Social Media Copy Checklist
A pre-publish checklist for social media managers checking character limits, duplicate hashtags, line breaks, and clarity.
Draft for humans before platforms
Write the message first, then adapt it to each platform. A LinkedIn post can carry context and a short story; an X post needs compression; an Instagram caption needs line breaks and a clear first sentence. Keeping a master draft prevents accidental meaning changes.
Count the visible hook
The first line does most of the work. Use the character counter to check whether the opening line survives truncation on mobile. If the important phrase appears after a long setup, rewrite the hook before editing anything else.
Remove duplicate hashtags and bullets
Campaign copy often accumulates repeated hashtags, repeated links, or duplicated bullet points across versions. Paste the line list into remove duplicates before scheduling. If order matters, do not sort; if you are cleaning a hashtag bank, sorting alphabetically can make review faster.
Keep a platform-specific length budget
Staying under the official maximum is not enough. Posts often perform better when they are comfortably below the limit. Leave room for links, tracked URLs, mentions, and last-minute edits. A post that barely fits in a draft tool may overflow once a platform shortens or expands a link preview.
Do one final plain-text pass
Before publishing, paste the final copy into a plain text tool and read it without platform styling. This catches hidden formatting, weird quotation marks, accidental double spaces, and broken line breaks that are easy to miss in a scheduler.