Something I have regularly seen from clients is that they hire me on Monday and they expect that I will start posting for them on Tuesday. That is the worst idea ever. In fact, I did that once because the client lost their social media manager unexpectedly and needed someone to start posting right away. It was a disaster. I won’t do it ever again, and any quality social media freelancer will say the same thing.

Why? There are just so many tasks you need to do to get the strategy, voice, content, etc. in a place that it needs to be for an effective social media presence. If those tasks don’t happen, the social media presence can go off the rails quickly. That’s especially true when you don’t have a written document in place with your social media freelancer.

So when exactly will your social media freelancer start posting? While timelines will vary, here’s approximately what you should expect.

Onboarding documentation

On the expected start date, you should receive a packet of information. This varies widely based on the social media freelancer and what you are hiring them to do.

For me, this includes a questionnaire. This is your homework and how fast I move forward depends on how fast you can get that information back to me. Part of that is because it includes the hand off information for your social media accounts. And part of that is because I want to get a better idea of your goals. Yes, we may have talked about that during our prospective meetings, but this is the time to get it nailed down in your own words.

I try to ask as little of my client as possible, because I know how overworked most of them are. So typically my questionnaire takes a half hour or less if you have all of your information together. It will obviously take longer if you have to do things like chase down passwords.

If you’re prompt with getting me everything I ask for, we can move onto the next part pretty quickly.

Goal setting

Before we get down to work, I set some goals. Yes, my client has told me what they want to get out of social media. But they don’t necessarily know what that really looks like in social media terms. And in most cases, they don’t know how they have been doing because they have never looked at analytics. Scary but true.

So I take what the client has told me and look at where they currently are. From there, I see if there is a gap. If there is, then we have to go into setting goals by bringing down the client’s expectations. I’ll be honest that this is a rare occurrence. Before they have even signed the contract, I’ve had a good look at their social media and gotten an idea of their expectations. It’s always better to bring down those expectations to reality before signing a contract rather than after. Otherwise the client could accuse you of bait and switch.

Once the client feels comfortable with my goals, then we really get going.

Research

The next two sections together will take typically about a month, but that varies dependent on how many hours a client has hired me for and the type of work I am doing. Another social media freelancer may take more or less time.

The research is my very favorite part of all of this. I’m just fascinated by how much information is out there and how easy it is to use it to my client’s advantage.

The first step is to look at their current social media. What has worked? And what has failed? That means fewer experiments and more well-informed posts. That is pure gold.

And then I look at competitors, do what is typically thought of as SEO research and finish off by getting to know your buyer. This is overly simplified and takes much longer than it looks. Of course, that also depends on the amount of information that a client gives me. For example, a client who tells me that they have no competitors is going to require me spending more time discovering those competitors. Because when it comes to content, you’re always in competition with someone else whether it’s a brand or an individual. An organization without well-researched keywords is going to require more time on the SEO research. And if they don’t know who their buyer is, that is additional time as well.

In other words, the more you know about marketing and the basics of your brand, the quicker this section will take. But even then, this will take your social media freelancer a significant amount of time.

Creating the social media strategy

This is where we take all of the research and create the plan. Basically, we figure out how to put all the pieces together in a way that works for the client.

What does this include? It’s different for every social media freelancer. I like to pull from three places for my content. The first is from the buyer’s journey, which makes sure I provide something for every place a customer is with the organization. Next, I’m looking at the questions people are asking online. Finally, I look at the buyer as a person. What are their wants and needs? How can our organization help them directly as well as indirectly? All of this information, as well as what the client gives me, can easily give me six months worth of content. But we’re still not there yet.

From this, I create a list of content pillars, along with the types of content we should be prioritizing. As a reminder, content pillars are not something we keep strictly to. This is more like a plan for those days that there is no news and no event to promote. They help a brand stay connected to their fans when they are in a slower period.

This document also includes any events or promotions that the social media influencer should have on the accounts. Basically it is a document that has everything that everyone needs to know about social media as well as the work that went into how these conclusions were reached. Exactly what that looks like will change based on who the social media freelancer is and who the client is.

Create content

At this point, we are so close to posting that we are just anxious to go. But we’re not there yet.

This is the point where I put together a list of what will be happening over the next three months. The goal is to have the first month the content that we are actively creating, the second month is where we have assigned any pieces of the content for passively working on it and the third month is all about putting ideas to dates. Since we’re working towards that, this is more about putting ideas to date.

Then I create a week’s worth of content. I expect this to be the roughest week of working on content with a client. We’re making sure we’re getting the tone and voice right, so it’s going to be a lot of looking at the tiniest aspects of content. It’s important while also headache-inducing. Getting everything right from the beginning will prevent problems in the long-term. I do all the research I possibly can to get this right, but it is still an educated guess at what is right for the client and the audience. As much feedback as possible from the client will help as we get ready to share what we’re doing with the audience.

This will also give me an idea of how approvals will work with the client. I can then customize the experience based on what happens here and how quickly the client can get back to me. All of this is a rehearsal for the big show.

Let’s publish!

After around a month, we finally get to the point where we can start pressing publish on all of this content that we had painstakingly worked on.

From here, I’m learning what the audience really responds to, so I make adjustments to the strategy document as needed. We improve our approval process. It should start going faster as I get better at figuring out what works for the audience and the client. And we are full-on in the creating process.

That first month is always hectic for any client and their new social media freelancer. And I have been guilty of thinking that I’m going to get fired just because of how hard that first month of publishing always is. But then you get to the other side where you have the flow figured out, and it’s just so much easier.

But none of this happens overnight. It all takes time. And it’s so important to give your social media freelancer the time to make it easy on you.

How long did it take before your social media freelancer pressed publish on their first post?