval.

2. Reject- To reject the post a user sends for approval.

->While you click on the Reject option, you will be given an option to specify the reason for the rejection. You can add your feedback or correction here, and hit the Reject button to notify the publisher. 

3. Yet to Review- Default status that is assigned to every post that comes in for approval.

4. Under Review - To imply that the post is still under analysis. This option is used by Approvers to let other Approvers within the Brand know that a particular post has already been looked at, and is awaiting more changes. 

Once a piece of content has been sent for Approval by a publisher, an Approver can now review it and move it along the publishing pipeline. To do this:

1. Go to the Posts tab and click on the Approvals option from the left menu.

2. From the list of posts displayed, click on the one you want to update the status for (Under Review, Yet to Review, Time Elapsed, and Reject) or simply Approve.

3. Click on the Approve button in the detailed post view to approve the post right away.

Once you click on the Approve button, the status of the post will be changed to Approved. If you click on the drop-down next to the Approve button, you can access two options.

Approve and Publish Now- Use this option if you want to approve and publish the post instantly.

Approve and Add to Queue- Use this option if you want to approve and publish the post immediately, or add it to the next available queue slot. 

You can alternatively hit the ellipses button (...) on top of any approved post and click on the Edit button to access all the scheduling options via the Publishing Window.