A good creative QA checklist has 15 checks in five groups: voice, visuals, facts, formatting and compliance. A reviewer who is not the author runs it in two to three minutes per post. Anything that fails goes back with a named reason, not a vague "can you tweak this".
TLDR: Copy the 15-point table below, put it on every post that goes to approval, and let a second person tick it. Most live errors are links, tags, wrong handles and off-brand wording, and all of them are cheap to catch before publishing.
Mydrop data, September 2026: in the 30 days to 16 September 2026, 98.5% of posts published through Mydrop went live at the first attempt. The most common warning was a YouTube custom thumbnail rejected because the channel was not phone-verified; the most common hard failure was an expired platform connection. Method in the Mydrop social media benchmarks.
The 15 checks, grouped so a reviewer can scan them
| Group | Check |
|---|---|
| Voice | 1. Sounds like this brand's written voice guide |
| 2. No banned words or claims for this brand | |
| 3. One clear call to action, not three | |
| Visuals | 4. Logo, colors and fonts match the brand kit |
| 5. Faces, text and logos are not cropped at the platform ratio | |
| 6. Text on image is readable on a phone | |
| Facts | 7. Every number, date and price matches the source |
| 8. Product names and handles are spelled correctly | |
| 9. Links open the right page, with tracking tags | |
| Formatting | 10. Caption fits the platform limit |
| 11. Hashtags and mentions are intentional | |
| 12. Alt text is written for the image | |
| Compliance | 13. Required disclosures are present |
| 14. Image and music rights are cleared | |
| 15. Region or language is correct for the account |
Print it, paste it into your brief template, or turn it into a comment you add to each post.
Voice: write the rules down once
Reviewers cannot check "on brand" without a reference. Write one page per brand with five example lines in the right voice, five in the wrong voice, and a list of banned phrases.
Mydrop's AI captions can generate in a saved brand voice, which gives reviewers a closer first draft to check. For a longer approach to keeping voice consistent across languages, see AI-powered brand voice consistency.
Visuals: check at the size people will see
Open the preview, not the source file. A square crop of a wide image is the most common visual miss, and it often cuts a face or a logo. Per-platform post preview shows how the post will render on each network, so crop problems appear before approval, not after.
Facts and links: the cheapest errors to catch
A wrong link costs more than a bad caption. Click every link in the preview. Check that UTM tags match your naming rule. Compare every number to its source document.
In our experience, broken links and wrong handles account for more rework than design problems. They are also the checks people skip when they are in a hurry.
Formatting: let the tool do the counting
Platform limits differ. In Mydrop's publisher checks, TikTok captions cap at 2,200 characters with hashtags counted inside, X at 280 weighted characters and Instagram's API rejects captions over 2,200 characters. A scheduler can refuse a caption the app itself would accept, so check the limit at drafting time. Instagram also caps posts and Reels at 5 hashtags, a rule you keep yourself.
Make the checklist part of approval, not extra work
A checklist nobody uses is decoration. Attach it to the approval step: the creator submits, the reviewer ticks, the client or brand lead approves. With approval workflows the comments and the decision stay on the post, so you can see later which check failed most often.
Who runs QA when the team is small
On a two-person team, swap posts: each person checks the other's. On a solo account, wait an hour, then run the checklist on the scheduled preview with fresh eyes. Reading the post as your follower sees it, on a phone, catches more than reading it in the editor.
What to do when a check fails
Send it back with the check number and the fix, for example "#9: link goes to the old pricing page". A named check takes ten seconds to fix. "Can you review the links?" starts a new round of messages.
Review your failures monthly
Once a month, count which checks failed. If "link" fails twelve times and "voice" twice, add an automatic link check to your process and leave voice alone. Trim any check that never fails for three months. A 15-point list should stay at 15 or shrink.
To start, copy the table into your next brief and ask one colleague to run it on this week's posts. If you want comments, previews and approvals in one place, try Mydrop free.
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