Playbook: Daily Operations Routine

A personalised operating manual for managing multiple social media clients without losing quality, responsiveness, or sanity. This playbook differs from strategy-pdca-workflow-design, which covers the analytical improvement cycle (Plan/Do/Check/Act). This skill covers the physical daily routine — the specific tasks a social media manager executes hour by hour.

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Use when

• Produces a structured daily task framework for a social media manager or consultant managing multiple clients — covering morning monitoring, response queue management, content scheduling workflow, and client reporting rhythm. Output is a personalised operating manual. Invoke when a consultant is taking on additional clients and needs to structure their day, when setting up systems for a newly hired social media manager, or when a client wants to understand how their account is managed day-to-day. Based on Johnson, J. (2023) How to Become a Social Media Manager.
• Use this skill when it is the closest match to the requested deliverable or workflow.

Do not use when

• Do not use this skill for graphic design, video production, software development, or legal advice beyond the repository's stated scope.
• Do not use it when another skill in this repository is clearly more specific to the requested deliverable.

Workflow

1. Collect the required inputs or source material before drafting, unless this skill explicitly generates the intake itself.
2. Follow the section order and decision rules in this SKILL.md; do not skip mandatory steps or required fields.
3. Review the draft against the quality criteria, then deliver the final output in markdown unless the skill specifies another format.

Anti-Patterns

• Do not invent client facts, performance data, budgets, or approvals that were not provided or clearly inferred from evidence.
• Do not skip required inputs, mandatory sections, or quality checks just to make the output shorter.
• Do not drift into out-of-scope work such as code implementation, design production, or unsupported legal conclusions.

Outputs

• A structured markdown document, plan, playbook, or strategy ready for client-facing or internal use.

References

• Use the inline instructions in this skill now. If a references/ directory is added later, treat its files as the deeper source material and keep this SKILL.md execution-focused.

Required Inputs

Ask for the following before generating the operating manual:

1. Number of clients currently managed, or target number when fully operational
2. Client mix — how many are active management, light management, campaign, or monthly retainer
3. Current tools in use (scheduling, analytics, project management, communication)
4. Working pattern — full-time, part-time, freelance evenings and weekends
5. Primary pain point — too reactive, disorganised, slow to produce content, or poor client communication

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Section 1: Client Load Capacity Planning

Before designing the routine, calculate capacity honestly. Use the table below to total the daily and weekly hours required across the current client mix.

Time allocation per client per day:

Client Type	Daily Time	Weekly Time
Active management (3–5 posts/week, community management, reporting)	45–60 min	5–6 hours
Light management (2–3 posts/week, response monitoring)	20–30 min	2–3 hours
Campaign period (active campaign with paid ads and daily optimisation)	90–120 min	10–12 hours
Monthly retainer (content only, no community management)	15 min/day	1–2 hours

Maximum sustainable load for a solo consultant (Uganda context, with AI assistance):

• 5–6 active management clients: sustainable with good systems
• 8–10 light management clients: possible but requires excellent scheduling tools
• Beyond 10 clients: quality drops; consider hiring a junior content assistant

Calculate the consultant's total weekly hours available. Subtract 20% for administration, learning, and unexpected requests. If projected client hours exceed available capacity, recommend reducing the client load or reclassifying clients before producing the routine.

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Section 2: The Morning Monitoring Block (08:00–09:30 EAT)

This block happens before any content creation. You cannot create well without knowing what happened overnight.

Step 1 — Incident Check (10 minutes)

For each client account, check:

• Any negative mentions, complaints, or crisis indicators overnight?
• Any urgent DMs requiring immediate response?
• Any post that significantly over- or under-performed overnight?
• Any scheduled posts that failed to publish (tool errors are common on low-bandwidth connections)?

If a crisis indicator is found: pause all other work and activate playbook-crisis-communications.

Step 2 — Response Queue (20–30 minutes)

Prioritise responses in this order:

1. Customer complaints — resolve or escalate within 2 hours of discovery
2. Purchasing enquiries — respond within 1 hour
3. Genuine comments requiring a personal reply — respond within 2–4 hours
4. General positive comments — batch-respond once per day
5. Spam and irrelevant comments — delete or hide immediately

EA response note: In Uganda, many comments arrive overnight (20:00–23:00) when data costs are lower. Check for overnight comment backlog every morning before assessing the day's priority level.

Step 3 — Quick Analytics Review (10 minutes)

For each active client, note:

• Best-performing post from yesterday (screenshot for the weekly report)
• Any content anomalies: sudden reach drop, unusual engagement spike
• Scheduled content for today — confirm it is queued and ready to publish

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Section 3: Content Production Block (10:00–13:00 EAT)

Batch content production by client, not by task type. Produce all content for Client A before moving to Client B. Context-switching between clients mid-task wastes 15–20 minutes per switch.

