Writing and approving
Posts are approved where they are written.
The plan in a spreadsheet, the copy in a document, the client’s OK on WhatsApp, the date in the head of whoever publishes: when one of these changes, the others never find out. In kSocial a post is a single row, with channel, content pillar, date, owner and status. The writer sends it for review, the approver approves it right there, and with mandatory approval nobody schedules it before that.
Eight statuses, each with one meaning
A post starts as Idea, becomes Draft, goes Under review, then Approved, To schedule, Scheduled and Published; or Cancelled. “Approved” says the content is fine, “To schedule” says someone still has to send it: the queue of what is left to go out can be read at a glance. With the setting “A post must be approved before it is scheduled”, on by default, anyone who writes but cannot approve stops at review. Approvers can also send a post back to draft, with a couple of lines that land in its conversation. And a mistake on a post already published can be fixed: an approver moves it back to the right status.
How it works
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Write the post for its channel
Internal title, channel, content pillar, format, date and time, owner. The counter shows how many characters are left for that channel, 3,000 on LinkedIn, 280 on X. Saving is automatic.
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Send it for review
Whoever can approve in the project gets a notification and an email: the post is waiting for their approval. If they still have not answered after the number of days you chose, a reminder goes out.
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Approved, then out
The approver approves or sends it back to draft with a note. The post moves to “to schedule”: whoever publishes by hand marks it as published and pastes the link; with the “Social publishing” extension they schedule it and it goes out on LinkedIn by itself.
Approval lives on the post, not in a chat.
What you can do
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One post, several channels
Write the common copy once and add the channels: each one gets a variant that follows it. The one that needs to be different gets customised, and a fix to the common copy reaches all the others. “Approve all” closes the group in one go.
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Four views of the same plan
Calendar by month or week; Grid with filters and grouping by status, channel, pillar, week or owner; Board with the columns you choose; Quarter, with pillars measured against their weekly target. Gallery, List, Timeline and Gantt come with the extensions.
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The Overview shows what is missing
How many posts are waiting for approval and since when the oldest one, how many are past their date and have not gone out, how many ideas sit in the drawer, and the pace of each channel and pillar over the last four weeks and the next four.
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Reminders for whoever publishes
Choose how many hours ahead to warn: the post’s owner gets a notification and an email before it goes out. Whoever is made owner of a post knows straight away. Trade fairs and paid campaigns send no reminders.
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Events and campaigns on the calendar
The Event and Adv channels publish nothing: they put the trade fair or the running paid campaign on the calendar. The “Until” field draws its days next to the posts, so you see what goes out while it is happening.
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In and out of a spreadsheet
The project’s item lists have the fields you decide: text, choice, date, number, person, link, attachment. The plan that lives in a CSV today is imported by matching the columns; the Grid downloads as CSV and prints.
In depth
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Gallery view
In a spreadsheet a post is a cell with a file name next to it, and to know whether the month works you have to open the images one by one. The Gallery view puts each post on a card with its image: you see at once if the colours repeat, if a content pillar has vanished, if three posts in a row look the same.
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List view
On Monday morning the editorial plan gets reviewed in a meeting: a spreadsheet makes you scroll sideways, a calendar makes you open posts one at a time. The List view puts one post per row, grouped by week, with everything you need to know on a single line: when it goes out, where, what, who is on it and where it stands.
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Timeline view
A launch that runs for two weeks, a Christmas promotion, an event with a before and an after: in a monthly calendar they are scattered posts, in a spreadsheet rows that do not say how long they last. The Timeline view puts posts on an eight-week line, one row per channel or content pillar: you see where two initiatives tread on each other’s toes and where a channel goes silent for ten days.
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Link sharing
The client wants to “see what the month looks like”: you export a PDF, email it, the next day it is already out of date and the comments come back on WhatsApp. With Link sharing every project view — calendar, grid, gallery, board — has its own public links: whoever opens them sees the view with your company’s brand and today’s data and, if you allow it, leaves a comment on the post under their own name.
Frequently asked questions
What does the client see of the editorial plan?
It depends on the level you give them in the project. As Reader they see posts from review onwards, never ideas or drafts, and comment on them. As Reviewer they approve or send back to draft, but they also write and see the whole plan. An external user goes no higher than Reviewer and does not see other projects, the posts’ internal note, the media or the to-dos.
Can a post be scheduled without approval?
Only if you decide so. The company setting “A post must be approved before it is scheduled” starts switched on: anyone who writes but cannot approve stops at review. Switched off, writers can take a post straight to “scheduled”. Anyone with the level to approve approves and schedules in one go.
Does kSocial publish posts by itself?
With the “Social publishing” extension, yes, on LinkedIn pages and profiles: a post “to schedule” gets scheduled and goes out by itself on its date, and until then it cannot be edited. On other channels, and without the extension, whoever publishes does it by hand, then marks the post as published and pastes the link.
The other kSocial features
Want to see it on your own plan?
We show you kSocial with your channels and your pillars, not a fake example. Half an hour, and you know whether it is the right place for your editorial plan.