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Social media is now a team sport—so why are we still buying solo tools?

June 17, 2025
By
Kelsie Rimmer

Today’s most successful social strategies involve multiple stakeholders: content marketers, designers, product leads, legal, customer support, performance teams—and often a few execs who want to "quickly approve" a post 10 minutes before it’s due.

But the tools? Still opxtimized for one person, one brand, one channel.

Social teams using solo tools: a contradiction we can’t ignore

The truth is, we’ve evolved past the era of scrappy solo scheduling. The stakes are higher, the goals are broader, and the teams are bigger. If your social tooling hasn’t caught up, your performance—and your people—will pay the price.

Ready to upgrade your expectations—and your platforms? Let’s break down why you should broaden your horizons and stop flyin’ solo. 

Social media has become a team sport

Before we find the solution, we first need to diagnose the problem! Let’s unpack what social media actually looks like inside high-functioning marketing teams in 2025.

More stakeholders, more steps

The average social campaign now involves creative, product, brand, comms, and analytics teams. Add in legal or compliance for regulated industries, and you’ve got a real juggling act. 

Content doesn’t just get made—it’s briefed, ideated, drafted, designed, approved, and finally shipped.

Speed meets structure

Trends move fast, but approvals still matter. Teams need to collaborate in real-time while staying on-message and on-brand. You can’t wait three days to sign off a TikTok—but you also can’t post without checking the facts.

Cross-functional by nature

Social content influences brand awareness, performance marketing, customer retention, product feedback, and even recruitment. It doesn’t sit in a silo anymore—it sits at the center of your customer experience.

More platforms, more complexity

Teams are managing Reels, TikToks, LinkedIn thought leadership, Stories, and paid ads—all with different formats, goals, and workflows. Keeping up means juggling trends and tracking metrics across formats that behave wildly differently.

Social is no longer the job of one person with Canva Pro and an eye for memes. It’s a team operation, and your tools need to support that.

Collaborate effortlessly, save time and spend less

Why settle for a lackluster social media management tool when you could be using Sked Social? With unlimited collaborator access, streamlined approvals and advanced auto-post technology that lets you schedule to all major platforms, Sked Social offers everything you need.

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‍What’s the problem with solo tools?

While solo tools totally have their merits, they have one glaring flaw when it comes to social teams—they’re simply not built for them! 

Here’s what happens when you use tools built for individuals or freelancers inside a fast-moving team:

  • No approval workflows: You’re stuck chasing sign-off via email or Slack. Comments get lost, feedback gets misinterpreted, and posts go live without buy-in.
  • No stakeholder visibility: Execs don’t see the content until it’s live, and suddenly everyone’s asking for changes. That 11th-hour feedback derails your calendar and kills momentum.
  • Limited reporting: You can’t break down performance by campaign, content type, or business goal. That makes it hard to show ROI or to learn from what’s working. Leadership wants strategy, and you’re stuck screenshotting metrics.
  • Low scalability: Adding new users, brands, or locations becomes a nightmare. A tool that worked great for one brand page starts buckling under a multi-location load.
  • Frankenstack workarounds: Teams end up cobbling together spreadsheets, manual tracking, and screenshots just to keep things moving. What should be centralized becomes a chaotic mess of tabs and to-dos.

The result? Bottlenecks, burnout, missed opportunities, and a whole lot of internal chaos.

Let’s be real, though—what are the real-world consequences? 

While mismatched tooling capability might seem like the least of your worries right now, soon enough, the cracks will start to show. Before you know it, your team will grow, your strategy will scale, and when your tooling doesn’t match your team structure, everything starts to break. 

Here are some of the issues that can arise when teams use solo tools: 

  • Burnout: One social media manager juggling creative, copy, scheduling, reporting, and stakeholder wrangling isn’t sustainable. Without the right tools, it becomes a full-time sprint, with no finish line.
  • Compliance risk: Skipped approvals can have real consequences, especially in industries like finance, healthcare, or government. A rogue caption or unapproved image could cost far more than just brand reputation.
  • Reactive chaos: Without clear workflows, every trend becomes a fire drill—and every post becomes a last-minute scramble. Instead of executing the strategy, your team is stuck putting out fires.
  • Lost impact: When your content can’t be properly tracked or optimized, it’s hard to learn what’s working or prove value to leadership. Your team starts making content just to fill the calendar, not drive results.

Why collaboration-first tools are the future

Great content is a team effort. But it only works when the system supports the process, not sabotages it. And that’s where collaborative tools come in.

A team-ready platform should:

  • Enable approvals and feedback without leaving the tool: You need real-time collaboration, not delayed email threads. Everyone—from intern to exec—should know where to go for review.
  • Make it easy to plan, schedule, and pivot across multiple accounts or brands: Whether you’re managing five Instagram accounts or 50 franchises, you need a unified calendar and the ability to adapt quickly.
  • Offer reporting useful for social teams and execs: Your CMO shouldn’t need a decoder ring to understand what’s working. Real-time, goal-based reporting means better decisions and less hand-holding.
  • Support roles, permissions, and visibility across departments: Not everyone needs full access, but everyone needs a view. Permissions should reflect reality, not force you into workarounds.
  • Scale as your team grows—without charging enterprise prices for basic functionality: You shouldn’t need a six-month process to add a user or unlock better analytics.

If you’re looking for a tool that ticks all the boxes, Sked Social is built for this exact reality. It brings planning, approvals, collaboration, and performance tracking into one place—so your team can move fast without falling apart.

Collaborative tooling: A better way to work across teams

Collaboration isn’t just about working together—it’s about working effectively. Here’s what high-performing teams—and high-performing tools—do differently:

  • Centralize planning: One content calendar, visible to all stakeholders. This keeps everyone aligned, eliminates duplicated effort, and ensures a true single source of truth.
  • Use approvals strategically: Create clear signoff paths for different types of content. Whether it’s a meme or a CEO announcement, ensure everyone knows who needs to see it and when.
  • Define roles and responsibilities: Who writes? Who reviews? Who publishes? This clarity avoids bottlenecks, finger-pointing, and last-minute panic.
  • Automate the repetitive stuff: Increase automation so you can focus on the content, not the admin. Think scheduled publishing, templated reports, or saved responses—all of which free up time for real creativity.
  • Report in context: Metrics mapped to goals, not just vanity numbers. Teams that tie performance to strategy can show impact and earn more trust.

When your team is supported by the right tools, you’re not just avoiding chaos—you’re unlocking better ideas, a smoother process, and stronger results.

The TLDR? If your team has evolved—so should your stack

The old way of doing social—one person, one password, one half-baked report—doesn’t cut it anymore. Social media has grown—and so have you, your strategy, and your stakeholders.

Now, it’s time for your tools to catch up.

Social media management is now a team sport, and the scoreboard is getting more competitive by the day. So, if your tools are still solo-mode, you’re not just falling behind—you might be holding yourself—and your whole team—back. After all, teamwork makes the dream work! 

Want to see how Sked Social can support your whole team, not just the person pressing "publish"?  Check out our guide to switching social media social tools, or book a demo today.

Try Sked Social free for 14 days!

Sked's tools are designed to streamline your workflow, enhance team collaboration, and deliver exceptional results for you and your team.

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