Online Tools & Resources To Help You Be More Efficient and Effective With Your Time
There are so many tools available these days and everyone has their own version of efficiency and effectiveness, so if you already have the perfect processes in place at work, then great, but here are some of my favourites.
The best way to keep a to do list. Instead of having a million pieces of paper all over your desk with more notes in your diary, with Todoist you have the ability to set single or recurring tasks for multiple projects, you can invite your team members where there are projects being managed by multiple people, the ability to add sections to each project as well as sub-tasks, and very importantly you can prioritise each task or section, so now you can make sure Dave in IT pays attention to a task.
If you’re like me, you write everything down. A checklist for a client’s new website, creating copy for your latest Facebook campaign and maybe even a lasagne recipe from your Auntie. Enter Bear! This app has been my saviour. Particularly useful for bloggers, prose composers, creative writers and even web developers, Bear pretty much has you covered, from plain text to HTML! You have the options of tagging notes so you can easily find multiple notes for one project, archiving and pinning notes to the top of the board for easy access. Sending notes to a different platform is easy where you can either export in a certain format including PDF or you can simply copy the note in a certain format eg plain text, rich text, HTML, markdown, etc. Only available for Apple products at this stage.
Then we get to the more meaty project management tools. We’ve all been there. When you run multiple projects for multiple teams and stakeholders, things can get really messy really quickly. These solutions will help you and your team to keep everything in one place, so no-one can use the excuse that they can’t find something anymore.
Both of these options have a free plan which covers pretty much everything for a small team. The ability to create multiple projects or boards, add team members or clients, schedule tasks, checklists, add due dates and priorities and also create a to do list. You can also upload files and images.
Same concept but more for the established companies and teams out there. Integrates into other project management, web and messaging platforms.
Known as a business manager solution, this would be more for project managers, eg web builders, web or graphic designers, anyone in the project management space, although can be adapted for most business models.
Moving on to the social media world, I cannot think of a more soul destroying task than building campaigns post by post on each platform. It's not efficient. Enter the social media schedulers of the world, Later.com and Hootsuite . These heavy hitters will help you save oodles of time and because your content is saved online, you can access it quicker and get the most use out of each element.
If you run solely on Facebook, then the Facebook ads manager will suffice quite nicely. It is updated regularly and offers really detailed reporting to help you manage your social community in the best way.
Lastly, but just as important, are the good ol’ faithful Google products. I’ve included these because they help you be efficient by providing background information at the drop of a hat which helps you with reporting and most importantly helps you navigate your business strategies. Another thing to note about these is they’re mostly free.
Business listing which appears on right hand side of the screen (on desktop) when people search for your business name.
Google Shopping - you can set up Smart Shopping campaigns within your Google Ads account manager
Google remarking - another campaign you set up within Google ads manager.
This is analytical data which shows traffic to your website as well as user interaction. This data helps with business and marketing strategies.
Shows you how fast your site loads and if anything is wrong with it. For example, a lot of sites take long to load on mobile because of high res images and background applications running on the site. Google insights shows you how to fix these issues.
Adding your website xml sitemap here helps Google to acknowledge the site and you can initiate a crawl of your site. Once the site is crawled, Google can rank you and will periodically crawl the site for updates. The more varied the content in/around your site and brand, the higher you will rank.
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Another really great organising tool comes from Australia, called Milanote.
Milanote is a tool for organizing creative projects into beautiful visual boards. By design, it feels a lot like working on the wall in a creative studio - visual, tactile and sometimes a bit messy (messy in a good way). Milanote is a great fit for designers who work in teams remotely. Key Features:- Write notes & to-do lists, upload images & files and save things you find on the web
- Organise visually using the flexible drag and drop interface.
- Boards by default are a private place to think, but with a single click you can create a shared workspace for collaboration with your team
- Milanote is filled with hundreds of built-in templates to help you get started with a variety of different projects, from creating a mood board to writing that perfect creative brief.
If you need help with your business or marketing strategies, or you’re just after some inspiration or guidance, please feel free to get in touch with us at enquiries@mushmush.co.za or call Jenn on 074 674 3194.