Executive social media programme: ghostwriting and an approval loop

An executive social media programme works when each leader has one clear angle, a writer who drafts in their voice, and a fixed 15-minute review slot each week. Start with three executives on LinkedIn, publish two posts per leader per week, and never publish without that leader's own approval. Here's how to set it up so it holds together across a large company.

TLDR: Pick 3 executives, give each a single theme, draft from a 20-minute interview each month, approve in a short weekly review, and measure replies and conversations rather than impressions. Add leaders only when the first group runs without chasing.

Mydrop data, September 2026: across posts that went through a client approval on Mydrop, the median time from submission to approval was 6 hours, and 66% were approved within 24 hours. Method in the Mydrop social media benchmarks.

Choose three leaders and one theme each

Start with ten leaders and you'll spread your writer too thin, and most of them will go quiet. Start with three who are willing and who actually have something to say. Typically a CEO or founder, one product or technical leader, and one customer-facing leader.

Give each a theme in one sentence: "How we run operations at scale", "What customers ask us in the first call", "Lessons from shipping hardware". Everything they post should fit under it. A theme stops posts from turning into generic company news in a personal voice.

Capture the voice in a 20-minute monthly interview

Executives won't write from scratch every week, and they shouldn't. Record a 20-minute conversation each month with their ghostwriter or a comms person. Ask:

• What did you see this month that surprised you?
• What would you tell a new hire about this?
• What do customers get wrong about us?
• What do you disagree with in the industry?

Mine the transcript for 8 to 10 posts. Keep their phrasing, including the slightly blunt bits. Polished copy reads as someone else's voice and gets less engagement.

Put a fixed review loop in the calendar

The part that breaks most programmes is approval. Executives are busy, and drafts sit for weeks.

Step	Owner	Time limit
Draft posts for the week	Writer	Monday morning
Executive reviews and edits	Executive	15 minutes, Tuesday
Legal or comms check (only for flagged topics)	Comms	Same day
Scheduled	Writer	Wednesday

Set a rule: if the executive hasn't responded by the deadline, the post waits for next week. Never publish without sign-off. It protects trust and keeps the executive willing to carry on.

Write a short list of topics that need extra review

Most posts about leadership lessons or customer stories need no legal check. A few do. List them in one paragraph:

• Financial results, forecasts or anything that touches investor rules.
• Unannounced products or partners.
• Legal disputes, layoffs or personnel matters.
• Any mention of a named customer.

Everything else gets the light loop above. This saves your legal team from reading every post and keeps things moving fast.

Mix three post types

A feed of announcements gets ignored. Rotate:

1. A story from the week (a customer call, a failed experiment).
2. A point of view on an industry question, in 100 to 200 words.
3. A reshare with a take, adding two lines of the executive's own view to a company post.

Avoid asking executives to reshare every company post without comment. It looks like obligation, and the audience learns to scroll.

Track conversations, not impressions

Measure per executive each month:

• Comments from people outside the company.
• Inbound connection requests and direct messages from relevant roles.
• Meetings or deals where a prospect mentions a post.

If impressions rise but nobody replies, change the topics rather than the schedule.

Handle many leaders from one calendar

Once the first three work, the load is scheduling and approvals. In Mydrop, each executive's drafts can sit in the content calendar with a named approver, and the approval flow shows what is waiting for whom. Publishing to LinkedIn happens from the same place as company posts, so you can see both in one view.

For the broader plan on B2B, our guide on LinkedIn content strategy for enterprise pipeline covers company and executive posting together.

Book the first three interviews this week

Pick the three leaders, send each a calendar invite for a 20-minute conversation, and bring the four questions above. By the end of next week you'll have a month of drafts and a clear test of whether the loop works.