At The Whole Brain Group, we’re always looking for new tools to make managing our work a breeze, and our latest favorite tool is called Smartsheet! Smartsheet is a great project management tool that encourages collaboration with advanced features tailored to project teams. We like to describe it as “spreadsheets on steroids”. We had previously used Basecamp for many years to manage our projects, but as we started working with more retainer clients we found that the tool just wasn’t working for us anymore. With Basecamp we had to go into each client project to view our individual to-dos, and it was [...]
Category: smart tools
By now you know your business’ website is critical for promoting your services, gathering leads, and communicating your messages. Rather than annoying your visitors with flashing pop-ups, or failing to get their attention with a “contact us” button, try a more effective design and attractive approach with the Hello Bar. This thin, full-width bar appears at the top of your website on all landing pages and contains a tailored call-to-action for your visitors. It doesn’t seem groundbreaking, but this extra “look at me!” component is a great way to give your audience members a new way to engage while you [...]
The folks over at Unbounce recently shared this great infographic from DivvyHQ outlining the 12 steps any savvy marketer should follow after writing a new blog post! Best of all, it doubles as a checklist, so you can print it out, laminate it, and keep it by your desk for reference. If you’re looking for an easy way to manage your content ideas, editorial team, production process and deadlines, DivvyHQ is a cool web-based tool to help you make sure you follow these steps every time you blog. Of course, you can also hire a team of smart marketers to handle these [...]
At The Whole Brain Group, we’re constantly trying to reduce the amount of paper we use, so signing documents has always been a source of irritation for me. When we send contracts out, I have a digital signature I embed in the document, but when I have to sign a document I didn’t produce, the steps are time consuming and paper-wasting: Print the signature page Sign it Scan it Email it back Not overly complicated, but annoying – and I have to be at my desk in the office to complete these steps. A more elegant solution for signing documents [...]
In honor of Earth Day, here’s a recap of three Smart Tools we’ve adopted here at The Whole Brain Group to reduce paper waste. Coincidentally, these tools also save you time and effort so you can be efficiency-friendly AND earth-friendly! Harvest Time Tracking Are you still using paper time sheets and sending paper invoices? Check out Harvest’s online time tracking, invoicing, and reporting tool! Team members enter time through the web interface, mobile app, or desktop app Send invoices electronically to clients via email Clients can view invoices online and pay via credit card Robust reporting gives you insight into [...]
If you’re like me, your email is constantly flooded with social media notices, coupons, mailing lists and bill reminders. You can try to set up filters for everything, but it’s hard to keep up, and you might miss things you should pay attention to. Consequently, you either have 800 unread messages in your inbox, or you spend hours reading, filing, archiving, and deleting things. If this sounds like your life, you should check out OtherInbox – a suite of tools that auto-filters messages and helps you unsubscribe from lists you don’t want to be part of any more. I found the [...]
If you’re overwhelmed by the volume of email in your Gmail inbox, it’s probably because you’re one of the millions of people who use your inbox as your to do list. Your inbox is probably full of requests for information or action, messages that you need to refer to later when you’re completing a task, or stuff you want to remember to read later when you have time. Up until a few months ago, I was in the same boat, and I dreaded looking at my inbox because it was impossible to focus on what really needed my attention! Then [...]
Throughout my time working with social media I’ve used and tested several monitoring programs, including Actionly, Sysomos, Hootsuite, and others. The Whole Brain Group primarily uses Sprout Social, and once I had an opportunity to spend time with the program I became a convert, even a champion! Here are our Top 5 Favorite Features of Sprout Social: Sharing Accounts – The WBG assigns two employees to monitor each of our social media accounts. Sprout allows us to share monitoring, assign tasks, and communicate with one another within the platform. This feature saves time and keeps us from double posting or [...]
Getting the right people to join your team is tough when you’re a small company. You probably don’t have a dedicated HR person, and it can be cost-prohibitive to use a head hunter or recruiter to manage things for you. At The Whole Brain Group, we’re in the same boat, and conducting a search for a new “brainiac” is something we all pitch in on. Up until a few months ago, our “process” was pretty rudimentary - we posted our positions on our website, and then spread the word via local job postings, social media and word of mouth. Next, [...]
Time tracking, invoicing, and tracking payments are some of the most important activities in a growing company’s cash flow and bottom-line, but it’s also a pain in the you-know-what. In the early days, we used a spreadsheet for time tracking, and Quickbooks to create invoices and track payments. But as we grew we found ourselves wondering where all of our time was going (hint: more people means more communication and internal projects), and found that our old methods were not scaling very gracefully: 37 clients + 48 projects = crazy messy spreadsheet 37 outstanding invoices + varying payment terms and [...]
