Time-Saving Hacks
Sometimes, you start the day strong: you’ve got a clear to-do list and are ready to start checking things off. But then you remember that that RFP is due today not tomorrow, and just as you pivot to that task, you remember that you were supposed to post a link to that blog. Before you know it, you’ve been sidetracked and are scrambling to catch up to your other EOD commitments. It happens to the best of us. And while we can’t eliminate every hurdle life throws at us, we can at least automate and streamline some tasks so that we can focus more on what’s important.
Check out this mini list of tools that will help you do just that:
ClickUp
"An app to replace them all," ClickUp eliminates the need for separate platforms for docs, chat, tasks, goals, and timekeeping. They offer an impressive free tier and at $5 per month per user you get unlimited everything. Want to create a Gantt chart for your project? You got it. Is Kanban more your style? No problem. Want to see everything you need to do next month? Just click on “Agency.”
ClickUp is used by tech giants like Google, Uber, and Airbnb. With it’s highly customizable interface, it's an equally great option for smaller teams. We would know—we use it! Check out ClickUp here.
Hootsuite
A Canadian-founded company, Hootsuite makes it easy to schedule social media posts across platforms, see what’s working, and respond to all the comments you receive. Here’s an article that dives into all of its capabilities. With the free version, you get access to most of the listed features.
Upgrading to their paid plans, you also receive advanced social analytics, team collaboration, and security features. With Hootsuite, you can free up some headspace by knowing that your social feeds are taken care of.
Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform that makes creating content possibly the easiest part of your day. Not sure what content to post? They have a plethora of templates to spark your creativity. In addition to posts and stories, you can use Canva to create presentations, posters, reports, business cards, logos, and other visual content.
While lots of their graphics and fonts are free, you do have to pay to get Pro access to everything. It’s been 100% worth it for us though! When you invest in the Pro plan, you get 100GB of data storage, can save designs as templates for your team to use, and can record and apply your brand’s logos, fonts, and colours. Get creating with them here.
Slack
Clear communication right now is one of the greatest ways to save time later. Hashing out project details? Talking through new strategies? Touching base on the progress of that article? Done, done, and done (quickly!) via Slack’s instant messaging.
It can be hard to keep everyone in the loop whether your team is in the office, working from home, or spread across different cities like us. Thanks to Slack, you can communicate on projects in dedicated channels, DM colleagues for something specific, share files, and more. The free plan is quite flexible with basic features such as searchable messages, apps and integrations, and 1-to-1 video calls, but check out their paid plans for even more team collaboration power.
If you have any questions about these tools, are looking for direction to help you out in another area, or if you have recommendations for us—we want to hear about it! Let’s connect.
