Tools for Remote Working
In the advent of Coronavirus, and in line with current advice, all of us at Tuminds began working from home earlier this week and, until further notice, we will be delivering our training programme and providing consultancy services online instead of face-to-face.
At this extraordinary time we wanted to give you some information on tools that can help with remote working, which will, for a large number of us, become the new norm.
We frequently have video meetings with clients and with a team member who has always worked from home. Here are some of the tools we use to share files remotely and to easily communicate with each other.
Whereby
We had our first remote team meeting on Wednesday via Whereby (free for up to 4 participants). We prefer this to Skype for video meetings and screen sharing, and have used it with clients and for team meetings for a while now. With current events we are having a daily Whereby chat at 9am each morning to check in with each other.
G Suite
G Suite is a set of cloud computing, collaboration and productivity tools, software and products. We use a Google calendar that we can all update and Google Docs for our own social media calendar. This means that any changes one of us makes can be seen be everyone else. We also use Google Drive for remote file storage.
Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts is a communication tool for messaging, voice and video calls. It is part of the G Suite package mentioned above, but you don’t need to have G Suite to use it. You can have up to 10 people in a call and it is another way we have held video meetings in the past.
Slack
We wrote about the benefits of Slack, an internal communication channel, in a recent blog post. One of our team has always worked remotely and so Slack has always been a key tool in team communication. Now with us all working from home it is even more important. It was designed to replace email between colleagues and is really useful for sharing files as well as allowing us to communicate with each other. We all use the mobile app as well so we can easily keep in touch. We have conversation threads for different topics and it is helpful for looking back on conversations to find information or files.
Zoom
Zoom is another video conferencing tool that we have used for meetings with clients. It can also be used for webinars. On the free plan meetings are limited to 40 minutes but there is a paid Pro plan for small teams and a Business plan for small and medium businesses.
WhatsApp Business App
WhatsApp Business App is a free app that is ideal for small business owners to connect with customers. You can also use it on desktop: https://web.whatsapp.com/. WhatsApp has become more like a social media platform over the years and WhatsApp Business allows you to create a business profile (with your address, a description, email address and website URL). You can also create a catalogue of your products/services, see video below.
To contact Tuminds via WhatsApp click button below
In this difficult and uncertain time one of the positives is having a range of digital tools and apps to connect and communicate. Social media has a huge role to play in bringing people together and in helping businesses stay connected with customers whilst we navigate this change.
Stay safe!
Featured image by thedarknut from Pixabay
If you have any questions about remote working or digital marketing please leave them in the comments below.
