Reduce email overload in content approval

A client called me last week, frustrated. They were working late every night, still missing deadlines, and constantly putting out fires. Instead of adding another productivity tool to their already overloaded day, we focused on decision friction: every choice they had to make from emails to approvals was slowing them down. Here’s what we implemented: 1. Decision rules: We created clear criteria for routine choices. If it met the criteria, it could be approved instantly or delegated. If not, it went into a structured review. 2. Batching similar tasks: Emails, approvals, and reports were grouped into dedicated time blocks instead of popping up randomly all day. 3. Weekly review ritual: 30 minutes every Friday to map priorities for the following week. It reduced reactive stress and gave the client strategic clarity. Within days, they cut 10+ hours of unnecessary decision-making, regained focus for high-impact work, and felt in control of their calendar again. Lesson for executives: Clarity beats busyness. If you feel constantly behind, start by mapping the decisions you make every day then reduce the ones that aren’t driving results. Tip to try tomorrow: Pick one routine task you do daily and set a rule for it approve, delegate, or defer. Watch how quickly your focus multiplies.

Ever been a part of an endless content review cycle with too many reviewers, preferential comments all over the place, and people downloading the doc to 'take it offline'? I feel your pain. 😬 It's an unecessary and avoidable challenge. This is what I see when I get under the hood of a painful review process: 🔹 no one has time 🔹 file control issues (email - gah!!) 🔹 too many reviewers are involved 🔹 lots of preferential changes 🔹 comments are in dozens of places 🔹 people don't know what to review for 🔹 no one wants to make the final decisions Here’s how to fix this so it's easier for everyone: ✅ always use a track changes feature ✅ Give people an explicit time limit - 3 days is reasonable ✅ Use a project management tool to track dates, file locations, progress, and owners ✅ Designate who makes final calls and let the author him/herself make those final changes ✅ Find a way to work online, for example on Teams or Google Drive, and STOP emailing files around ✅ Choose MAXIMUM three people to perform reviews. Your blog posts do not need to go all around the company for approval. Nip that one in the bud. ✅ Tell people exactly what they are reviewing for - grammar? Flow? Accuracy? Tell them what they DON'T have to review for - ie, most often grammar, if you have an editor. ✅ Be very specific with your request: "Your feedback on this blog/ebook/newsletter is important. Can you complete it by EOD Friday? The link to the file is here. Please use the track changes and commenting feature. If you cannot make that date, please let me know as soon as you can. If I don't hear from you, I will assume that you approved the content.' What other tips would you give to teams trying to manage content reviews?

I used to send content drafts over WhatsApp. Screenshots. Long explanatory texts. Then, "Wait, which version did we approve?" threads that went 20 messages deep. It was chaos. And the worst part? I was the one managing it. As a social media manager, your job is to make the client's life easier, not to become another notification they dread opening. Then I started using Planable. And honestly? It changed the way I work with clients completely. Here's what my workflow looks like now: All contents, captions, visuals, and scheduling sit in one place. Whether it's LinkedIn or Meta, everything is laid out exactly as it will appear and scheduled to go live on its own. The client sees it before it's published, in the exact format, on the exact platform. No more "can you send me the caption again?" No more confusion over which draft is final. They comment. They approve. Done. No back and forth. No lost files. No version chaos. Less time firefighting. Revisions dropped. And I stopped spending so much of my day just managing communication and started spending it on actual strategy. If you're a social media manager still running approvals over email or WhatsApp, I promise you, there's a better way. Your time is worth more than a 20-message thread. 🔗 Tool used: Planable More tool explorations are on the way. What tools have made the biggest difference in how you manage clients? Drop them below. I'm always building my stack. #SocialMediaManager #ContentStrategy #Planable #SMM #ClientManagement #WorkSmarter #DigitalMarketing

