Small teams run on knowledge held in people's heads, which works until someone is away. A written social media team workflow converts that into roles and handovers, so a holiday is a scheduling matter rather than a gap in output.
Roles, not job titles
Define roles by what they decide rather than by seniority: who briefs, who produces, who checks facts, who approves claims, who publishes, who responds. One person may hold several, which is fine as long as it is written down.
The pairing to avoid is producer and sole approver. Someone checking their own work against a brief they also wrote will approve almost everything, and the check stops being a check.
Making it durable
- List the roles and who currently holds each.
- Name a deputy for every role.
- Document the production standard in one page, not a manual.
- Define the handover point between each role.
- Keep credentials in shared secure storage, never in messages.
- Record recurring decisions so they are not re-litigated monthly.
- Review the map whenever someone joins or leaves.
Handover points are where work is lost. Being explicit about what one role delivers to the next removes most of the "I thought you had it" failures.
Documentation people actually read
A one-page standard gets followed; a detailed manual gets ignored under deadline. Write the smallest document that answers the questions people actually ask, and delete anything nobody has referred to in six months.
Keep it where the work happens rather than in a separate system nobody opens. Documentation stored somewhere inconvenient is functionally the same as no documentation, and it creates a false sense that the knowledge is safe. Approval structure sits in the content approval process, and quality checks in the quality assurance checklist.
Common questions
How small can a team be and still separate roles?
Even two people can separate producing from checking, which is the separation that matters most.
Should everyone have access to everything?
No. Assign the narrowest access that allows the work, and review it periodically.
How is the standard kept current?
One owner, reviewed twice a year, updated whenever a rule proves wrong in practice.
What about freelancers?
Give them the same standard and the same handover points. Undocumented expectations are unfair to someone new.
How should cover be arranged?
Name the deputy in advance and let them do the role occasionally, so cover is practised rather than theoretical. See the services page.
What should happen when someone leaves?
Rotate credentials, reassign roles formally, and check the handover notes are current. Doing this in the last week is far cheaper than reconstructing it afterwards.
How do you avoid the standard becoming stale?
Tie the review to something that already happens, such as quarterly planning. Standards with no scheduled review are quietly abandoned rather than deliberately retired.