Speaker 1: Onboarding social media clients. In today's video, I'm gonna share with you how you can create a smooth onboarding process with your social media clients from the moment they get off the discovery call with you and say, yes, I wanna work with you, until the moment you post your first post on their account. So everything in between is what we call the onboarding process until you actually have access to their account and from the moment on, they say, yes, I wanna work with you. Before we dive in with all the content, I would love for you if you could subscribe to this channel and if you like the video, hit that thumbs up button. Right, so let's say you had your discovery call with a potential client and they say, yes, I wanna work with you. Now, what do you do next? And how do you get access to their accounts? And how do you get paid? So let me walk you through that whole process step by step, starting with right after the call, I want you to send them an email explaining the next steps. For all of these things that I'm gonna share with you now, you wanna have a template ready because it's always gonna be the same thing. So if you wanna prepare an email, that would be something that you can start with. It's called the next step email. And even a step further back, when they said yes on the call, you wanna tell them what your next step is going to be. You wanna tell them, look out for my email. I'm gonna send you an email today. You can say tomorrow, but I honestly prefer today. While the client is still hot, while they're ready, we wanna keep that excitement high. And now here's the biggest difference that you can make compared to other freelancers. And trust me, I've hired freelancers myself and the onboarding experience was, let's say not so good. And that will make you feel, oh my God, do I really wanna give them my money? Are they going to be like that in the whole process when working with them? So right when you go off the phone with them, you can share or show how professional you are. So you're gonna say, okay, so in the next hour or today I'm gonna send you an email with the next steps. In that email is going to be the contract. Now the contract is your first thing that you're going to send out. This basically involves the package you discussed on the discovery call, which you decided together with the client would be serving them best. Obviously the price. And also when you state the price, make sure that it says paid upfront. That's super important. If you don't do paid upfront, you end up working a month doing all the great stuff for your client and then might not get paid. So this is always upfront for me, non-negotiable. In the contract, you also state different things about that you're a freelancer, you're not an employee of the company and you can add many other things. I'm not a lawyer, I have my own template, but make sure that you have a good template or work with a lawyer so that it's super clear what you're going to do and what you're not going to do. State it clear in the contract what's not a part of you. One other thing I wanna mention here is if they have an emergency or something that they need you to post, they can do that once or twice, but usually they have to give you 48 hour notice because what we don't want to happen is them sending you random pictures and saying, can you post that in the next hour? That's not how it works. So contract and next step emails are the first thing you're going to send out. Once you have gotten the contract signed back, you can then send the invoice together with how to get access to the different assets that you're going to share. So what you can do is when you start out, it's okay to just send a PDF because I understand that you don't wanna right away invest in a tool. However, further down the road, I highly suggest to use a tool. You can use HoneyBooks, you can use 17Hats, or you can use Dubsado. I highly suggest to use a tool because then the whole process is automated. As in like when the client virtually signs, it will trigger a invoice. So then you have to worry about one thing less, everything is automated. And also if the invoice is not paid by a certain date, it will trigger a reminder, which will make it easier for you because then you don't have to send out those annoying emails saying, hey, you still owe me money. So once you have sent out the contract, they signed it, they know what the next steps are, you'll send the invoice or your system sends the invoice. And now we're also gonna share with our clients how are we gonna work together? What platform is best? And I personally use Google Drive for everything. So I have a dedicated folder for each client. And then each folder has subfolders. One subfolders would be for photos, one subfolder would be for videos. And it's super clear for the client that they have to upload their photos in those subfolders. They're not sending you an email or a text message with their photos, right? They upload it into that folder. Now in that folder, you can also have subfolders for their logos, for their other brand assets, like what is their tone of voice? What is their brand images that they use? What is their color palette? So they can upload all of that. Here are two ways on how you can explain that to the client. You could either create, and a lot of people do that, a PDF and you make it nice in Canva and you send that to the client. That's basically your onboarding document. And in there, they will see, ah, okay, yeah, I have a Google Drive and here I can upload this and that. But let's be honest, not everyone is gonna read it and then they're gonna skip through half of it and they still don't understand it. So my personal preference is to create a little video. You can use Loom for that. And you put that video in the folder as well. The video is called Start Here or Watch This First. And in that video, you're just walking them through, step-by-step, what the Google Drive entails and just explain to them, this is where you upload your photos, your videos. Here you can add your logos, et cetera, et cetera. So Watch This First video, you can add in the Google Drive. One other important thing on that is you're gonna add a client questionnaire into the Google Drive. Now this is a part, this is the next part, basically, on our process, having a client questionnaire. If you don't do work with the Google Drive, that's fine, but you still wanna send them a client questionnaire. If you don't do that, you will have so many struggles along the road creating content for them. And honestly, it would just be weird because it's one of the most important parts. That client questionnaire is asking them more about their company. Yes, you've already talked with them, but now we're talking way more in depth, way more in depth about their services or about their products, about their competitors. Most important, about their client avatar and what are their pain points and challenges. If a business doesn't have that, red flag. So that is super, super important. So the client questionnaire for my clients, they can find in their Google Drive. So that leaves us with one more important thing. How can I now get access to all my clients' different accounts? Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, whatever is in your package, you need access to those accounts. And again, it's not always as simple. And remember, most of your clients, they're not used to working social media. They have a different business. They are experts in a different business. So it's not always super straightforward for them to understand how they can give you access. And what they should never do, and I really mean never, is sending you their password. It's very unsafe. And if you work from different locations, like when I work from Bali, et cetera, it feels weird to the platform when suddenly someone gets a password sent out to a different country. So that's a whole other story. But for now, let's just say we don't send passwords. So how are we getting access then? We're using a tool called LastPass. LastPass is a very safe and secure way, which I would use for all your personal passwords as well. And it lets you share your password with someone else without them seeing it. So now I can just go and log into an account using the LastPass extension in Chrome and log in to their platform. This works, let's say, for example, we use LinkedIn or we use a scheduling tool like Planoly. However, for Facebook, we wanna do it differently. That is what we call the Facebook Business Manager, which they now renamed to Meta Business Suits. So if you hear me say Facebook Business Manager or Meta Business Suits, it means the same. It's basically a part within Facebook that lets you manage someone else's assets. So company A can add me as their editor or administrator in their business suits. And then from there, I can have access to different platforms like Facebook, different Facebook pages, Instagram, Facebook ads, et cetera. So this is, to me, the easiest way to go via Meta Business Suits. Now, if you log in on Instagram on the app, you still need the password. Again, you can use LastPass for that. Also, you wanna make sure they have turned off the two-factor verification while you log in. Otherwise, they will get sent out a code and you can't log in. Now, as you can see, even just from me explaining that now in this short summary, it sounds very complicated. And if you hear that as a client or you see it on a PDF written, you're like, oh my God, I don't wanna do that, right? So if you create a video for your client walking them through, it's gonna feel so much easier. So you're gonna use Loom and you screen record exactly step-by-step what the client has to do. So then they can just rewatch your video over and over again. One other thing that some of my clients do is they go on a call and then they explain step-by-step what to do. I highly suggest to do the video way because honestly, that is just a waste of your time because everything that we can automate, we should automate in our business. And we can automate that by creating a video, sending it to the client. Now they can rewatch it as many times as they want to. So this video about how to add me in your metal business suits or give me access to your different platforms and how to set up LastPass, et cetera, that is also going to be in the Google Drive. So now the client has a clear overview on what they have to do next. And honestly, if they send me an email with a photo, I will reply the first one or two times saying like, hey, please upload that in the Google Drive. And the next few times I just won't use that photo. I have to be very strict because otherwise, if you work with five to 10 different clients, you completely lose the overview. And I have a very structured way and it works super well if you do it that way. So that brings me to our next point, which is how do we communicate with clients? You can put that also in the contract, by the way. Otherwise, you would just have it in your next step emails. My communication is via email with the clients. And once a week, once a week would be a bit too much, once a month, I have a call with them and I walk them through the social media analytics. And we talk about the next month and what kind of content I'm creating for them, what kind of strategy we're choosing based on the analytics. So that means I only communicate with my client once a month via a call. And if they have an urgent request, they can email me. But really, there is nothing much to discuss during the month otherwise. I don't want to have Slack where it just opens the conversation for daily chit chats or giving their input on stuff. So really for me, it's like I have a folder dedicated in my email system for each client. And if they have something that they need me to know, I'll drag the email in that folder and I can just reply via email. But really only if there is something urgent. Otherwise, I usually only talk to my clients once a month on the call. Talking about call, this is the last step in our journey on onboarding a social media client. It's a kickoff call. On the kickoff call, I like to discuss what kind of content I'm seeing for my client, what kind of content I don't see for my client, basically a bit the strategy, making sure, again, we're on the same page, making sure I also ask some final questions of what content they don't want or content that they really love and content that I see strategy-wise makes the most sense. And then also, again, explaining how it works moving forward with the communication, that I schedule the content usually a month upfront, which means if there's something urgent, they have to tell me, et cetera, et cetera. So the kickoff call is the last step. During this whole process, the most important thing, and I can't say it enough, but before I say it actually, click subscribe or like this video if you feel this was helpful for you. Let's get back to it. Most important thing is to always be the leader. The client should never ever have to email you or message you, what are we gonna do next? I saw you did this, now what should I do next? Your emails should always tell them or your videos what the next steps are. And this can also be that you say, hey, for the next week, just that you know I am in my research phase, so I will review your answers, I will come up with a strategy, I will do some competitor research based on what you said, so you will hear back from me after that, so that the client constantly knows what you're doing and it's super clear when the kickoff date actually is, and again, just keep them in the loop. So the client should never have to email you. All right, guys, this is my process for onboarding social media clients. Let me know below this video if this was helpful and also what kind of other content you would like me to create, and I will see you in the next video. Bye.