What to Request From Social Media Management Clients During Onboarding

When starting your journey with a new social media management client, it's important that we deeply understand the brand and audience. This stems from asking the right questions and getting all the required information we need to be able to learn the ins and outs of the brand. This will shine through in both the strategy and the content we curate as social media managers.

While we do gain a great deal of info on our clients in the discovery process, we consider those the basic questions that we can expand on in the onboarding process to get a better idea of each. So, what information should we be asking social media management clients for in the onboarding process? Here are six must-have pieces to request from clients before creating their social media content.

Branding Guidelines

Branding Guidelines are arguably the most important! We need to fully understand the brand and it's overall feel, and this is where the branding guidelines come in. Not only does this ensure we have a guide, but it helps the overall brand presence remain consistent across all platforms.

Logo Files

We all know how essential logos are to the overall branding. We want to ensure the clearest file format to showcase on designs, to update their profile picture if needed, and to have for future reference. Asking for all files of their logo will be extremely helpful for the long run.

Marketing Materials

Any marketing materials they have used in the past. Things like flyers, brochures, brand or product decks, etc., can be powerful sources of content ideas and information to help you learn the brand. Their website will also be a large resources we can't forget to mention here!

Brand Assets

Brand assets such as photos, videos, blogs, sales copy, and more will be necessary for content creation. Note that, if a brand is low on assets from the start, you need to approach the project differently to factor in working through them crafting these assets for social media.

Audience Insights

Any past analysis they might have on their audience. This could include a market research survey, reports, demographic breakdowns, target market deck, or analytics tracking sheets. This is especially important if the account starts under 100 followers on Instagram because there aren't insights we could access within the account yet.

Log-Ins

A non-negotiable for us, we need their account log-ins for full social media management. Engagement is a large part of social media management, so we need to be able to fully log into the account for manually posting, community management, and insights. We need their login for social accounts, plus any additional tools they are currently using such as an analytics tool. When it comes to collecting this information, we want to protect our clients from any security risks. We use LastPass to collect the information, that way they don't have to share over email. We traditionally log in directly on the onboarding call to go through two-factor authentication.

We hope this helps strengthen your client onboarding process and gets you a clear picture of what to request during this stage of client management. Get all our client tips inside our mentorship for social media managers!