How to Use Sprout Social to Run Several Brands on One Calendar

The short answer: for three brands run by a central team of three with reviewers in each market, Sprout Social's Professional plan is the floor, 3 x $299 = $897 a month on annual billing, because the approval workflow and campaign tags begin there (pricing page, checked on 5 November 2026); create one Group per brand, give each person the lowest profile permission that does their job, build an approval workflow per brand, compose into each Group's calendar with Optimal Send Times, tag every post with its campaign, let AI Assist draft the local variants while a reviewer approves them, send each market a read-only calendar link, and read the Tag Performance Report at month end.

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A second brand is where a social calendar stops being one person's spreadsheet: brand A's post lands on brand B's profile, and the regional manager sees a draft after it went out. Sprout's answer is structural, Groups, permissions and an approval step, documented in its help centre, the source for every step below. Prices and tiers are in the Sprout Social glossary entry.

Before you start:

1. Price the reviewers. A reviewer who only approves still needs a seat unless they approve by email as an external approver, an Advanced feature at $399 a seat. For example, two regional reviewers as Professional seats add 2 x $299 = $598 a month, while moving the whole team of five to Advanced costs 5 x $399 = $1,995 and lets the two reviewers approve from their inbox with no login (external approvers guide, pricing page).
2. List each brand's profiles and who touches them. One line per profile: network, brand, who drafts, who approves, who replies. That list becomes the Groups and permissions in steps 1 and 2.
3. Take a baseline by hand. Count last month's posts that went out late or on the wrong profile, and note engagements per post for each brand. The trial has to beat both.

What you need

• A Sprout trial, or a Professional or Advanced plan; the 30-day trial asks for no card, per the pricing page.
• The Manage Permissions right to create Groups, and Administration Permissions to create approval workflows, per the Groups guide and the approval guide.
• Admin logins for each brand's profiles, and the reviewers' email addresses.

Step 1: One Group per brand

Open Account and settings, then Settings, then Groups & Social Profiles, and click Create a group. Name it after the brand, then connect a new profile or pick from profiles already in the account. Sprout suggests structuring Groups by brand, client, region, network, team or purpose, and gives a global retailer a "Global Brand" Group for executive reporting beside "North America", "Europe" and "Asia" Groups for regional publishing (Groups guide). A profile can sit in several Groups, which is how the global view and a regional view share one Instagram account.

Step 2: Permissions per profile, not per person

Open each Group, then each profile, and set every user's access. Read Only sees the profile, Needs Approval drafts but cannot publish without sign-off, Can Reply answers messages, and Full Publishing posts directly (permissions guide). Give the regional writer Needs Approval on their own brand and Read Only on the others; on Advanced plans, Roles carry Group access as a set.

Step 3: An approval workflow per brand

Go to Settings, Global Features, Approval Workflows, and click Create New Workflow. Each step takes a name and its approvers, with Any or All deciding whether one approver or every approver must sign (approval guide). Approvers need Read Only on the Group plus the Approve Others toggle. A post not approved by its scheduled time does not publish; it stays in Needs Approval with an expired-approval notice to the author, and one left there 90 days is rejected automatically. On Advanced, type a reviewer's email into a step to make them an external approver, up to three per workflow; they get one email about five minutes after posts are assigned and approve, reject or comment from a browser stream, once Link Sharing is on (external approvers guide).

Step 4: Compose into the brand's calendar

Switch to the brand's Group, open Compose and pick its profiles. Optimal Send Times in Compose suggests a slot for the chosen day on every plan, and the Sprout Queue, set to ViralPost, releases evergreen posts up to 10 times per profile a day (queue guide). In the Publishing Workflows section of Compose, select the brand's workflow and submit. The calendar shows List, Week and Month views, with notes up to 13 months ahead (calendar page).

Step 5: Tag the campaign

In Compose, scroll to Sprout Tags and add the campaign. A post carries one Campaign tag and any number of label tags, and Recommend Tags by AI Assist suggests tags from your taxonomy once a caption is in (tagging guide). On Advanced you can require label tags before a post can be scheduled, which closes the gap where a market forgets.

Step 6: Let AI Assist draft the local variant, and a person approve it

Sprout documents one AI step for this job. An admin turns on Enable OpenAI Integration under Settings, Global Features, AI Settings; then, in Compose, Enhance by AI Assist generates alternatives from an existing post, a top performing post, a custom topic or an article, changes the tone and translates the post (AI Assist guide). The central team writes the master post, the regional writer asks for a translated variant and inserts it, and the workflow from step 3 holds it until the market reviewer signs. The Trellis Performance & Engagement agent can also send content ideas to Compose as drafts (agent guide). A draft is all either produces; nothing publishes without the workflow.

Step 7: Share the calendar without handing out logins

In the calendar's List view, filter to the brand, click Share, then Create shareable link, and choose invite-only or public with an expiry date. Recipients see a read-only calendar for the profiles and dates you shared; calendar links are on every plan, while shared report links need Premium Analytics (link sharing guide).

Step 8: Read the Tag Performance Report

At month end, open Reports, Cross-Network, Tag Performance, and filter to the campaign tags. The report compares impressions and engagements across tags and campaigns, and on Advanced it can arrive weekly or monthly by email (tagging guide). If the numbers must reach a warehouse, the Sprout API on Advanced returns post and profile analytics at 60 requests a minute and 250,000 a month, and it creates posts only as drafts, so a script cannot publish around the approval step (API docs).

What Sprout's own guides warn about

• Deleting a Group removes its notes, scheduled posts and topics, and any profile that belonged only to that Group leaves the account (Groups guide).
• Approve Others applies to published posts only; approving inbox replies needs Can Reply or higher on the profile (approval guide).
• Shared calendar links come from the List view; the expanded Week and Month views are not yet supported (link sharing guide).

Measure it before the trial ends

The free check is the baseline from the list above: late or misplaced posts last month against this month, and engagements per post per brand from the Tag Performance Report. Trellis comes on every seat with 100 credits a month, and its chat spends them while AI Assist in Compose spends none, so the more a team asks the agent, the sooner it meets the $28-a-seat Trellis Plus upgrade; the drafting that costs no credits sits on the Professional seat this setup already needs (pricing page). Ask the agent one question a week and let Compose draft.

FAQ

Can one profile belong to two Groups?

Yes. A profile assigned to several Groups stays connected to the others when one Group is deleted (Groups guide).

Do external approvers need a Sprout seat?

No. On the Advanced plan they are added by email, up to three per workflow, and review from a browser stream after entering a name and time zone (external approvers guide).

Does AI Assist use Trellis credits?

No. The pricing page says Trellis Chat and Skills use credits and AI Assist features do not; AI Assist in Compose is a Professional and Advanced feature.