Whether you’re a new or seasoned social media manager, managing a brand’s social presence can be overwhelming. After all, you’re behind every post and every interaction with potential customers so the pressure is on.
One way to ease that and make sure you’re at the top of your game is with a social media checklist. In this article, we’ll cover the daily and monthly tasks every social media manager needs to succeed.
Table of Contents
Social Media Manager Checklist & Tasks
Before we get into the checklist, we’re going to break down the work of a social media manager into four pillars.
- Sharing – You must post on social media regularly to grow and maintain an audience.
- Engaging – Connecting with your audience, via polls, responding to comments and DMs, and reposting user-generated content, is key to building that brand loyalty.
- Monitoring – It’s important to know how your brand is perceived online, so you’ll need to monitor mentions of your brand as well as topics within your industry.
- Reviewing and Optimizing – If you’re not reviewing your performance, how can you improve? This is a necessary part of every social media strategy.
If you don’t share often, you’ll struggle to build an audience. Without an audience, you won’t have much to engage with. This also means that you’ll have little to no data about what works well and nothing to optimize or review.
This is all to say that to have a robust social media presence, you must be strong in all four areas. Now, let’s dive into the daily tasks you’ll need to complete in this role.
Social Media Daily Checklist
On a daily basis, you will be focused on the first three pillars: sharing, engaging, and monitoring.
While there is some reviewing and optimizing that can happen daily, you can better identify patterns when you do so on a monthly basis once you have compiled a good data set.
1. Share content.
Your number one priority on social media should be sharing content.
That’s what will allow you to reach your target audience, attract them to your brand, and keep them engaged.
However, when asked about Pinterest, most marketers surveyed only post two to three times a week.
Of course, how often you post will depend on various factors including the return on investment.
2. Respond to comments and DMs.
One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is by responding to their comments.
In this post, skincare brand Cerave encourages its audience to try new product releases.
In that same vein, you can ask your audience to tag a friend who would enjoy your post.
3. Monitor brand mentions and industry-related content.
You can also routinely do searches on platforms like TikTok where alerts aren’t readily available.
This will allow you to gauge brand sentiment and quickly address concerns from your target audience.
4. Identify trends and buzzy content.
Trends come and go just about every week on social media.
The trick is jumping in as they’re growing in popularity and knowing when they’ve died out.
If not, it’s always OK to skip because there’ll be another one coming around the corner.
5. Answer queries on forums.
When we think of social media, we often think of content-sharing apps like TikTok, X, and Twitch.
However, some social apps – think Reddit and Quora – focus instead on conversations and community.
You can then leverage that information into value-packed posts to attract your audience.
6. Connect with brand evangelists.
This means connecting with your brand evangelists on a regular basis.
This can look like commenting on their content and/or sharing it on your platform, giving them access to exclusive content, shouting them out, and inviting them to participate during live streams.
While social media can be filled with parasocial relationships, don’t let that be the case for you and your audience.
Daily Social Media Checklist
Consistent daily activity is the foundation of a successful social media strategy. If your team has the bandwidth, these tasks should be performed every business day to maintain engagement and build momentum.
1. Monitor and respond to engagement.
Timely responses are crucial for building community. Data shows that 79% of consumers expect brands to respond within 24 hours, with 40% expecting a response within the first hour.
- Check all notifications across platforms
- Respond to comments, messages, and mentions
- Thank people who shared your content
- Address customer service inquiries promptly
2. Check industry hashtags and trends.
- Look for trending topics that align with your brand
- Identify opportunities to join conversations authentically
3. Post scheduled content and real-time updates.
While planning ahead is crucial, daily posting requires attention to timing and context.
- Verify that scheduled posts are still relevant and appropriate (brand safety)
- Make last-minute adjustments if needed
- Share or retweet relevant content from industry leaders
Weekly Social Media Checklist
1. Engagement Analysis
Look beyond basic metrics to understand how your audience is interacting with your content.
- Review engagement rates across platforms
- Identify top-performing content themes
- Note which content formats (video, images, text) perform best
Pro tip: You’d be surprised at how even the time of day your team is posting can affect your engagement, try to identify patterns of high impressions by noting the traffic spikes.
2. Content Planning and Creation
- Create and schedule posts for the coming week
- Develop visual assets (images, graphics, videos)
- Prepare captions, hashtags, and links
3. Community Building
- Engage with content from partners and industry influencers
- Identify potential collaboration opportunities
- Join relevant group discussions or Twitter chats
4. Competitor Analysis
Social Media Monthly Checklist
1. Check your analytics.
It will also help you identify trends. In fact, when we asked social media marketers “How do you predict which social media trends are worth investing in?” The top answer was by analyzing their social media analytics.
So, which metrics are marketers reviewing? Here are the top five, according to our survey:
- Likes and comments (41%)
- Sales (41%)
- Traffic to their website (41%)
- Impressions and views (40%)
- Brand mentions and hashtags (35%)