Here's a step-by-step to drastically reduce the deluge of emails between you and your clients/internal team. An absolute GAMECHANGER 👇 Enter: The Collaboration Doc 👏 I’ve stolen this idea from Cal Newport’s podcast Deep Questions. I immediately implemented it with my own clients and they LOVE it. Fundamentally, most people don’t need a response *right now* – they just need to be safe in the knowledge that everything is being taken care of. So all the Collaborative Doc is is a very clean, clearly outlined document that you and your clients and/or your internal teams can use asynchronously to reduce overhead tax. Overhead tax is all the unnecessary (and exhausting) meetings and emails flying back and forth that surround a project. Here’s how to drastically reduce your overhead tax immediately: Step 1: Create a shared document This could be in Notion, Google Docs, Word or whatever works best for you and your client. Make sure your privacy settings are all correct. Step 2: Make it incredibly easy to navigate I have mine split into: 📆 Key Details 📝 Meeting Notes 🧠 Brain Dump Within Brain Dump I’ve further split that into all the key stakeholders so they know exactly where to put their notes. Break this down however you want. They key is that it's all clear and formatted, it looks nice, but it's not overworked. This should be as bare bones as possible. Step 3: Agree a cadence The point here is to reassure your client that you will absolutely refer to their notes. If you have a weekly Wednesday meeting for example, say that you will check all notes first thing on a Tuesday. They can be confident that nothing will go un-reviewed and anything that needs to be actioned before the meeting will be. Meanwhile, you get to be clearer on when you work on each client/project, as everyone has a set cadence. Step 4: Be religious about your collaborative documents This only works if your client has absolute trust that you will keep the document updated and reviewed. Do not let anything slip! WHY THIS WORKS Instead of emailing back and forth, clients put any questions, ideas, notes etc into this one, living document. It helps you to whittle communication down to the essential, increasing the value of your work, your time and the experience your client has (remember it's reducing overhead tax for them, too!) I've done the above example for working with a client, but it works just as well for internal teams, too. It gives everyone more time as people know that things are documented and will be picked up, so there's no need to just fire little things off on slack unless they're actually needed there and then. For both groups, streamlining like this means that you can save time and energy for when a response really is needed right away. Simple, I know, but honestly SUCH a winner. Do you do this already? What problems do you foresee and how would you tweak it?

🚨 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 Did you know SharePoint now includes a 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺? No need for custom Power Automate flows or complex setups! Here’s how to activate it in just a few steps:  1. Go to your 𝗱𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗿𝘆  2. Click on "𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲" > "𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘀"  3. After setup, 4 new columns will appear:  • 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀  • 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀  • 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲𝘀  • 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 Once a document is uploaded, users can click on the "𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗱" button to launch the approval. They can customize: ✅ The document name ✅ The approval type (sequential or all-at-once) ✅ The approvers ✅ Additional details ⚠️ 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁: Approvals are sent 𝘃𝗶𝗮 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀, but the document submission can be done from either 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 or 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀. 💡 This feature offers a fast, integrated, and user-friendly way to manage document approvals saving time, reducing email clutter, and improving transparency. 👉 Have you tried it? Let me know how it’s working for you or how you think it could improve your document workflow! #SharePoint #Microsoft365 #DigitalWorkplace #DocumentManagement #Approvals #TeamsIntegration

Did you know that on average, enterprise marketing teams take more than 10 business days to approve final creative by marketing, management and legal and compliance? (Some of you are laughing out loud because in many companies this sounds fast and in actuality, it takes even longer). At IntelligenceBank on average, our clients who use workflows, AI checks and proofing take less than 4 days to approve content, and our very best clients on average do it under 2 days. How? 1. You need a process and get out of email. Email is not a system of record and creates nightmares in the proofing and approval process. Not to mention is tedious and time consuming when you get audited. Being able to add contributors, reassign requests, manage versions and compare them, proof and mark up content quickly is essential to compete. 2. You need to automate brand and legal checks with AI. We help our clients check content against custom rules such as tone of voice, spelling, brand consistency, regulatory guidelines and exact match disclaimers. This removes 80% of approval friction. Literally 80%. Use your legal team strategically, not as a human spell check. 3. A disclaimer engine integrated within your creative briefs (that also get approved) ensures teams are using the right 'fine print' on each ad type and in each geography. It also removes legal bottlenecks. 4. Creative Templates automate the production of 'below the tip of the iceberg' advertising and you can create ads on the fly (with pre-approved headlines, disclaimers, images) without needing them to be approved again. 5. Last but not least - for product web pages, PDS's, google ads and other key content pieces, have a robust tracker and approval process to review published content using AI and humans to ensure offers are not out of date and importantly there is a change management process for approving updates. Streamlining approvals as part of your go to market strategy couldn't be more important - and here's how we make it easy, automated and trackable. https://lnkd.in/gJrgYKes