The client has not approved and the post is due: publish, hold or skip?

When a client has not approved a post by its time, hold it. The post goes out under their name, and a wrong price is theirs to explain. Silence is not a yes, even when a contract says so. Agree on an approval deadline before the first post, make it visible while there is still time, and let a missed deadline move the post, not publish it.

A client not responding is rarely a client saying no. The owner of a café sees your message at seven, while the oven heats, and means to answer after the morning rush. The rush ends at three. The post was due at nine.

Silence is the default because nothing in the request says what silence leads to. “Could you look at these when you have a minute?” has no deadline, so it loses to everything that has one. A good social media approval process is mostly a request that carries its own deadline.

When the time comes and the answer has not, there are four ways to go:

• Publish anyway. The calendar stays full and the risk moves to the client's account. If the post carried last month's price, you published it.
• Publish under a clause. The contract says a post counts as approved unless the client objects in time. The post still goes out unseen.
• Hold until approved. The post waits and goes out at a new time once the client says yes. A day is lost, and nothing goes out unseen.
• Skip it. The post goes back to the drafts. Right for anything tied to a date that passes: a lunch special, a weekend event.

“Approved unless you object” keeps the calendar moving. On the day a post is wrong, with a price that changed or a photo of someone who has left, the clause settles whose fault it was. It does not take the post down, and it teaches the client that reading is optional.

What changes from client to client is not whether a post waits for a yes. It is how early you send it and whether a post that is not approved in time moves or is dropped, which depends on what a wrong post would cost.

A dental clinic or a pharmacy works under rules about what it may say in public: send its posts a week ahead, and drop one that is not approved in time rather than rush it. A café can see the week's posts on Monday morning, and one that is not approved in time simply moves. Whatever you choose, write it down for each client.

A rule works when the client heard it before the first post, not after the first missed one. Put it in the contract in plain words, with your own numbers:

In the first meeting, ask who approves, by name, and who approves when that person is away. A café whose owner takes August off needs a second name in July.

Most missed approvals are a deadline nobody could see. Put it in the request: when the post goes out, in the client's own time, and what happens if no answer comes. The reminder the day before says it plainly:

Send it a day before, not an hour before, so the client can answer the next time they look at their phone. When the deadline passes, do what the message said, or the next deadline is only a suggestion.

In SPREVA, holding is a setting. With approval on, a post nobody approved by its time is not sent: it becomes a draft again and its author is told. Reviewers are free on every plan, up to 25 per workspace, and every plan starts with a 7-day trial. How required approval works.