How to onboard a new social media client in five working days
A day-by-day onboarding plan for agencies: access, brand voice, approvals, the first month's plan and a first post that goes out without surprises.
The first week with a new client sets the tone for the whole relationship. If access drags on, the brand voice is a guess and nobody knows who signs off, the first month starts late and the client’s first impression is of chasing. This plan breaks onboarding into five working days, each with a clear outcome, so you can tell the client on day one exactly what will happen and when the first post goes out.
Before day one: send the welcome pack
Onboarding goes faster when the client has done their homework before the kick-off call. Send a short welcome e-mail with:
- The date and length of the kick-off call, and who should attend (the decision maker and the person who will approve posts)
- A list of the social accounts you need access to, and what “access” means for each network
- A short questionnaire about the brand (see day two)
- The approval process you propose, so they can think about who approves
Keep the questionnaire short. Ten good questions answered beats forty skipped.
Day 1: kick-off and access
The goal for day one is that you can see and connect every account you will manage.
Agree what you are managing
List every account by network, with its exact name or handle. Clients often forget an old Facebook Page or a second Instagram account; ask directly whether any exist that you should not touch.
Get the right kind of access
Each network has its own rules about which accounts a scheduling tool can publish to, and they are worth explaining on the call rather than discovering on day four:
- Facebook: tools publish to Facebook Pages, not personal profiles. Someone with the right role on the Page must sign in when the Page is connected.
- Instagram: only professional (Business or Creator) accounts can be connected. Switching a personal account to professional is done in the Instagram app.
- LinkedIn: posting to a Company Page needs the person connecting it to be a Page admin, and the tool must have LinkedIn’s approval for Page access.
- TikTok, YouTube and Pinterest: each has its own developer review that affects what a tool can do. Our integrations pages list the requirements per network.
Our longer post on what scheduling tools can post to each network explains why these differences exist.
Never ask a client to send you their passwords. Connections should be made through each network’s own sign-in screen by someone who has the right role, ideally on a short screen-share.
Day 2: brand voice and boundaries
The goal for day two is a written brand voice that a writer, a reviewer and an AI assistant can all follow.
Use the questionnaire answers and the kick-off notes to write one page covering:
- Who they are: what the business does, in one or two sentences, in plain words.
- Who they talk to: the customers they want more of, not everyone who might buy.
- How they sound: three adjectives, each with a “but not” (warm but not gushing; confident but not boastful).
- Words to use and avoid: product names spelled correctly, terms the business never uses, competitor names to avoid.
- Hashtags they always use, and any they never use.
- No-go topics: subjects the brand stays out of, and anything regulated (health claims, financial promises, alcohol rules).
- Disclosures: how paid partnerships and gifted products are labelled.
Send it to the client to confirm. A brand voice the client has signed off is the best defence against “that doesn’t sound like us” later.
Day 3: the approval rule
The goal for day three is that everyone knows who approves, how fast, and what happens when nobody replies.
Decide together:
- Does this client need approval at all? New relationships, regulated sectors and posts with prices or offers usually do. Some established clients only want to approve campaigns.
- Who is the approver, and who is the backup? Name people, not “the marketing team”.
- What do approvers check? Facts, claims, people and permissions, brand, accessibility. Our printable approval checklist puts this on one page.
- How fast? For example, two working days, with a default: posts that have not been reviewed by the deadline move to the next slot rather than going out unapproved.
- How does feedback arrive? On the post itself, not in e-mail threads, so there is a record of what was approved.
Our guide to setting up a client approval workflow covers each of these in more depth.
Day 4: the first month’s plan
The goal for day four is a draft month the client can react to.
- Put the fixed dates in first: launches, events, holidays the audience cares about, days the business is closed.
- Choose three to five content pillars from what you learned on days one and two. Our post on content pillars for client social media explains how.
- Set a rhythm per network that you can keep up for months, not just the first one.
- Fill a planning sheet, one row per post, with date, time, pillar, networks, working caption, asset needed and link.
Do not aim for perfect captions yet. A clear plan with working captions gets better feedback than a polished month that is aimed at the wrong things. Our free social media calendar template has the columns you need.
Day 5: review, schedule and the first post
The goal for day five is a first week that is approved and scheduled, and a first post that goes out without surprises.
- Walk the client through the month on a calendar view, not a spreadsheet. Gaps and repetition are much easier to see.
- Send the first week for approval and agree when the rest of the month will follow.
- Schedule the first post for a time when someone on your side is working, and check it on the network after it publishes: formatting, link, image crop, alt text.
- Book the first monthly review, and agree which two or three numbers the report will focus on.
Doing this in PostRoost
Each client in PostRoost is its own workspace, which maps neatly onto this plan:
- Day 1: create the client, set its time zone (every scheduled time for that client uses it), upload its logo and colour, and connect its accounts under Accounts & settings.
- Day 2: paste the brand voice into the client’s brand voice settings. The AI writing assistant drafts in that voice.
- Day 3: tick Posts need admin approval before publishing and invite the approver as a client owner or admin under Users. Invitations are e-mailed with a link that is valid for seven days. Approvals are included from the Team plan and on the agency plans.
- Day 4: fill the calendar template and load it with bulk upload; posts are created as pending approval when the client requires it.
- Day 5: the approver reviews under Approvals; anything sent back appears in the writer’s Actions list with the note.
Client users only see the clients they were added to, so a new client never sees anyone else’s work. Approvers see the number of posts waiting next to Approvals when they sign in; PostRoost does not send approval reminder e-mails, so agree a review day with the client.
The onboarding checklist
- Welcome pack sent before the kick-off
- Every account listed, with the right access type per network
- Accounts connected through the networks’ own sign-in, no shared passwords
- Brand voice written and confirmed by the client
- Approver, backup, checklist and turnaround agreed
- Fixed dates, pillars and rhythm for the first month
- First week approved and scheduled
- First post checked live on the network
- First monthly review booked
Five days is achievable for most small and mid-sized clients. If access is the bottleneck, which it often is, start the plan from day two anyway and connect accounts as they arrive; nothing on days two to four depends on them.
