Approval workflows
Approve what is risky, not what is routine
A social approval workflow is an agreed set of rules about which posts and replies need a second pair of eyes before publishing, and who provides them.
Approval is a tax you pay for control, and like any tax the question is not whether to have one but where to apply it. Reviewing everything makes the reviewer the bottleneck and makes the review shallow, because nobody reads the four hundredth routine reply carefully. Reviewing the small proportion that carries real risk is both cheaper and more effective.
Sort by consequence, not by volume
A reply about pricing, a comment on a competitor thread, and anything touching a regulated claim carry consequences that a routine helpful answer does not. Those are worth a second reader. Applying the same process to every reply guarantees the risky ones get the same three seconds as the rest.
Speed is part of quality on social
A reply that takes two days to clear approval is a reply into a dead thread. If your process cannot turn around a routine reply within a working day, the process is not protecting quality, it is preventing publication.
The reviewer needs authority, not just a queue
Approval only works when the approver can say no and it sticks. A queue where the reviewer feels obliged to pass everything is a delay dressed as a control, and everyone involved learns to treat it as a formality.
Two people minimum, or the queue stalls
A single approver means the whole thing stops the week they are on holiday, and a queue that stops for a week teaches everyone to route around it permanently. Name a second approver explicitly rather than assuming somebody will cover, because an assumed deputy approves nothing.
How to do it
Write the risk list
Pricing, competitors, customers by name, legal or regulated claims, and anything about an incident. Everything not on the list is routine by definition.
Set a turnaround commitment
Same day for routine, a few hours for anything time sensitive. Without a stated commitment the queue becomes the slowest person on it.
Name the approvers, including the deputy
Two people with real authority to reject. Write down who covers when the first is away.
Add a second approver only where it earns the delay
For most teams that is a subset of content or a subset of people, such as a new hire during their first month, rather than everything from everyone.
Audit what got rejected quarterly
If nothing has been rejected in three months, the control is theatre and you can loosen it. If a lot is rejected, the problem is upstream in briefing, not in review.
Common mistakes
- Reviewing every item, which makes every review shallow and the reviewer a bottleneck.
- A single approver with no named deputy, so the queue stops for a week every holiday.
- No turnaround commitment, which quietly turns approval into cancellation.
- An approver who cannot actually reject anything, which is a delay pretending to be a control.
How Quillen handles approval workflows
Human approval is the default on every Quillen plan: drafts wait in an inbox and by default nothing posts without you. There are two documented exceptions and both are opt in. An optional autopilot is Team plan only, off unless you switch it on per LinkedIn campaign, unavailable on X entirely, and only drafts that pass the voice lint are ever eligible for it. Separately, Team workspaces can turn on two step approval, which routes drafts from members to an owner or admin for final sign off and disables autopilot entirely while it is on. Two step approval is off until an owner turns it on, and turning it off again does not release drafts already waiting.
Common questions
- Should every social reply be approved?
- Approving everything is a reasonable default while you are learning what a tool produces, and a poor steady state, because a reviewer reading four hundred routine replies stops reading carefully. Move to reviewing by risk once you trust the routine output.
- What is two step approval?
- A second reviewer: one person drafts or submits, a different person with final approval authority signs off before anything publishes. It is worth the delay for regulated claims, for new team members, and for accounts that are not yours.
- Does approval slow things down too much for social?
- It does if routine items sit in it. Threads age out within a day or two, so the fix is not skipping approval, it is narrowing what needs it and committing to a turnaround time for the rest.