Managing Your Workforce Remotely

ips on Managing Your Workforce Remotely

So many people are now working from home (WFH) 100% of the time. Hopefully, if this is often the case for you, you'll maintain productivity and stay positive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While tons folks are wont to living the entrepreneur life from a headquarters, it's still an enormous adjustment to possess to self-isolate and stop all face-to-face interactions with coworkers and clients.

I encourage you to use this point to require a better look at your overall business goals, specialize in your health (both physical and mental) and self-care, and luxuriate in some family time reception.

I think many small business owners are having to pivot their marketing strategy, and what they are doing when the coronavirus passes could look quite different from what they did before.

I wanted to share some useful tech tools which will make your day-to-day WFH life much easier.

Team Communication Tools

This is probably the most important WFH product decision you will have to form. Your team needs a reliable and easy-to-use tool that lets them instantly message coworkers. the proper one for you depends on your business needs and challenges, team size and budget.

1. you'll have heard of Slack. This tool gives you the power to make channels around multiple topics and invite users. From marketing content ideas to social media tactics to office dog photos, your team can create relevant channels for straightforward chat and collaboration.

It also integrates with many useful tools, including Outlook Calendar, Twitter, HubSpot and Salesforce, so you'll see what is going on on within the least times right in the Slack app (no got to click in and out of your daily calendar or Twitter feed, for example). There are numerous fun and artistic emojis you'll use too, making remote messaging during a challenging time like this a touch more lighthearted.

2. Another popular platform is Discord. fashionable gamers, this voice, video and text tool is not just for lecture coworkers, except for finding like-minded communities and new friends. you'll create "servers" and "channels" for specific topics, similarly such as you do for Slack channels. While Slack has more business integrations, Discord has voice channels, so you'll easily chat with team members. Discord also allows you to set user roles and permissions.

3. The flock may be a cloud-based team communication tool with video and audio calling, screen sharing, text chat, integration with other business applications and more. you'll tag colleagues in comments and to-do lists, upload documents, images, and videos and set reminders and due dates. Polls, code snippet sharing, and group discussions are available, and it integrates with other apps like Trello, Github, Google Drive, and Asana.

Team Collaboration Tools

Your employees got to be ready to share their work, whether they're creating on a marketing strategy or editing a handout. Here is a couple of which may suit your small business needs.

1. G Suite may be a Google product that's made from cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products. In one suite of tools, it offers email, data processing, spreadsheets, presentation decks, shared calendars, cloud storage, and more.

You can comment and make suggestions on specific documents through Google Sheets and Docs, edit documents online simultaneously and collaborate on projects and documents. it is easy to offer users permission to specific files.

2. Evernote: this is often quite a note-taking app. Evernote helps you capture, prioritize and share ideas, track projects, and to-do lists. I find it super helpful for note-taking, obviously, but also as a kind of "digital filing cabinet" that simplifies organization. there is a free, basic and business package available.

CRM Tools

CRM stands for "customer relationship management," and CRM tools assist you with things like inbound lead management, sales tracking, social tracking, and eNewsletter delivery. Here are three to consider:

1. MailChimp is an all-in-one marketing platform with tools to make everything from emails to postcards. they need an excellent selection of templates to settle on from which will then be further modified to fit your brand. Their intuitive interface and thorough reporting are great, but things can get expensive as your subscriber list or number of emails increases. you'll compare their different plans on their website.

2. Constant Contact has always been an enormous rival with MailChimp to be the name in email marketing. Constant Contact has an email option that's designed so users can easily share your newsletter on Facebook.

This option is often considered the foremost social media-friendly and has all the main features of the others noted. If your online marketing involves Hootsuite (you can integrate this into Hootsuite) and you focus your efforts on gaining traction on social media then this is often an excellent newsletter tool for you.

3. AWeber is a particularly popular option and recommended by many professional marketing companies. It gives you five plans to settle on from and an extended list of features like unlimited email marketing campaigns, follow-ups, lists, and Auto Responders.

Many people believe their Auto Responder platform is superior to other companies, allowing businesses to automate the method of delivering personalized emails to customers on a schedule.

Project Management Tools

A collaborative task management tool lets everyone track and manage all of their projects. consider it as a web scheduler, taskmaster, and collaboration tool to manage your team's workflows.

1. Asana is one of the leading tools and gets tons of regeneration. It allows everyone on your team to follow the entire workflow of a project in a simple visual tool. you will always know where your team is at and who's liable for what and when.

From daily reminders on a task that's due, to the power to simply add collaborators or assign teammates a sub-task of a project, Asana makes it simple to ascertain what everyone's day, week and month seem like (but you'll easily move things around if plans change).

2. Monday.com may be a pretty simple, intuitive visual team management tool (it's really a project management platform). It runs processes, workflows, and projects in one digital workspace. Visually, it's equivalent to a set of very customized spreadsheets, during which every team member can log their tasks and update them with status reports and other relevant information.

That means that each person can see all active tasks and keep calculate their progress. Team members can work on multiple projects without getting lost by using Monday's weekly overview. The workflow is often customized almost any way you would like it to speak priority, what's done, not done then on. the colorful designs and large buttons don't hurt either!

Social Media Management Tools

Many small businesses will have already got a social media management tool found out. A social media management tool allows you to manage all of your accounts from one dashboard, which saves you both time and frustration. These tools share your content at the simplest possible times throughout the day, so your followers and fans see your updates more often. it is a smarter and more efficient thanks to schedule and share your social media posts.

The best part about these tools is that the built-in analytics system, which can offer you a glimpse into what's performing well, and when your social media posts are making the foremost impact.

Here are two social media management tools I personally use:

1. Buffer shows your scheduled posts and analytics (how in-depth those analytics get depends on the plan you choose). Many small business owners choose Buffer due to its sleek, clean interface that's easy for beginners to urge the hang of.

2. I find that while Buffer is great for fewer demanding social media needs, Hootsuite is where it's at if you would like to ascertain your timelines, replies, and more across all of your social networks.

Both Buffer and Hootsuite offer free and paid plans, so you'll always try them out and see which one seems like a far better fit for your small business.