Slowly coming to terms with the changes
forced upon us by the spread of COVID-19? It is difficult, shifting work to
your home premises. But it is not impossible.
Here is a list of some free tools that can
make the transition to working from home smoother and hassle-free.
Slack – It is a great collaboration hub
that allows you to share files and communicate in groups as well as on a
one-on-one basis.
Google Hangouts –It brings to life
conversations through texts, audio and video connections on a one-on-one basis
and for groups.
Zoom–It is a platform that allows you to
hold video meetings and host virtual presentations online. It offers real time
chats and video recording features as well.
Skype–It is a free communications tool
that helps you connect with as many as 50 people through audio or video
conferencing.
AirTable–This is a strong tool that
helps manage data and inventory on visually appealing spreadsheets so you can keep
track of what your team is doing.
Asana –It helps teams structure work and
tasks and helps team leaders and team members track progress and completion of
tasks.
GitHub–It is a crucial free tool used to
facilitate design and development, used as it is for version control and
viewing, sharing and collaborating on code developed by team members.
Chrome DevTools–It is used for web
development and the software is built directly into the Google Chrome browser.
Grammarly– It is a great platform used
for writing on and editing documents with.
Google Drive– It is best for sharing files and collaborating on them with remote
team members.
Working from home? So are we. And so are millions of people across the world forced indoors by the spread of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
But if you have access to the Internet, you are doing better than many because of a variety of free tools available to assist you in working from home.
For communicating
There are several free tools available for helping you to communicate with your colleagues.
Tools like Slack, Workplace by Facebook, Basecamp, Discord and Microsoft Teamsare the names you should be acquainted with.
Most of these are on offer with paid plans, but they grant basic free packages with some limitations (that should not pose any problems to users).
For instance, there is a guide to Slack’s free versus paid-for services.
For work lists and projects management
Making a to-do list of tasks is the foremost way of keeping track of work to be done and tasks completed.
There are several tools which help carry out this function. Take, for instance, Trello and Google Keep.
Tools like Trello give us the opportunity to handle projects, keep a track of work done, add comments or collaborate on these.
Google Keep allows us to do similar things like making lists, taking notes (with a feature that allows for attaching pictures or audio clips), and sharing them with co-workers.
Apps like Zoho, Asana and Paymo can also be used for these functions.
For Collaboration
To collaborate on documents, worksheets and presentations, the most widely used tools are those comprised in the Google Suite.
Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides facilitate work on documents, worksheets or spreadsheets and presentations respectively.
Files are usually saved on Google’s cloud platform – Google Drive – though they can also be saved in the offline mode. An alternative is Zoho Docs.
Conclusion
Working from home can be productive if you want it to be. So do not hesitate to be adaptive. We suggest you try out these free tools and recommend them to colleagues as well. And if you are looking for more suggestions, do read our upcoming blog. Best, Sprout Road
Currently, 2.46 billion people are regularly active on social media. By 2019, the number is expected to swell to 2.77 billion.
As rightly put by Howard Shultz, “Social media is a bullet train, and it’s not going to slow down any time soon”, more than 80% of businesses are seeking refuge under social media for unabashed digital marketing success, and we can’t agree more.
Each day, something new is being launched. Innovation is at its peak. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, SnapChat, Foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest – are some of the scene stealers for now, because we don’t know what’s coming the next! A constant buzz about new platforms is resulting into a lot of commotion among marketers. New trends coupled with increasing audience strength are adding more bedlam to the mix.
To break the back of the beast, your business must be empowered with a powerful social media strategy. And for that, we are here. Let us help you get started:
Dream Big or Go Home
Know your purpose well. Before starting strategizing social media campaigns, give a thought to your purpose. What is the main goal of your company? Set the priority of the day, regarding your business. Once you know these, you can start off with aligning social media with these goals, and walk towards achieving brand success and overall improvement for your company.
Remember, the goals of businesses vary. To start with, a startup firm may have a goal to build a brand’s identity. A second goal may hover around establishing a strong customer base. And thirdly, the business might be aiming to launch a handful number of products at the end of the year.
