What to send your social media manager each month

What decision should the content support?

Name the customer action the next cycle should make easier: request an estimate, book an appointment, order a special, visit a location, register for an event, ask about a product, or understand a service before contacting the business. Add the audience, campaign window, channel, and one primary destination. Without that decision, a manager can produce attractive posts that compete with one another or send customers to unrelated next steps.

Write the goal as an operating statement rather than a promised outcome. For example, use “help homeowners understand the spring maintenance visit and request an appointment” instead of “make this campaign go viral” or “guarantee twenty bookings.” The statement should guide topic selection and measurement while leaving room for honest uncertainty about distribution and sales results.

Which offer facts belong in the monthly record?

For every promoted offer, record the exact name, eligibility, price or approved price language, inclusions, exclusions, start and end dates, location or service area, capacity or inventory constraint, redemption method, destination URL, and the employee who can reconfirm a change. Google Business Profile separates Updates, Offers, and Events and gives dated posts specific fields, which shows why timing and terms belong in the brief before copy is written.

Label volatile information. A permanent service description may be reusable, while an appointment opening, menu item, event time, staff schedule, coupon, financing term, or product quantity may expire quickly. Give each time-sensitive fact a recheck date and a fallback instruction such as pause, replace with an approved evergreen post, or return it to the owner. Silence should not keep an expired promotion moving toward publication.

How should approved media be prepared?

Choose the strongest approved photos, short clips, logos, brand files, product images, screenshots, before-and-after pairs, process visuals, and team images for the current goal. For each item, identify what it shows, when it was created, the business or customer involved, where it may be used, required credit, cropping limits, and any privacy or licensing restriction. Remove near-duplicates and files whose ownership or relevance is unclear from the working set.

Add the information needed for accessible publishing. W3C guidance says text alternatives should convey an image’s information or function, while decorative images use a null alternative. Give the manager the meaningful context that is not obvious from the pixels: the service shown, the result that can be supported, the important words inside an image, or the action a functional graphic represents. Do not use alt text as a keyword list.

What proof can the manager use?

Attach real proof only with enough context to use it accurately. A review needs its platform or original record, date, exact wording, incentive or material-connection status, permission notes where relevant, and any limitation that prevents promotional reuse. A result, statistic, award, certification, guarantee, comparison, or before-and-after claim needs its authoritative source and the person qualified to approve the interpretation.

FTC guidance requires advertising claims to be truthful, non-deceptive, and supported, and it treats endorsements as claims the advertiser could not make deceptively on its own. Tell the manager which statements are approved, which need disclosure, and which are prohibited. Do not ask creative wording to carry a stronger conclusion than the evidence supports, and do not let a disclaimer hidden in a caption repair a misleading headline or visual.

How can customer questions become content inputs?

Send repeated questions, common objections, disqualified inquiries, booking friction, service misunderstandings, and the points staff explain every week. Remove unnecessary personal information and summarize the pattern rather than forwarding private conversations into a content folder. For each question, provide the approved public answer and name the situations that still require a private or qualified human response.

Prioritize questions connected to the current buying decision. If customers repeatedly ask whether a quote includes materials, the next content may need a scope explainer. If they arrive unprepared for an appointment, a preparation checklist may be more useful than another promotional graphic. The purpose is not to make private support content public; it is to use recurring, non-sensitive friction to improve the next accurate explanation.

Which destinations and tracking details belong in the brief?

Give the manager the exact live URL, booking path, phone or contact instruction, location page, product page, menu, registration form, or profile action that the post should use. Open each destination on a phone, confirm that the offer and business details agree with the planned post, and identify the event that will count as a useful result. A polished post cannot fix a broken form, outdated landing page, or ambiguous booking route.

Document the campaign name and tracking convention before scheduling. Use consistent link tags where appropriate and tell the frontline team how to record calls, visits, bookings, orders, or self-reported sources. Separate delivery, attention, consideration, qualified action, and business value. The content brief should create evidence for a later decision, not imply that every impression or click became revenue.

Who controls access, approval, and exceptions?

Use platform roles and named accounts instead of sharing a primary password. Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and TikTok offer different access levels, so map the manager’s real duties to the narrowest workable permission. Keep business-controlled ownership and recovery, and state who can draft, approve, schedule, publish, reply, change billing, or manage other users. A content brief is not authorization for unrelated account administration.

Name one final approver, the review location, the deadline, and the exact status that means a post may be scheduled. Identify extra review for prices, regulated claims, health or safety language, endorsements, minors, sensitive customer situations, contests, paid partnerships, or crisis communication. Also define what happens when a fact changes, approval is late, a platform rejects a post, a destination breaks, or a customer raises a sensitive issue after publication.

What monthly handoff rhythm keeps the brief current?

Hold one short source review before production begins. Remove expired material, confirm the main campaign, assign proof and media to distinct customer questions, and note every missing fact. The manager can then return a proposed sequence that shows the job, source, format, CTA, owner, and deadline for each post before spending time on final creative.

At the end of the cycle, archive what expired, retain genuinely reusable material, record corrections and customer questions, and decide what evidence should influence the next brief. Measure the handoff itself: late facts, approval time, revision causes, unusable media, broken destinations, missed posts, and manager questions. Repeated rework often signals a source problem that a larger content package will not solve.