This feature not only helps you bring relevant discussions from all other features of the product (like Reports, Connections, Monitor, etc.) to a single tab, but also provides a platform to discuss ideas for social media content, approve content ideas, review your performance, discuss engagements, or anything that requires the team to come together.
You can also turn posts into interactive threads where you involve team members from drafting responses to iterating copies by tagging Team Members or Clients.
Some of the things your team can discuss on the Collaborate tab are:
Content: Drafts, Scheduled posts, Published posts, Posts from the Calendar view, and Unpublished Posts
Brand Mentions: Mentions seen on Monitor, Live Stream, or Notifications
Reports: From the Stats or Analytics section
Connections: Everyone who has interacted with your brand across social channels
Posts: Posts you see within the Monitor tab and Posts tab. This includes your posts that others have liked or commented on.
Ways in which you can collaborate with your team
You can easily collaborate with your team by starting discussions on Zoho Social.
Whether you're looking at your posts, or monitoring a set of keywords, or analyzing a report—you'll see a Discuss button under a drop down ellipsis (...) menu.
In some places you'll see a Discuss icon like shown in the image below.
When you click on it, you'll be able to start a discussion about that particular topic or user in the Collaborate tab. You will also be able to choose the specific people you want to discuss the topic with, and also tag specific members in the thread to notify them.
Now, let's look at specific aspects in Zoho Social that can be discussed in the Collaborate tab:
1) Discussing Posts from the Posts tab or Calendar view:
Spot a post that you want to discuss with your team? Simply click the Discuss icon when you hover your pointer over a post to initiate a conversation about it with your team. Similarly, you can also discuss Scheduled posts directly, and carry the discussion forward to the Collaborate tab.
Let's take a look at some people who find the Collaborate tab extremely resourceful to discuss posts:
Discussing Draft posts for approval:
Let's say Charles needs help with a draft post before it is scheduled to live. By clicking on the Discuss icon on the post from the Drafts section, Admins can easily discuss post iterations in the collaborate tab until the content is approved and ready to go!
Discussing Post failures:
Eduardo spotted a Failed post that slipped into the Unpublished Posts section (located in the Posts tab and Calendar view) and never saw the light of day because the post contained an invalid image. He can initiate a discussion about the post anytime by clicking on the Discuss option next to the post directly, without having to contact specific Team Members or Admins by sharing the post in the Collaborate tab. This way he brings in a more effective workflow when it comes to identifying, resolving and avoiding the issue altogether.
Keeping a track of Scheduled posts:
Manish has some interesting content ideas to discuss with his team. What does he do? He immediately clicks on the Discuss icon (next to the post in the Post tab or from ellipsis menu in the Calendar), tags the post author as well in the Collaborate tab and suggests an idea before the post goes live.
2) Discuss Users:
Matt wants help figuring out how to approach a user who engaged with his Brand on Twitter. He can click on the Discuss option on that specific Connection or user from anywhere in the product (Monitor/Live Stream/Connections, etc.) to discuss with his Team Members.
3) Discuss Stats & Analytics:
As a Marketing Analyst, Charles can discuss Stats and Analytics about his Brand's performance during a specific period, say for the past 30 days. He can do this by going to the Reports tab and click on the desired dataset for any social channel that he wants to discuss. To do this, he clicks on the ellipsis (...) on the top-right and hits Discuss.
Great! Now, that you've learnt some common use-cases to discuss with your Team Members and Admins on the Collaborate tab, go ahead and give it a spin.
Accessing the filtered view on the Collaborate tab
You can access the filtered view in the Collaborate tab to focus on a discussion that matters most to you. On the left side bar, you can find the following filters that categories discussions based on different features available on Zoho Social.
- All Feeds: Get a complete picture of all the discussions that take place within Zoho Social.
- Discussions: Catch a glimpse of all the discussions created directly from the Collaborate tab.
- Drafts: View all discussions about posts shared from Drafts.
- Posts: View all discussions about posts shared from the Posts tab.
- Scheduled posts: View all discussions about Scheduled posts shared from the Posts tab
- Unpublished posts: View all discussions about Unpublished posts shared from the Posts tab.
- Connections: View discussions about specific Connections shared from the Monitor tab, Messages, or the Connections tab
- Reports: View all discussions about the Stats and Analytics shared from the Reports tab