Untapped Digital tapped into hassle-free Social Media Collaboration with Planable

Untapped Digital started conquering the digital world 4 years ago and has since changed the way dozens of brands use social media. Corrie Jones laid the groundwork for a specialist social media agency in London. Today they’re a team of 6 and cater to anyone from start-ups to corporate businesses all over the world.

“We help our clients grow and develop through social media. Whether their business aims to grow and attract more customers or improve retention and the relationship with their existing ones. We will match that social media marketing plan to help them achieve those business goals.

We do that in a couple of different ways. We use really clever content creation, relevant for that audience, that’s also super shareable and engaging. We also work on advertising campaigns. We do that for clients looking to amplify their message and get in front of the exact people they need to be talking to.”

Untapped Digital is also not afraid to share their knowledge and help businesses master the basics of social media on their own.

“We offer strategy, consultation, and training as well. Sometimes we work with small businesses or founders who want to manage social media themselves, but need steering in the right direction. Another use case is if they already have a team that needs to be upskilled in house and manage social media properly. We run training sessions to enable that, too.”

They like to work closely with their clients and aren’t afraid to go deep into details. That’s how they get to the bigger picture and ensure they deliver game-changing results. For this, their clients’ trust is crucial, as is working efficiently.

Keeping up with feedback in Google Docs

Social media planning is a team effort: agency and clients combined. You need a clear space where you can view everything and give feedback in context. A general tool that allows comments such as a Google Docs seems like a good idea, right? It’s actually a lot more messy than it sounds. You can quickly get lost in it.

“We were using Google Docs to plan the content out, and it was just getting so complicated because it was quite a specific content. The client was from an Industrial area where there were lots that needed to be exactly right. They’ve got different offices all around the world. So their feedback on our content was quite particular and detailed. There were loads of Google comments flying back and forth. My email inbox would just be filled with 20 different emails from Google. A comment here, a comment there, notifications were piling up all the time. I was missing things and it was getting so overly complicated and difficult.”

Keeping track of feedback and changes in Google Docs can become almost impossible. And suddenly, your overview of the plan is gone as well. Drowned in dozens of comments all across the page. It’s the kind of process that may feel like it’s working, until it’s not.

You’ve got mail — all the time

Being in the loop is great. You want to make sure you’re notified when clients get a chance to look over posts and give feedback. But dozens of emails a day are definitely overwhelming and cluttering.

“The client won’t necessarily give all the comments at one time. So one day I’d get 10 emails from Google about different comments left on the sheet. Two days later, they’d come back to it and do another batch. So planning around those emails got really stressful.

I would get to the office in the morning and start the day with over 20 different messages about feedback. ‘Can you check these?’ ‘Can you check those?’. They were never coming in at the time when I actually wanted to be working on them.”

Any social media agency will tell you: planning is key. That’s why we love clear, easy workflows where you can organize both your content and people. Receiving several email notifications each day is distracting and can’t fit any efficient workflow. It interrupts focus and is a constant source of stress. It ends up taking time away from all of your other tasks and instills this horrible feeling that nothing’s getting done.

Lost in comment threads

Implementing feedback and making sure the content that goes out is just right is crucial. It’s imperative. That’s why, the second feedback gets cluttered or confusing, the stress level rises. And that’s when mistakes can happen.

“It was getting difficult to manage all the accounts and stay on top. Going into Google Docs and seeing all the different comments everywhere became incredibly stressful. It became hard to use, as well. People would accidentally resolve comments that weren’t really implemented. We would waste time looking for those comments, implementing that feedback, and finally resolving it.”

Clear, easy to track feedback is non-negotiable. Any miscommunication about whether it has been implemented or not shouldn’t exist. Because social media managers deserve peace of mind too.

Both the team and client have to be 100% sure that the final content is the right one. If the approval is given in endless threads of comments, it can easily get lost. It’s both inefficient and ineffective.

Can social media collaboration be this easy?

Corrie Jones and her team knew that there had to be a better way. And they realized just how frustrating the old process was when they tried Planable. After that, they made sure to share their new discovery with their more complex clients.

