How do I check a social media post before it publishes?

Run five checks on every draft before anyone approves it: what the campaign has already used, the platform's limits, the claims the brand must not make, who has signed it off, and whether it is still right at the moment it goes out. The first three catch mistakes in the post itself; the last two catch mistakes in the process around it.

Most published mistakes are not typos. They are a figure already used three posts ago, a caption cut off by a character limit, or a claim legal asked the team to stop making last quarter. A spell-checker catches none of them.

1. 1Against the campaign. Compare the draft's hashtags and headline figures with every earlier post in the campaign. A repeat is a question, not an error: keep it if it is deliberate, such as a campaign tag, and replace it if it is habit. See how to stop repeating hashtags and headline figures.
2. 2Against the platform. Check caption length, the number of hashtags, and the number of slides in a carousel against the platform the post is going to. The same post often goes to several platforms, and the strictest limit wins.
3. 3Against the brand's rules. Read the draft against a written list of claims the brand must not make, each with what to say instead. Write the list down rather than relying on memory; the claims that slip through are the ones that are nearly true. See how to build a blocked-phrases list.
4. 4Against the sign-off. Confirm the version going out is the version that was approved. An edit after approval is a new version, and the reviewer approved the old one. See how to run client approval.
5. 5At the last moment. Look again shortly before the post goes out. Accounts get disconnected, approvals get withdrawn and news changes what a post means. A post scheduled two weeks ago was checked against a world two weeks old.

Keep the campaign in one spreadsheet with a row per post. Add tabs for the hashtags and figures already used and for the brand's blocked phrases, and give each post a status column that only moves to approved once the first three checks are done.

Write each platform's limits at the top of the sheet once, and use a LEN formula on the caption column to show anything over. For the last-moment check, put a reminder in the calendar for each scheduled post rather than trusting that nothing has changed.

• Checking only the post in front of you. The mistakes that hurt a campaign are between posts, not inside one.
• Checking once, at the first draft. Every substantive edit needs the checks again.
• Keeping the brand's rules in someone's head. A rule nobody wrote down is a rule the next freelancer does not know.
• Treating approval as the last step. Approval is a decision about a version; publishing is a separate moment that needs its own look.

In CampaignFlow, Campaign Guard runs the first three checks as you write: hashtags and headline figures the campaign has already used, slide and caption limits, and the brand's own Don't say list of claims it must not make. A reused hashtag or figure is flagged naming the post that used it first, while the post is still a draft.

Client sign-off happens from a link with no reviewer account. Approval is sign-off by default; turn on 'require approval before publishing' and an unapproved post can't go out. Each scheduled post is re-checked 15 minutes before it publishes, and a post that is not ready is held back rather than published.

Campaign Guard's rule checks have no limit on any plan; Fix with AI, which rewrites the flagged part, and the spelling, grammar and claims check carry a plan allowance. One-off posts outside a campaign get their caption checked, but not the reuse checks. See the features page for the rest.