7 Tools We Use to Branch Out

Life here at Red Branch Media is pretty hectic. Although we have several specialized teams, everyone tends to dip their hands in multiple pots where they’re needed which helps to make projects and deadlines run a little more smoothly. While everyone has a different way of doing things, we do have several tools we all use on a daily basis.

Cloud technology, writing software, communication apps — you name it, we have our preferred tool. Our company culture might be difficult to emulate, but you can use the some of the tools of the trade we use to make your internal communications operate as efficiently as possible.

 

Bitrix24

Communication is an important part of any organization and is essential for clarity and efficiency. In fact, companies lose $37 billion every year due to poor communication. At Red Branch, we use Bitrix. It’s a private social network where we talk about and assign projects and share finished projects to put out on social media. We also post a lot of gifs, but that’s just how our culture shines through digitally.

The design is familiar to anyone who’s used a social media platform before, and it’s great to have a central place to post new work-related updates. Being able to assign tasks and keep track of all our client work in once place is great too, since the integration means task work and regular updates mix into one simple feed. It’s the go-to standard for any organization not made up of zombies.

 

Google Drive

Specialized apps are great for maintaining focus, but there’s no getting around Google’s ubiquity. Everyone knows their way around Google’s interface in some capacity, and simply knowing that your email can integrate your Google Docs and connect to your Google Sheets allows for a degree of centralization you can’t beat.

We use Google Sheets for our editorial calendar, Google Docs to send and edit content, Gmail to send the pieces back and forth (as well as the regular email stuff), and Google Drive folders to store work we’re doing. We even have a whole folder dedicated to all the things Maren needs to edit, making sure all of her content work is organized in one place. Currently, there are 45 articles in that folder.

 

Evernote

Evernote at first seems like an alternative to writing in Google Docs, but it’s really much more than that. Our content team uses it for article-clipping, PDF and infographic storage, backing up their work, and even in-progress brainstorming. We even keep track of conference calls and take notes using it, since it’s easy to share them with others and let them know the most important parts of every call or meeting. You can even photograph receipts and notes with its mobile app and turn paper notes into digital ones effortlessly. And like Yammer, Evernote provides a way to keep you concentrated on work by displacing it from your where you might normally write. It all works so well that if you’re starting up a business and need somewhere to keep all your internal business materials, there are few ways to do it better. Evernote is wonderful for spell checking and showing you what else you’ve inputted (written or saved) that relates to what you’re working on, perfect for building our evil sticky web of content!

 

Dropbox

Who uses servers anymore? Dropbox provides that storage in the cloud, and updates all of the files no matter how many computers are synced to an account. We have all kinds of things stored in Dropbox, from internal onboarding documents, timesheets, in-progress design work, and important client documentation. It works like any other folder on your computer, and the ease with which you can upload and share all sizes of files with coworkers is unmatched. If we’re looking for a file not linked to content or social, there’s a good chance it’s in Dropbox. We use the business version of Dropbox which plays not so well with other versions.

 

Hemingway

While we use a couple of apps and programs to create and keep track of the multitude of our writings, Hemingway is one of the tools our content creators use to ensure grammatical accuracy. It helps to ensure superfluous adverbs are ironed out and keeps the writing at a “readable” level (it has a gauge for the reading level after it analyzes the piece). Hemingway is one of the few apps that evaluates how you write beyond how many words you use, and what section titles you emphasize with bold or italics. The app marks complex sentences and even lets highlights passive voice. Hemingway was known for his clean, no-nonsense style and if you want tight, consistent writing, (or to simply make the editing process a little easier on yourself), give it a try. It doesn’t work on facebook, unfortch.

 

Edgar

Edgar transforms any user from a Twitter neophyte to a social media mastermind. Tweets, ephemeral as they are, can disappear as soon as they’re posted, leaving a lot of their potential influence to chance. Edgar can manage your tweets and give them more impact, reposting them at better times and making sure more people see them. Edgar also keeps better track of your tweets than Twitter does, so it’s easier to reference old posts if you ever need to. It’s invaluable to our social media team here at Red Branch, and it can make life easier for your social people, too. Honorable Mention: SproutSocial

 

UberConference

Maren makes a lot of calls. A lot of calls including, but not limited to: clients, prospective clients, employees, applicants, webinars, weekly meetings, and any other type of call a CEO has to make. So it makes sense that she’d have a conferencing app of choice, and UberConference is that app. Why does Maren love it so much? You can schedule calls and UberConference will send a reminder email for the participants. But the best part is: it records the calls so you don’t forget important details from the conversation.

Their quality is killer, their rates are cheap, and their software works on desktop and mobile alike. You could probably replace your regular phone service with UberConference if you really wanted to. And with as many calls as Maren makes on it, she may start considering it… Honorable Mention: Speek and Join.Me

 

Now, some of these aren’t the end-all-be-all of apps — but they work for the needs of our team. For the most part, we think they’re all solid. What are some of the apps you use? Any tips for using some of the ones we’ve mentioned? Let us know in the comments below!