Webinars and social media go together like Bonnie and Clyde; a dynamic duo that, when well executed, can catapult a business from bland to booming. Unfortunately, scads of business owners fail to execute a full-scale webinar-boosting plan, brimming with supporting content, compelling adverts, and divine timing. This means that an abundance of webinars end up driving minimal attendance, which reflects poorly on the presenter and their brand – personal or otherwise. [Read more…]
Cloud-Based Tools to Stake Your Business Blog On
Businesses that run on the cloud understand the benefits of working remote. Owners don’t have infrastructure, office space, and equipment associated with a business in the strictest sense. But cloud-based tools will help them run their company instead without compromising their performance. Doing this lets them operate their business in its bare essentials so they can maximize their earnings.
The same principles apply to running a business blog. This online activity has been elevated to a marketing tactic due to its ability to reach out to your target audience with ideas shared in your posts. It is also possible to monetize your blog by applying the best practices so you don’t have to work a job at an office.
To get to this stage in your career as a business blogger, you need to hire people who will help realize your dreams for you. You don’t have to make sure your team goes to an office so you can monitor their progress. Managing writers, designers, programmers, and developers to run your multiple blogs will be difficult, but not impossible thanks to these cloud-based tools.
Time-tracking tool: Toggl
There are cloud-based time tracking tools that lets your team clock in the time just like they would in an office despite working from a distance. One of these tools is Togglr, a free time tracking online tool that lets them enter the times they’ve worked and the tasks they’ve accomplished during the day.
Once your team members have entered their hours, they can send you a visual report of the tasks they’ve finished during the day, week, or month. They can record their time by visiting the site from your browser or you can download the desktop and mobile app to log in their work hours.
While the app is free for use, it can only accommodate five team members. Purchasing the Pro or Business plan will let you include unlimited members who can record time and send you regular reports, aside from other features.
Project management tool: Asana
Who’s supposed to write a post to be published later this afternoon? When should the blog redesign be finished? Where are the updated files of the brief provided by the client?
These are some of the questions you’ll be asking yourself without a project management system in place. Asana is a free tool that will help organize your projects, tasks, and members to keep your blogging business running in tip-top shape.
You can create projects and place actionable tasks to be assigned to specific members in your team. You can describe the brief of the tasks at hand and place a deadline on each so team members are aware of what needs to be prioritized. Other features include create visual milestones, receive updates straight to your inbox, and third-part integration, and more.
Online meeting tool: ClickMeeting
Sometimes, you’ll need to gather your team at the same time to discuss plans you have in store with your blog. You will also need to receive updates about the tasks assigned to each on your project management tool. Taking the option of online chat, while free and cost-effective, will take time to finish since typing your message is neither the fastest nor the most efficient way of communication.
For a more dynamic approach, you should go with holding online meetings using ClickMeeting. You can conduct an audio and video conference (if not both) with your team so you can discuss your blogging plans like you would a face-to-face meeting. You can also hold a moderated Q&A session so you can filter out questions from team members to discuss in the public chat. If you have prepared a presentation or want to show whatever’s appearing on your screen, you can enable the full desktop sharing and control to engage your team.
Other features include the ability to record your meetings, meeting room rebranding, and more.
Final thoughts: The cloud-based tools featured above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to running your business blog. There are even collaboration tools to help you build a community with your blog. Nonetheless, these should help run your blog efficiently while making the most out of your earnings.
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