This wasn’t a straight road; there were many twists and turns. If you’re creative like me, you might feel actual dread and exasperation when asked to make lists for your work or when you have to sit and think about all of the individual tasks associated with one project.
Still, when Amanda and I started working together, we were on the same page when it came to tools that we could use to manage our workflow better. She did the scouting (bless her), and we tried a few platforms before settling on Monday.com.
Some tools offered similar project management capabilities and others allowed us to manage our time by tracking it. But we found that something was missing. We wanted one platform to do everything we needed: track projects, manage workflows, facilitate communication and help build the foundation for the structure that is so important to how we operate. We wanted a platform that was responsive when it came to customer support and had an interface that encouraged interaction and made it easy to keep coming back. We found that with Monday.com.
Yet, with so many available tools on the internet; it can be overwhelming to select which tool is right for you. To help provide clarity to anyone who may be looking, we will share how this tool has helped us with our projects and in maintaining calm in a storm of “busyness.”
Amanda: The Monday.com platform allows us to see all of our projects in one place and adjust the scheduling and workload accordingly.
Each of our clients has a folder with at least one board outlining all the work we are doing for them. From there, there are multiple ways to see all the tasks due for all the clients and when they are due. The Timeline view , Dashboards and the “My Week” feature are really great for this. If there is an overload of work in one period then adjustments can be made to even out the load while still meeting our deadlines. This is also helpful when onboarding a new client; we are able to see where and how their deliverables will fit into the current schedule and develop their schedule and deadlines with that data in mind.
Nyika: It helped to organise my thinking when planning content.
Planning can sometimes be a pain. We’ve spoken in previous blogs about how planning your media can give you a better, more holistic view of your efforts and help you strategize more effectively. Planning your content is the same way. When you’re able to look at your content over a longer period, you can make the messaging more seamless and make it easier for your consumer to connect the dots and understand your overall message. We tried using a spreadsheet for planning content but we found the process was quicker with Monday.com. Having a dropdown menu that includes many different types of content makes planning easier and minimizes some of the creative heavy lifting.
Amanda: Automations simplify our daily focus.
There are a wide array of automations that can be customized and added to boards which allow actions or notifications to happen without our manual input. For example, each team member has an individual action board and we have an automation set up on all our client boards. These automations create tasks in team member’s action boards a certain number of days in advance of their due dates. This way, each person doesn’t have to check each client board continuously to know what they have to do.
Nyika: you can invite clients to the platform to manage deliverables and sort out tasks
I’m thrilled that I can communicate not only with my team but also with clients within a board. This helps to ensure smoother delivery of items in either direction. Clients can play a greater role in the workflow, which means that everyone knows where the project is and what might be holding it up. We have a client that does all approvals within the platform and also uses it to share resources with us.
Nyika: It allows for communication within tasks
Within each board, you can communicate in relevant threads so everyone understands the task or issue you’re responding to. The platform also gives us transparency, so we know who has had a chance to view the update.This is not something that we’ve experienced with similar tools. You can even share documents within these threads and that makes approval of items so much simpler!
Amanda: Integrations allow us to sync with other tools we use.
With integrations, we can perform an action on Monday.com and it creates an action in the synced platform or vice versa. We’ve only just started exploring all the integrations available but some that are useful to us so far are with Asana, Google Drive, Google Calendar and Gmail. We have a client that uses Asana so when a task is created there, the integration creates a task in the board we select on Monday.com. That way we can see the activity there without having to switch platforms.
I am also very excited about the opportunity to explore integrations with Hubspot and LinkedIn!
This mandatory work-from home period has allowed us to explore more of what we can do with the platform and how it can help us work smarter and not harder. What we really love is the more we work with the platform the more things we find that are useful and they are constantly adding more features.
Interested in seeing how Monday.com can help you manage your workflow and projects? You can find out more here. If you want a team dedicated to managing your marketing projects, send us a message or give us a ring.
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