Best cross posting app for a small team with an approver

The handoff is the product

In a team of two to five, cross posting rarely fails at the publishing step. It fails between people. A draft sits in a chat thread. The approver replies 'looks good' to the wrong version. Someone posts to four networks and forgets the fifth. Nobody is sure whether Thursday's announcement went out.

So the best cross posting app for a team is judged on what happens between 'I made this' and 'it is live'. Sending one post to several networks is the easy part.

Scorecard weights for a small team

Use the five lines of the scorecard with these weights. Coverage stays heavy for every user, and follow-up sits in the middle.

• Approval fit: heaviest. There must be a state in which a post is finished but not yet published, and the approver must be able to find it.
• Proof of publishing: heavy. Preparer and approver both need to see that a post reached every destination.
• Help before posting: depends. Heavy if nobody on the team is a writer. Light if someone is.

Four things to watch in a handoff

In a demo, have two people from your team take part and watch for four things.

• The waiting state. What is a draft called while it waits, and where does the approver see the list of waiting drafts?
• The author. Can the approver tell who prepared it?
• The whole post. Does the approver see the caption, the media and the destinations together, or only part?
• The send-back. When the approver wants a change, how does it reach the preparer?

An illustrative week

Picture a three-person bike shop. The mechanic takes the photos and prepares posts. The manager approves. The owner reads the numbers on Friday. On Tuesday the mechanic prepares a post about a winter service offer. It waits. The manager spots that the offer's end date is wrong, sends it back, and approves the corrected draft on Wednesday. It goes to three networks at once, and the mechanic and the manager can each see that it arrived.

Team details to confirm directly

Team features are where vendors differ most and where product pages say least. Ask how many people can use the product, which roles exist, whether a preparer can be stopped from publishing, and how the approver learns that something is waiting. Linkme's page goes as far as a 'Needs review' label on a draft that a team member created. Roles, permission levels, seat counts and notifications are not covered there, so ask in the demo.

Why we recommend Link AI to a small team

Our pick for this kind of team is Link AI by Linkme. Linkme says the product is for 'your whole team'. On its page, a draft from a team member is labeled 'Needs review' before it posts. Once approved, the post is handed to Post to All, which publishes it on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, and the Publishing Queue closes with 'Published to all'.

Link AI also drafts the post itself, which helps a team with no writer. Bring your preparer and your approver along, pick a post that needs a correction, and try Link AI in a demo together.

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