As companies around the world take their operations remote to help reduce the spread of Covid-19, just as many people are looking to launch an online business or develop a personal brand. No matter your situation, there’s plenty of help online to help you grow or expand your business. Get started by taking advantage of these awesome tools and services that are experts in remote work and online business.
Slack
Although Slack can certainly be used in an office environment, its real power is its ability to easily connect people. It’s ultra-fast and can even send large files in the blink of an eye. It integrates with all your favorite third-party apps. It has a whole subculture surrounding it. It’s pretty awesome.
But where Slack truly excels is in what it promises: to replace email. With email, you’re limited to long, sometimes unwieldy threads that might be challenging to search and organize. With Slack, you can start organizing before the messages even start: Create different “channels” for your various teams, projects, etc, then add team members only to the channels to which they need access. This will help conversations stay on track and prevent those horrible email chains that talk about five different topics. When you’re transitioning from an office environment to remote, that’s especially important.
Set up a Slack for your business to help former in-house workers keep in touch without drowning in email, or as a way from members of your online business to chat about projects and share files. Slack easily ties into Google Drive, Trello, and other popular tools.
Flocksy
As you grow your business, you’ll likely find that you need a little help with all the emergent tasks that come up, especially in the face of a pandemic. Or perhaps you’re not quite ready (or able) to hire on full-time help yet you don’t have time to hunt for freelancers. You need Flocksy, where you pay a flat monthly fee to gain access to dozens of creatives.
Flocksy is a creative services agency devoted to providing you with a quick turnaround on whatever you need: copywriting, graphic design, web development, and even videos. It’s perfect for companies going remote, because Flocksy’s team members are already experts on working remotely and can help establish a productive workflow.
Skype
Especially if you’ve been forced into remote work by the pandemic, you might miss seeing your coworkers’ faces. Enter Skype, which offers free video calling, instant messaging, and virtual conference calls, all in one. It’s an affordable way to have instant meetings or phone calls with your team without resorting to personal cell phones.
Plus, you can chat in the app, then search conversations. While not as powerful as Slack’s search function, it’s still super convenient to be able to find exactly what your colleague said in chat two days ago.
Google Calendar
Speaking of Google… we’re impressed by everything that the Google Suite has to offer, but Google Calendar deserves a special shoutout. It integrates with Gmail to automatically detect events and appointments, and it’s available on multiple devices because it’s stored in the cloud.
But here’s what’s really great about Google Calendar for remote teams. This remarkably flexible calendar allows you to create and share multiple calendars, as well as subscribe to third-party calendars. That makes it much easier to coordinate multiple people for events and see what all members of your team are up to.
HootSuite
It quickly gets exhausting to log into multiple social media accounts for your company, and on some platforms, it’s not even possible to schedule posts in advance. Enter HootSuite, which allows your team to create, schedule, and review social posts right there in the platform!
Plus, you can respond to your followers’ comments and shares of your post and see ones that your team members have already handled. That saves you time trying to coordinate who responded to whom and who scheduled what.
Making social media easier? Yes please.
Google Docs
Why are you still swapping Word files back and forth? Google Docs permits you to quickly edit, save, export, and share rich documents with your team members. Need to make a document accessible to a wide range of people. Easy as pie. NEed to control who can edit a document? No problem. Need multiple people to be able to edit simultaneously? That’s one of Google Docs’ reigning features.
Google Docs integrates well with the rest of the Google Suite, so you can attach tasks or notes to docs, docs to tasks, and so on. Plus, you can import any text-based document and convert it into a Google doc. Alternatively, export a Google doc as a Microsoft Word file, PDF, or even an ePub document. Any remote team should consider Google Docs for their document creation and collaboration.
Wrapping Up
Remember, remote work can be challenging, especially if you’re getting used to working remotely or trying to navigate the world of online business. Using the above tools and services can help streamline your workflow and save you time and money. And ultimately, that’s the key to scaling up your business.