About this piece. This checklist was contributed by the team at Turrboo and edited by us for the blog. It is general marketing workflow rather than tool coverage, so it lives here and not in our Directory. It is not a Watchdog entry, and nothing in it is on our re-verification schedule. Disclosure: followedapp.com is published by the team behind RecurPost, which this piece names alongside Turrboo under the same rules as any other vendor. Both vendors’ prices below were read from their own pricing pages on 2026-09-03.
Prices verified: 2026-09-03, each vendor’s own pricing page. Figures are US dollars, monthly billing unless stated.
Running social media well is not about posting more. It is about posting with a system. An ad hoc approach burns time and produces uneven results, while a checklist-driven workflow keeps every platform, campaign, and piece of content moving in the same direction.
The ten steps below are the operating checklist. The first one is about tooling, because almost every later step is easier with a central tool in place. The other nine are about the work itself.
1. Set up a social media management tool
Get the operating foundation in place before anything else. Managing several platforms, a schedule, and more than one person without a central tool is the fastest route to missed posts, duplicated work, and no record of what performed.
A social media management tool earns its place on this checklist when it lets you:
- Schedule and publish to every platform you run from one composer
- Share drafts with teammates and route them through an approval step
- Read engagement and performance for all channels in one report
- Answer comments and messages without opening each native app
- Draft and refine captions and hashtags inside the same workflow
Which tool fits depends on team size, budget, and how many channels you manage. Two examples, priced from their own pages on 2026-09-03:
| Vendor | Entry plan | Entry includes | Team-sized plan | Team plan includes | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turrboo | $29/mo ($19 annual) | 7 channels, 1 user | Team $59/mo | 15 channels, 3 users | 14 days, no card |
| RecurPost | $9/mo ($7.50 annual) | 2 accounts, 1 user | Agency $79/mo | 20 accounts, 3 users | 14 days |
Read 2026-09-03 from turrboo.com/pricing and recurpost.com/plans-and-pricing. Annual figures are the per-month price when billed yearly. Turrboo geo-serves rupee prices to Indian visitors; the figures above are the US dollar prices. Turrboo’s $129 Agency plan and RecurPost’s per-unit add-ons are in the text below.
Turrboo prices by plan with the seats included. Its $59 Team plan carries three users and 15 channels, and its $129 Agency plan carries ten users and 40 channels, so a five-person team pays for the Agency plan and nothing per seat. Turrboo’s inbox, approval workflows, and sentiment filter start on the Team plan; the $29 Essentials plan is publishing and analytics only. There is no free tier. Every Turrboo plan starts as a 14-day trial with no card required.
RecurPost, published by the same team as this site, is the cheaper entry at $9 a month for two accounts, and it prices growth per unit: $4 for each extra account and $20 for each extra teammate on any plan. That makes RecurPost the lower-cost choice for one person running a handful of accounts, and the pricier one for a team of five or more, where three included seats on Agency plus two at $20 each comes to $119 a month. Our full profile, with the dates behind every figure, is at /tools/recurpost/.
Whichever tool you pick, getting this piece right first makes every other item on this checklist easier to execute.
2. Define a goal for each platform
Not every platform serves the same purpose. Decide upfront whether a channel exists for brand awareness, community, lead generation, or customer support, and let that goal shape the content decisions. A channel with no defined goal usually ends up with no defined content strategy either, which shows up as inconsistent posting and mixed messaging.
Write the goal down per platform and revisit it every quarter. Audiences and platform algorithms shift often enough that a goal set a year ago may no longer fit.
3. Know the audience
Build, or revisit, audience personas: who they are, what problems they have, and what kind of content they actually engage with. Vague targeting leads to vague content.
Pull this from real sources rather than assumptions. Audience insights inside your management tool, comment themes, DMs, and support tickets all say what the audience cares about more reliably than a workshop does.
4. Build a content calendar
Map out themes, campaigns, and key dates at least a month ahead. A calendar prevents last-minute scrambling and keeps a healthy mix of content types in view, from educational and promotional posts to behind-the-scenes and user-generated ones.