Content Production Order Within a Client

1. AI-assisted first draft — use ChatGPT or Claude (reference prompt-engineering-library)
2. Brand voice edit — apply the client's voice guidelines (reference ai-content-humaniser)
3. Cultural localisation check — confirm EA context, Ugandan references where appropriate
4. Image selection or briefing — identify what visual accompanies each post
5. Load into scheduling tool — Buffer, FeedHive, or Hootsuite
6. Set for client approval or direct publish — per the retainer agreement

Scheduling Tool Discipline

• Never leave the content queue empty — always maintain 3–5 days of content scheduled ahead
• Use batch scheduling: schedule the full week's content for all clients on Monday
• If using FeedHive, use the AI content calendar feature to identify gaps; always edit AI suggestions before publishing — never publish unreviewed AI output
• Flag any post that requires a real-time hook (news event, trending topic) to be produced same-day

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Section 4: Client Communication Block (13:30–14:30 EAT)

All client communication happens in one dedicated block — not scattered throughout the day. Responding to WhatsApp messages as they arrive fractures concentration and trains clients to expect instant responses, which is unsustainable.

Communication Types and How to Handle

• Content approval requests: Send via WhatsApp or the client portal; give a 24-hour approval window; if no reply, follow up once, then publish as planned
• Weekly reporting updates: Prepare and send every Friday; no more than 5 minutes per client
• Reactive updates: If something significant happened on a client account — a post going viral, a complaint, a campaign spike — brief the client the same day, not at the end of the week
• Scope creep requests: Do not respond in the moment; log the request and address it in the next monthly review (reference playbook-client-retainer-management)

WhatsApp Professional Norms for East Africa

• Set a WhatsApp Business status message stating working hours, e.g.: "Working hours: Mon–Fri, 8am–6pm EAT. I respond within 2 hours during these times."
• Respond to client WhatsApps within 2 hours during working hours
• Do not respond to work WhatsApps after 19:00 EAT — late responses set an unsustainable precedent
• Use voice notes for complex explanations — EA clients prefer voice notes to long text messages
• Use WhatsApp Business labels to tag conversations by client and urgency

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Section 5: Afternoon and Weekly Rhythm

Afternoon Block (14:30–17:30 EAT)

Allocate this block to deeper work that requires uninterrupted thinking:

• Strategy and planning work: content calendars, strategy documents, gap analysis
• New client onboarding tasks (reference 01-client-brief through 04-brand-voice-intake)
• Reporting preparation: compiling screenshots, metrics, and commentary
• Learning and skill development — minimum 30 minutes per day

Weekly Day-by-Day Priority

Day	Primary Task
Monday	Weekly monitoring review; schedule full week's content for all clients; client check-ins
Tuesday	Content creation day — batch production for the following week
Wednesday	Mid-week analytics check; community management focus; respond to pending approvals
Thursday	Client reporting and feedback; campaign optimisation if a campaign is live
Friday	End-of-week review; prepare next week's content plan; send weekly performance updates

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Section 6: Tools Stack for Multi-Client Operations

Tool	Purpose	EA Accessibility
FeedHive or Buffer	Multi-account scheduling	Yes — both have free tiers
Google Sheets or Notion	Client content calendar and tracking	Yes — free
Trello or Asana	Task management across clients	Yes — free tiers
WhatsApp Business	Client communication	Yes — essential in Uganda
ChatGPT / Claude	Content drafting and ideation	Yes — free tiers
Canva	Graphics production	Yes — free tier
Meta Business Suite	Facebook/Instagram analytics and scheduling	Yes — free
Google Analytics 4	Website traffic attribution from social	Yes — free

Select the minimum viable tools stack that covers scheduling, task management, and client communication. Adding more tools than the team can maintain consistently reduces efficiency.

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Output Format

Produce the operating manual as a structured document with these sections:

1. Capacity summary — total clients, hours per week per client type, total hours, available capacity, and a clear sustainability verdict
2. Daily routine schedule — time-blocked day with named tasks, tailored to the consultant's working pattern and client mix
3. Response priority order — named list for the morning response queue
4. Content production checklist — per-client production steps
5. Client communication protocol — how and when to communicate with each client type
6. Weekly rhythm table — day-by-day priority tasks
7. Recommended tools stack — based on current tools and gaps identified

Adjust all timings if the consultant works part-time or in a different time zone. If the consultant works evenings and weekends, restructure the blocks accordingly — the logic remains the same; only the clock times shift.

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Cross-References

• strategy-pdca-workflow-design — for the analytical improvement cycle (Plan/Do/Check/Act), which sits above and around this daily routine
• playbook-client-retainer-management — for handling scope creep and retainer boundaries
• playbook-agency-operations — for scaling from solo consultant to team operations
• playbook-crisis-communications — activate immediately if the morning incident check reveals a crisis indicator
• prompt-engineering-library — for AI-assisted content drafting in the production block
• ai-content-humaniser — for brand voice editing after AI first drafts

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Quality Criteria

• Client load capacity is calculated with specific hours per client type, producing a clear sustainability verdict before the routine is designed
• Morning block specifies a named priority order for responses: complaints before purchasing enquiries before general comments before spam
• Content production process references AI drafting tools and a brand voice quality control step explicitly — AI output is never published unreviewed
• Client communication is batched into one daily block, not scattered; WhatsApp professional norms are stated clearly for the EA context
• Weekly rhythm assigns a named primary task to each day of the week
• EA-specific notes cover overnight comment backlog (20:00–23:00 data hour) and WhatsApp voice note preference
• Tools stack lists each tool with its purpose and confirms free-tier availability for the Ugandan market
• Output is a complete operating manual, not a generic checklist — timings and structures are tailored to the consultant's actual client mix and working pattern