How Agencies Can Rock Team Collabs With Shared Calendars

Agencies, want a simple way to collaborate with your clients on social media content? Then use Agorapulse’s shared calendars.

Along with the growth of social media itself, tools have been created to help make the jobs of social media managers a little easier. From content scheduling tools to managed comments, and team functions, the options available to social media agencies today have been a game-changer. Now, you can add shared calendars to that list of tools to review. Sign up for a free Agorapulse trial and level up your social media marketing game immediately.

What Are Shared Calendars?

“Shared calendar” can mean different things in different online tools. For example, Monday.com offers a shared calendar that is an internal planning and task management tool. And tools like Sharelov refer to shared calendars for internal team collaboration on content for Instagram.

While team collaboration is an important tool, especially for larger agencies, do you wish you had a tool that helped you communicate with your clients?

That is what the Agorapulse shared calendar allows:

• You can now share the social media calendars that you create for your clients directly with them—even when they don’t have an Agorapulse account. (Up until now, your agency clients would have needed an account and login.)
• With the shared calendar, you have a link for easy access that you have complete control over. Your agency clients only see the completed calendar with approval and rejection options, without all the multiple layers of content management and social media creation.

How Shared Calendars Improve Client Relationships

If you have been managing social media, a client has asked at some point to see the content before it is published. Or maybe you are sending out sample social media content as part of a bid for a new agency client.

It is so time-consuming! First, copy and paste images into a document or presentation file. Then write text into a usable format for your clients or potential clients. What makes it even more difficult is that this format doesn’t adequately represent what the post will look like on the native social media platforms.

Shared calendars answer all these dilemmas. It also puts the power back in your agency clients’ hands for how they want to manage their social media and streamline communication.

Give your clients the final say

One of the biggest concerns I hear from businesses thinking about handing off their social media is: “Will another company understand our voice?”

Taking the time to understand and document brand voice is an essential first step with a new client. The beauty of a shared calendar is that they can see every final post. They can choose to approve or reject individual posts and provide instant feedback.

What is nice is that in the calendar view, you can see the status of all the upcoming posts.

You have a couple of options for how to manage this that will depend on the individual client relationship.

• Publish first. Then they can reject or comment on already scheduled posts.
• Schedule all content (so it doesn’t go live unless the client approves the pending posts.)

The first option is perfect for an established client relationship. If you already have policies and procedures in place to minimize snafus and good communication exists between you and the client, this can save them time since they only have to do anything if they want a change.

On the other hand, if you want to give the client complete control, choose the second option. Make sure you let them know that nothing will go live unless they give the go-ahead. If you see upcoming posts that are not yet approved, take the time to check in with them, and make sure they don’t have any questions.

Get post-specific feedback

One of my favorite features of the shared calendar is the granular options for feedback. Rather than needing to go through a list and specify which posts need changes, clients can simply add a quick comment to any specific post.

They can do this through a message when they reject a post or as a comment on a post that has already been published, is scheduled, or is pending.

Improve day-to-day productivity

If you had to guess, how many emails have you gotten since you started reading this post? My guess is more than you would like.

We have all had the experience of digging through endless email threads to find that one answer or piece of feedback. Or the frustration of trying to get an answer on a specific timely social media post.

When you start using social media tools more effectively, you can save hours every week.

Shared calendars specifically can save time by:

• Eliminating unnecessary back-and-forth emails
• Keep all your content-related conversations in one place
• Ask specific questions to your clients when you assign them content to review
• Get post-specific feedback from clients

Getting Started with Shared Calendars

The Shared Calendar in Agorapulse is a premium tool that you will need a paid subscription to use.

The question you should always as is whether it will save enough time or improve other parts of your business enough to pay for itself.

You might need to have a conversation with your boss showing the time and money value of using something like this for your agency.

Once you are ready to start using the tool, it is pretty simple to set up.

Step 1: Create your shared calendar

Whatever you name your calendar will show up in the unique link as well as in any emails and notifications to clients. Make sure it will make sense and be professional to you and them.

Step 2: Add a new user and invite the new user to the shared calendar

To add your client to the shared calendar, you only need an email address for them and their name. Then send them the invitation.

You can also manually copy and paste the shareable link for easy access. Once you send the invitation, they will receive a simple email they can click on to view the calendar. No login is required on their end. (And yes, you can add multiple users if needed.)

You can choose which social media profiles each user can view on the shared calendar. This is perfect for social media agencies that have multiple different clients.

Step 3: Make sure your clients completely understand how to use the tool

Last, but certainly not least, make sure that your client feels comfortable using the tool.

Though shared calendars are intuitive, some users may still need a quick introduction. You can do this in person, or through a short video walkthrough if needed. Even a brief phone call after you send the invitation should work.

Bonus: How to Set Up an Approval Workflow for Your Social Media Team

Get started on saving time and energy in managing your clients’ Instagram accounts! Check out our free trial of Agorapulse to help you schedule, track, and measure all your social media efforts.