A calendar also makes it easier to plan around product launches, seasonal moments, and industry events instead of reacting to them after the fact.
5. Decide the content mix
Avoid an all-promotional feed. A balanced mix typically includes educational or how-to content, product or service highlights, community and user-generated content, timely or trending posts, and behind-the-scenes material.
A common starting ratio is roughly 60% educational or entertaining, 20% community-driven, and 20% promotional. Treat that as a starting point, not a rule, and adjust it as your own engagement data comes in.
6. Adapt content to each platform
Resize, reformat, and rewrite captions per platform instead of cross-posting the same asset everywhere. What works on LinkedIn rarely works unchanged on Instagram or TikTok.
This covers aspect ratios for video, caption length to match platform norms, and hashtag use. Heavy hashtag use suits Instagram, while minimal to none tends to work better on LinkedIn and X. Most management tools, Turrboo and RecurPost among them, let you edit the same post per platform before it goes out, which is the practical way to do this at volume.
7. Schedule posts in advance
Batch-create and schedule content ahead of time so publishing does not depend on someone remembering to post at the right hour. Loading a week or a month of content in one sitting frees up time for the higher-value work of engagement and strategy.
Check how the tool handles volume before you commit to a batching rhythm. Turrboo’s plans list unlimited scheduled posts and a publishing queue on every tier. RecurPost’s bulk scheduling takes a CSV of posts in one upload, which suits a monthly batching habit.
8. Monitor and respond to engagement
Set aside time daily to reply to comments and messages. Fast, genuine responses build trust and tend to help distribution.
A shared social inbox helps here, especially for teams, because it keeps incoming messages and comments from multiple platforms in one queue instead of scattered across separate apps. Check which plan carries it: Turrboo’s inbox starts on the $59 Team plan, and RecurPost’s social inbox covers Facebook Pages, Instagram business accounts, LinkedIn Company Pages, and Google Business Profile, not X or TikTok.
9. Track the right metrics
Go beyond likes and followers. Track engagement rate, click-throughs, conversions, and follower growth relative to the goal set for each platform in step two.
Report on these numbers on a fixed schedule, weekly for fast-moving campaigns and monthly for overall channel health, so trends are visible before they become problems.
10. Review and refine monthly
Look back at what worked and what did not every month, and use those insights to adjust the content mix, posting times, and platform priorities.
Treat this review as a standing part of the workflow rather than an occasional audit. The checklist works as a loop, not a one-time setup.
Questions this checklist usually raises
How often should a brand post on social media?
There is no single right number. It depends on the platform and the audience’s expectations. As a general guide, three to five times a week works for most platforms, with higher frequency on fast-moving feeds like X and lower frequency on LinkedIn or Facebook.
What is the best time to post?
Best times vary by platform, industry, and audience time zone, so there is no universal answer. Most social media management tools include audience activity data that shows when your specific followers are online, and that beats any generic best-time chart.
Does every platform need a different strategy?
Not a completely different strategy, but different execution. Overall goals and brand voice can stay consistent across platforms, while formats, captions, and posting frequency should be tailored to each one.
How do you know whether social media marketing is working?
Tie the metrics back to the goal set for each platform. Awareness channels should be measured on reach and impressions. Conversion channels should be measured on click-throughs and conversions, not engagement alone.
Is a paid management tool worth it over native scheduling?
For a single platform at low volume, native scheduling works fine. Once you manage multiple platforms, a team, or a steady posting cadence, a dedicated tool typically pays for itself in time saved on scheduling, approvals, and reporting. The cheapest paid entry among the two tools priced above is RecurPost at $9 a month; the cheapest plan that includes a team inbox and approvals is Turrboo’s Team plan at $59.
On these prices. Every figure above was read from the vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-09-03 and is in US dollars. Vendor pricing pages change without notice. RecurPost is in our Directory and on our re-verification schedule; Turrboo is not, so treat its figures as a dated snapshot rather than a live record.