There are so many tools for everything in marketing; sometimes to the point that it’s overwhelming; however, using these tools is a necessary evil. It’s all about finding the tools that are right for each aspect of your marketing efforts. What many forget, however, is that there are more tools than just those that help your actual marketing work. There are lots of tools out there that can help a marketing team run smoothly—behind-the-scenes tools, essentially.
Collaboration is a huge part of marketing and making sure that your online strategies are running smoothly because there are so many different factors you have to keep organized. Because of all these factors, you have to have a lot of people, and because of all these people, collaboration is inevitable. Using a few collaborative tools might be just what you’re missing.
6 Tools to Help Online Collaboration for Marketers
The best part about these tools is that collaboration doesn’t really change. You’re used to marketing evolving constantly and therefore having to change some of the tools you use, but collaboration is always going to be important. Below are some of the most popular collaborative tools for online marketers to help you stay organized:
- Google Drive. Free for anyone who uses Gmail (particularly companies that have a Gmail address for all employees).
This is a free tool that I have been using for years and have found works great for collaboration. You can create any type of document, spreadsheet, presentation, folder, and more and share it with whomever you wish. You can also determine who is able to edit the document, so you can make updates in real-time. It’s also nice that the system shows activity made to the file on the right-hand side of the screen so you know exactly where to look to see changes.
- Co-op. This works well for smaller companies who just need collaborative tools for small, simple tasks.
This is a really cool tool that allows a team to communicate all in one place. Most people use it for smaller tasks such as asking questions, posting an agenda for the day, or including news from around the office. It might not be the place where you post breaking news or assignments, but it’s a good interface for people to just go in once a day in the morning and check things out.
- Basecamp. This tool is all about project management.
This is probably one of the most popular tools out there today for managing different projects. I personally use this tool to send out assignments to different people in our department. The team will see the assignments and be able to turn them in right there on the tool, which avoids a lot of back-and-forth emails. You also have plenty of space to leave comments or ask questions, and you can request that your comment be sent to certain people via email so that they get the message faster. If you have a content team, this is a must-have tool.
- Skype. Great if you have team members away from the office.
Skype works particularly well if you have different employees telecommuting, but even if not it can still be very useful. When most people think of Skype they think of simply calling someone and talking with them face to face, and while this type of collaboration and communication is great, the tool offers much more. You can share files, leave video messages, use the tool on your phone, and chat just as you would chat on a platform like Gmail. Did I mention it was free?
- Join. me. This is a free screen-sharing tool.
Again, this tool is great if you have people from different offices needing to collaborate. All you need to do is hop on a call and then you can actually show the other party what you’re seeing on your screen and what exactly you’re doing on that screen. In other words, it’s as if the other party is staring at your screen and watching your every move. The coolest part about this is you can actually hand over the controls to the other party so that they can start showing you how something is done and you can sit and watch. This works great for designers or for different projects that involve a lot of teaching-by-showing.
- Dropbox. Basically, a tool used to share big files.
This isn’t a tool that is talked about much for business (it’s popular for picture sharing), but it has proven to work great for sharing big files of information. If you want to send a project over to your team quickly, you can just drag the file you want to share into a Dropbox folder that you set up for certain team members. Your whole team not only receives the large file, but they can editor and/or download it.
Amanda DiSilvestro is the Editor-in-chief for Plan, Write, GO. She has been writing about all things digital marketing, both as a ghostwriter, guest writer, and blog manager, for over 10 years. Check out her blogging services to learn more!
