Per my earlier blog on using FB Messenger, I mentioned I would write another “How-to” and was planning to do it on Zoom. As I started doing research I realized everyone was using Zoom, so not sure what the point was on writing another “How-to” on Zoom, so I felt this was a better blog to write and hopefully help your company.
As I mentioned in my last blog, I’m a techie and have been doing this for 26+ years. I’ve learned so much by taking on multiple software projects and also building technology companies. So by sharing the tools I use I hope it will help your business.
Online Meeting Tools
Zoom is showing to be the most popular online communication tool for having online meetings. I’ve been using it for years now. I’ve also included a few others as alternatives and are free.
Zoom
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-zoom
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206618765-Zoom-Video-Tutorials
Google Hangouts
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-google-hangouts
https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9247502?hl=en
Webex – I do want to mentioned this account took 24 hours to setup
https://www.webex.co.in/support/getting-started.html
https://help.webex.com/en-us/8bzter/Cisco-Webex-Meetings-Video-Tutorials
Messaging Tools
Think of using these instead for SMS Text Messaging or iMessage. Slack in particular can elimate a good majority of short emails and text message, along with some great search features and plug-ins. One of the plug-in to Slack is Giphy, it’s just fun and you’ll get into Giphy battles! 🙂
Slack
https://slack.com/resources/using-slack/slack-tutorials
https://slack.com/help/categories/360000049043
Info on how to install the Giphy plugin:
https://slack.com/help/articles/204714258-Giphy-for-Slack
Skype
https://mashable.com/2014/07/09/skype-for-beginners/
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA10613/how-do-i-make-a-call-in-skype
Google Hangouts – See Online Meeting Tools Above
Project Management
If you’re going to work remotely, you’ll want some tools to manage your day-to-day projects in your company. Since we can no longer have in-person group meetings, these 2 platforms have really good tools to manage projects.
Jira – Is a great tool for managing projects, there’s a bunch of way to do use this and I will give you the “buyer beware” it’s a bit complicated to setup if you’ve never used it before. In the tech world many companies use SCRUM methodology for developing software and this has that built in, along with managing task and bugs. It also allows you to assign these tasks to people. Buyer beware up to 10 users it’s $10/user, after that it can get pricey.
https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/getting-started/basics
Asana App – I just started using Asana this year with another development company I work with. I find it really easy to use and it’s free.
https://asana.com
https://asana.com/guide/get-started/begin/quick-start
Online Support
There are a ton of online support platform tools to you for your company. But I’ve really only used two. I’m a fan of Zendesk, but the theming is a bit complicated. I tried Freshdesk, which was much simpler, but missed some of the advnaced features I like in Zendesk. I’m still deciding what to use for BottleVin, but right now I can manage through our webpage contact us and how-to. Eventually I will need one of these.
Zendesk
https://www.zendesk.com
Freshdesk
https://freshdesk.com/
Digital Signatures
Need to get documents signed? The most popular is probably DocuSign, they’ve become the industry standard. But I like using HelloSign, partially cause you get 3 signatures for free. The last one is using Adobe Acrobat, not sure how many people know about this, but if you have a Adobe Acrobat cloud account the service is free.
DocuSign
https://www.docusign.com
HelloSign
https://www.hellosign.com
Adobe Acrobat
https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/how-to/electronic-signatures-online-e-signatures.html
My next blog I’m looking to write about the “Live” platforms, meaning YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and Twitter Live. BottleVin did their first FB Live with winemaker Steve Reynolds of Reynolds Family Winery and iLona Thompson of PaleteXposure hosted. It was really a fun project and we have a few more in-queue. Here’s the event if you’d like to take a look.
We’ve ramped up very fast with these platforms and have a different way of producing these events, think more of a TV broadcast, vs the normal Live events you’ve been seeing. The beauty about broadcasting this way, is we can create a custom branded template for anyone we partner with.
If you have any questions or just looking for some advice, feel free to contact me through the contact form on our BottleVin website at:
https://bottlevin.com/contact-us/
Thanks for reading!
-Paul