“We had a review meeting with our clients and I presented Planable. My pitch was ‘Hey, we don’t think Google Docs is time-efficient. This is the system we’re using now. We’d love to move you across to it.’

I was wondering if they would find it easy to use. I was afraid I was going to have to explain how it works a lot. But they loved it.

There was just a visible sigh of relief that we were saying goodbye to Google Docs. They loved it instantly and couldn’t wait to start using it.”

As we’ve mentioned before, the workflow is equally important to the team, as it is to the client. Both sides have to understand and be onboard for a new tool and experience. Thankfully, we created Planable with that in mind. Simplicity is one of our core values. Why click twice when you could click once? Nothing should be complicated, ever. If it’s not as easy as turning a boxed mix into cake (add water, stir, bake), it never leaves the drawing board.

Having everything in one place: planning content, feedback, approving, and scheduling can make any marketer’s life so much easier. As well as the clients’. The simple act of clicking a button to approve takes away any confusion. You clearly know that post is ready to go out. Without having to sift through endless comment threads or email notifications.

Oh and for any miss-clicks, we have version history. You can see exactly who did what when and ensure the accountability we all need.

Plan on your own time

Time is precious. More so in business. And even more when it comes to social media. In order for Untapped Digital to deliver awesome, creative, and innovative campaigns, they needed the space and time to focus. If email notifications are buzzing every 20 minutes, that’s much harder to do.

Before, clients would access Google Docs at random days and times. With Planable things changed.

“Clients started giving feedback in two week batches because it was so much easier for them to visualize and get it done. Now I just log onto Planable when I have the time dedicated for it. I just go through the notifications. It’s so much more simple. You log on at a time you’ve dedicated for that specific time, implement feedback, and get it done.”

This way, teams can plan their days however they want. Without being distracted. And on the clients’ side, having a clean, simple overview made the process of leaving feedback so much easier. And much less overwhelming.

What does this all add up to? Saving time.

“There’s usually two people on our team and two people from the clients’ side involved in the social media process. From a time saving point of view, freeing off a couple of hours each month for each of these people is great. Our team members have more time to focus on our clients’ projects.

It also saves time for the client. Planable is so easy to use, they now have more time to focus on their business.”

We’ve been saying this since the beginning. But our customers are experiencing it first hand. Having everything in one place, with a clean clear view saves time. A lot of it. For everyone involved in the process.

Transparency leads to trustworthiness

More than efficiency and time, Corrie told us one other major thing she gained from using Planable. Her clients’ trust.

“The ease of it — you just log on one place and all the client dashboards are there. I think it also helps with trust from a client perspective. They get to see how everything’s going to look like and they know that the job’s being done really well.

It’s especially important if the client isn’t that familiar with social media. They can now actually see what the posts will look like and understand a little bit more about what we do, what we’re aiming for. It improves the client’s experience, which is great.”

Other than the ease the clients get from using Planable, they’re also getting a much better overview of their content. Which gives them the confidence that the agency they work with is doing the job right.

This also helps with the feedback process. Good communication is a big part of the process. And an even more important part now that face to face meetings are more of a rarity than a habit. Especially, if like Untapped Digital, you work with global clients.

With Planable everyone logs in when it’s best for them. You easily get your message across in one place without worrying that someone missed an email notification.

The clearer things are, the easier it is for clients to give straightforward feedback. Transparency ultimately leads to less room for misinterpretation. And ultimately consolidates the agency-client relationship.

Simple, clear, efficient

This is how social media collaboration looks like with Planable. No more confusion, interrupted workflows and overall chaos.

“We save hours now and just majorly improved the way that we were working. I don’t think either us or the client realized how frustrating the Google Docs were until we were using something which was so much simpler. And then we just wondered why we haven’t been doing this the whole time.”

It’s easy to get caught up in one way of doing things. And it can be difficult to step away and see if it really is the best way. But this is exactly what we set up to do. Make social media collaboration, easy, clear and seamless for everyone involved.

Feedback like the one we get from Untapped Digital confirms that we’re on the right track. And that Planable actually improves agencies’ ways of working on social media. All the while saving time.