As business thrives, grows, and changes, the tools and ways of managing a team change as well. There are many ninja products that I use to make sure I am staying on top of the game, but here is a review of the ones I can’t live without and others I am testing out right now.
Not only are most of my clients in different places around the world, our team and extended network are sometimes scattered as well. Fortunately, I have a wonderful virtual team to help me with all of these important pieces of my business.
So here we go, the ones I can’t live without:
Asana
In order to manage a virtual team efficiently, a solid project management system is key. I’ve tried a few of them over the years, but I keep coming back to Asana. For an internal team, Asana is the best in my opinion. It’s free for up to 15 team members. You can create multiple projects with tasks and sub-tasks. Most small businesses have multiple ongoing projects, and keeping track of them all is a breeze with Asana. It is easy to see what everyone is working on and when tasks are completed by getting email notifications.
Groove
Sometimes managing email for a small business is daunting, but it doesn’t have to be with a good email management system. With a virtual team in place, we can easily view and respond to all customer emails in one place using Groove. It works like a help desk, where each email is a ticket and the conversation stays in one thread. You can tag the ticket with each corresponding client’s name and keep track of everything in folders. Need to leave a note for another person on your team? It’s easy to collaborate with private notes that only you and your team can see. It’s also great to keep your inbox free of clutter by marking each ticket with Open, Pending or Closed.
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Dropbox
Any business needs a good online file storage service to run smoothly. With a virtual team, using Dropbox to put all our files makes sense. Dropbox syncs with everything: computer, mobile device, or any other computer linked to your account making it really easy to access files. Sharing files is also easy, even if someone isn’t a Dropbox user. You can create public folders and send a link to the person to download the files. Or for everyone on a virtual team, you can share folders with specific people.
Hootsuite
If your business is active on social media, chances are you’ve considered a content scheduling tool. My go-to for social media scheduling is Hootsuite, for a variety of reasons including saving time and running more efficiently. You can manage all your social media marketing from a single dashboard which makes scheduling content really easy. I also like to track messages and mentions from each social profile. You can keep track of it all within Hootsuite.
LastPass
This seems like the easy piece, but passwords are the life blood of helping clients. I can’t do much of anything without having access to their internal workings and log in credential. LastPass is single place to store logins and passwords win a secure way. Clients can share their entire password pack with me and they are able to know that I will be able to access their passwords and keep them up to date when the dreaded day of updating it comes. LastPass is a simple password manager, keeping track of all your passwords so you don’t have to. It syncs across a single platform, and lives inside your browser as an extension. Saving all your passwords in the LastPass value is really simple, just by saving each password as you log into each new site. Every time you revisit those sites, LastPass automatically enters the username and password for you.
While I feel like I am constantly learning how to better manage my virtual team, this list is a good starting place for any small business. These tools help me keep everything running seamlessly while I’m traveling or away from my desk. What tools do you use for your team? Contact me here.