Now, comes the big question– how can social media help you in branding your business?
With billions and billions of users on social media, partnering with a famous social media influencer can help you establish your business online and reaching out to the masses. It will help you in expanding your customer loyalty base. Social media also suffices to be a fabulous platform to launch new products. Create campaigns and target niche audience.
Hit the Right Tip: Be Precise
After establishing a purpose on social media and calibrating your business goals, it’s about time to give attention to develop specific marketing strategies.
The most important marketing goal would be to enhance brand awareness. This falls in line with your company’s objective of nurturing a brand identity and harnessing a good customer base. The second goal would be to boost brand engagement – it will help in luring new customers and retaining old customers, while keeping absolute focus on building brand identity. Lastly, your company may be in dire need of some research and know more about its user base. As a result, you will get the perfect opportunity to know your customers well and understand which customers to tick, what products will serve their needs and in what ways to reach them for better impact.
Social Media: Not Just Impress People but Impact Them
Now, that your marketing goals are perfectly integrated with your business goals, let’s see how social media is doing its job of creating brand awareness.
Nowadays, each social media platform comes with its own search engine, making it easier to find answers, discussions and conversation threads for specific products and services. Sit with your marketing team to scour through numerous platforms, especially the ones that have the highest number of potential viewers. Build an engaging profile that is in congruence with your brand’s services and character.
Then strike conversations with your users on the site. Register in consumer forums and discussions. Mind it, social media is now the new-wave word of mouth. Use good content to back up leads and start building brand engagement.
Ask the Right Question and Analyze
After all this, it’s time to start with the process of analyzing your site performance. Several analytic software tools, like Buffer, Google Analytics, Hootsuite and Crowdbooster help you determine whether your social media strategy is up to the mark or not, and how well is it working. Through these tools, you can track conversion rates, traffic generation and total number of customer leads. Also, they will provide crucial insights about how to utilize paid versus organic social media, along with devising great product launch campaigns for your business. But above all, analytics will make you understand the importance of well-conceived social media strategy, as your business evolves with time. Moreover, it will nudge you if your social media schemes are working, and illuminates about ways to adapt.
As parting thoughts, hopping on the bandwagon of social media is not as intimidating as it may seem in the beginning. The crux lies in making a place of your own on the solid ground, before you take the big leap. What’s more, social media is going to evolve, as always, your strategies should also never stop growing. Keep these in mind and pop onboard!
For the last two years, Google updates have been showing the company’s burgeoning focus on monetizing searches with navigational queries and local intent. Starting from local inventory ads to ads featured in the Local Pack, Google considers local searches to be the fertile ground where more ad conversations can be pinged into.
A similar strategy has been used for Google Maps, where ads generated from location extensions now occupy for searches. The popularity of these ads is immense, supported by a rise in the share of traffic, ascribed to the “Get location details” click type.
Rising ‘Get Location Details’ clicks
Google confirmed that mostly all traffic that is ascribed to the ‘Get Location Details’ is owing to the ads advertised on Maps. Particularly in phones, there’s been a surge in ‘Get Location Details’ traffic and Maps is undeniably becoming a part of a greater share of overall traffic.
Online Conversion Rate will suffer
The likelihood of Google Maps searchers to get converted is very less, as they are more likely to seek out to physical stores. The data says Online Conversation Rate for ‘Get location details’ is comparatively lower than overall conversation rates for branded keywords for an average advertiser.
CPC is likely to spike up
With respect to overall CPC, desktop CPC for ‘Get location details’ is lower. However, on phones, the CPC is 30% higher, and Tablet CPC is way too higher. Interestingly, we find it hard to explain the strange phenomena.
Last Thoughts
Google has kept a lot of things under its hood, for now. Google Maps has a terrific user base and traffic generation. Looking forward, Google is largely focusing on driving ad traffic from searches with local intent, with improved formats, like local inventory ads and Local Pack ads. Hopefully, in future owing to these latest developments, we are going to see some humongous growth associated with traffic share.