By now you know your business’ website is critical for promoting your services, gathering leads, and communicating your messages. Rather than annoying your visitors with flashing pop-ups, or failing to get their attention with a “contact us” button, try a more effective design and attractive approach with the Hello Bar. This thin, full-width bar appears at the top of your website on all landing pages and contains a tailored call-to-action for your visitors. It doesn’t seem groundbreaking, but this extra “look at me!” component is a great way to give your audience members a new way to engage while you [...]
The folks over at Unbounce recently shared this great infographic from DivvyHQ outlining the 12 steps any savvy marketer should follow after writing a new blog post! Best of all, it doubles as a checklist, so you can print it out, laminate it, and keep it by your desk for reference. If you’re looking for an easy way to manage your content ideas, editorial team, production process and deadlines, DivvyHQ is a cool web-based tool to help you make sure you follow these steps every time you blog. Of course, you can also hire a team of smart marketers to handle these [...]
At The Whole Brain Group, we’re constantly trying to reduce the amount of paper we use, so signing documents has always been a source of irritation for me. When we send contracts out, I have a digital signature I embed in the document, but when I have to sign a document I didn’t produce, the steps are time consuming and paper-wasting: Print the signature page Sign it Scan it Email it back Not overly complicated, but annoying – and I have to be at my desk in the office to complete these steps. A more elegant solution for signing documents [...]
In honor of Earth Day, here’s a recap of three Smart Tools we’ve adopted here at The Whole Brain Group to reduce paper waste. Coincidentally, these tools also save you time and effort so you can be efficiency-friendly AND earth-friendly! Harvest Time Tracking Are you still using paper time sheets and sending paper invoices? Check out Harvest’s online time tracking, invoicing, and reporting tool! Team members enter time through the web interface, mobile app, or desktop app Send invoices electronically to clients via email Clients can view invoices online and pay via credit card Robust reporting gives you insight into [...]
If you’re like me, your email is constantly flooded with social media notices, coupons, mailing lists and bill reminders. You can try to set up filters for everything, but it’s hard to keep up, and you might miss things you should pay attention to. Consequently, you either have 800 unread messages in your inbox, or you spend hours reading, filing, archiving, and deleting things. If this sounds like your life, you should check out OtherInbox – a suite of tools that auto-filters messages and helps you unsubscribe from lists you don’t want to be part of any more. I found the [...]
If you’re overwhelmed by the volume of email in your Gmail inbox, it’s probably because you’re one of the millions of people who use your inbox as your to do list. Your inbox is probably full of requests for information or action, messages that you need to refer to later when you’re completing a task, or stuff you want to remember to read later when you have time. Up until a few months ago, I was in the same boat, and I dreaded looking at my inbox because it was impossible to focus on what really needed my attention! Then [...]
Throughout my time working with social media I’ve used and tested several monitoring programs, including Actionly, Sysomos, Hootsuite, and others. The Whole Brain Group primarily uses Sprout Social, and once I had an opportunity to spend time with the program I became a convert, even a champion! Here are our Top 5 Favorite Features of Sprout Social: Sharing Accounts – The WBG assigns two employees to monitor each of our social media accounts. Sprout allows us to share monitoring, assign tasks, and communicate with one another within the platform. This feature saves time and keeps us from double posting or [...]
Getting the right people to join your team is tough when you’re a small company. You probably don’t have a dedicated HR person, and it can be cost-prohibitive to use a head hunter or recruiter to manage things for you. At The Whole Brain Group, we’re in the same boat, and conducting a search for a new “brainiac” is something we all pitch in on. Up until a few months ago, our “process” was pretty rudimentary - we posted our positions on our website, and then spread the word via local job postings, social media and word of mouth. Next, [...]
Time tracking, invoicing, and tracking payments are some of the most important activities in a growing company’s cash flow and bottom-line, but it’s also a pain in the you-know-what. In the early days, we used a spreadsheet for time tracking, and Quickbooks to create invoices and track payments. But as we grew we found ourselves wondering where all of our time was going (hint: more people means more communication and internal projects), and found that our old methods were not scaling very gracefully: 37 clients + 48 projects = crazy messy spreadsheet 37 outstanding invoices + varying payment terms and [...]
