In today’s Tech News Tuesday episode, we want to share some tips on working remotely and let you know about an upcoming special Google livestream on remote work for small businesses and nonprofits.
Links in this episode: Grow with Google’s Manage Your Business Remotely in Times of Uncertainty Livestream
Transcript
Welcome to the Get Digital Marketing Results podcast where we give you information and actionable tips to grow your organization.
Bob: Hi, I’m Bob Clark.
Donna: And I’m Donna Botti. We’re with Delos Inc and we make the web work for you. In today’s Tech News Tuesday episode, we want to share some tips on working remotely and let you know about an upcoming Google livestream on remote work for small businesses and nonprofits. As more of us transition to remote work, there’s definitely some adjustments that happen. Now our team pretty much works remotely all the time, so we have a couple tips for you as well.
Bob: I think it’s important Donna that you got to create a routine, since you’re going to be working at home. You gotta get up and you got to exercise. You gotta go out and gotta walk the dog. I think you got to get dressed. I don’t think you should be in your remote office in your pajamas all day long.
Donna: That’s true. Even though some people only want to put on a shirt for their video calls. [Laughs] I think it is important to get in that routine as you say.
Bob: Very important.
Donna: Another really important thing is communication. You have to communicate among your team members, that is really key. People need to understand what’s happening, what’s going on with the work you’re doing, and there’s a number of tools that are out there that can really help in making communication easier in a remote work environment when you can’t just yell across the room to someone about what the next thing is or a quick question you have.
Bob: Those video meetings that are out there… They’re pretty cool. Recently, I’ve been on a few Zoom ones. I know you’ve done them a lot Donna. But you got to be seen and you got to be heard out there. There’s tools like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, as I said, Zoom is a really cool way to stay in touch and see how people are doing. You know here at Delos we are using these communication tools all the time and we realize it’s new to many of you out there.
Donna: So another great tool is Chat. We already get enough email, so we don’t want to be just inundating ourselves with emailing back and forth to our team members. So if you’re using the Google Suite, or Microsoft Suite, they have chat tools. Slack is another popular chat application to allow conversations among team members, and you know, quick questions that you might have and things like that, rather than having to wait and schedule a meeting or pick up the phone or send an email.
Bob: So you can even share your documents via the cloud today. There’s tools in Google like Docs and Sheets that work very well. We use those all the time here at Delos. And it’s best to collaborate on the work that you do with each other, and these tools really do help.
Donna: So we also use an online project management system to keep track of due dates and assignments and who’s doing what. The one we use is from Asana. But there’s also a number of different ones out there, Trello, Jira, ClickUp, Airtable. There’s just a lot of really really neat tools that can kind of help collaborate, and let you work from wherever you may be.
Bob: Yeah, when your mail, and your calendar, and all your contacts are in the cloud you can just work from any device, which is really the best way to do it. You don’t have to worry about that there’s just one specific computer in the office or one hard drive you’re working with. You have a lot more flexibility.
Donna: Right, and these are things that are really useful even when we’re not forced into a situation where we can’t be physically in our office. When you think about it, if you have team members that are on the road or if your business requires you to be in different places, or maybe you just want to take an extended vacation, be able to check in at the office when you’re not there. These types of tools can really help you to be efficient and productive and to work from wherever you are whenever it makes the most sense for you. So, next week is Small Business Week and Google has a special livestream next week that’s called, Manage Your Business Remotely in Times of Uncertainty.
Bob: Oh yeah Donna, I heard about this, it’s coming up next Wednesday, May 6th, and it’s going to be noon Eastern Time.
Donna: Yes, they’re going to talk about how to use Google tools like Google My Business, Google Ads, Google Meet and YouTube to manage remote work.
Bob: I know this event is going to benefit a lot of our small business friends and nonprofit friends out there, who are trying to make this transition to remote work.
Donna: Yeah, so tune in if you can. We hope everyone stays safe and healthy.
Bob: That’s it for today’s episode. You can find the link to the Google livestream registration and a transcript of today’s podcast at DelosInc.com/131. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our actionable digital marketing tips to grow your organization.