This article has been contributed by Vartika Kashyap.

The coronavirus pandemic shows us how something microscopic can have such a humongous impact on the world. The ripples have reached us all, and it’s time to adapt your teams to the telecommuting or remote work regime. Managing a remote team isn’t easy and the transition can take a while.

This feat is even harder for marketing teams, who need constant communication and work primarily on feedback. Nevertheless, communication can be kept alive – if your team works together adhering to remote work guidelines and uses the most suitable tools.

If you use these tricks and tips, communication between people working remotely can be made easier, more efficient and more effective.

The Best Possible Communication Advice For Your Remote Team

Communication works best in an office environment when you know what you want to talk about. Separating trivia from the all-project talk is important. Which is why nowadays we have tools for everything. Discuss the latest show you binged on an instant messaging app and use a “proofing and review management tool” for keeping tabs on the tasks at hand.

What can you do as a manager to facilitate effective communication among the people in your remote team? Communication and collaboration are easy practices when you know what you are talking about. Here are some tips for your remote team:

• Set defined goals so that people are always aware of what your targets are. This makes communication effective and streamlined.
• Setting deadlines and milestones works well for keeping your remote marketing team on track.
• Established workflows also work well if you want your employees to have a systematic communication channel.
• Regular video meetings are very important to help you narrow down your conversation topics and keep everyone on the same page.
• Find a tool that meets your team’s communication needs, for example, a proofing tool, an all-in-one project management tool, or an instant messaging software platform.

What Is the Best Communication Software For Your Marketing Team?

Communication is far more effective when you use a channel designed specifically for the type of communication that your team uses.

1. All-In-One Software Platforms

Using multi-purpose SaaS software is the key to having a well-functioning remote team. These are software platforms that facilitate project management by organizing and categorizing your data, tasks and team members in many different ways. These are coming in handy especially well in the lockdown days. These software platforms work particularly well because they make it possible for you to find everything in one. There are many advantages of using an all-in-one project management software:

• Save your team’s time and energy.
• Keep a record of resources.
• Calculate project and task duration.
• Check on the project progress.
• Review reports and documents.
• Facilitate unperturbed communication.

Related:

• 13 Free Online Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know About
• Jacob’s Top 25 Design & Business Tools 

Here are some of the niftiest and marketing team-friendly project management platforms that are easy to use and have the ability to cut your work time in half. These include:

ProofHub

ProofHub is your go-to software solution for clear task allocation. It helps you create a space where all your employees are on the same page. With an array of useful bells and whistles, ProofHub shines through with some refreshing features for team interaction.

It’s also particularly helpful for marketing teams since it can handle content management and content marketing pretty well. Here is a list of features that make this tool so special when compared to the others:

• Schedule and establish deadlines and make end of the day reports.
• Deliver projects and document progress with Gantt charts and Kanban boards.
• Organize your tasks and store your files in one place.
• Visualize and orient productivity by setting goals and managing milestones.
• Set a custom domain with your brand logo, and theme color of your choice using white-labeling options.
• Make proofing and documenting reviews easier with markup and annotation tools.
• Practice agile project management with ease.

Basecamp

A software that rises to the occasion for the inclusion of your remote marketing team is Basecamp. With this software, you are sure to always keep your team members closer than ever.

Providing you with a place for discussions, it builds you a customized camp where your team can collaborate virtually. The reason why Basecamp works exceptionally well for remote teams is because of the following factors:

• Make productivity the main goal by creating interactive to-do lists.
• Also, make scheduling easier with calendar view.
• Establish and schedule recurring tasks.
• Create and organize people, tasks, and teams.
• Keep track of projects with viewing issue history.
• Create forums and set priorities.
• Track progress and calculate project hours.

ClickUp

ClickUp is another emerging name among the best project management tools out there. This is because it helps your team work with full efficiency even when you go remote. With abundant customization tools and tricks, you can make your data, your tasks and your projects, completely your own.

It is a software program that helps you organize your files and documents and break tasks into subtasks to make your projects more doable and presentable. It also has features like:

• Organize emails effectively with ClickUp.
• Helps with time management by tracking the on time and the duration of the project and tasks.
• Allows complete customization.
• Reporting tools help you keep track of work.
• Make changes to your workflows with 100% customization.
• Manage processes easily with a variety of templates.
• Assign projects and tasks to one or more team members with ease.
• Set task dependencies with Gantt charts.

2. Content Review and Proofing Software

Marketing teams include people who have to be in constant contact with the other teams. They are the first pair of lenses that any task or project is seen under. Therefore, your team primarily requires a software platform that involves an easy to read and easy to write reviewing process. Reviewing and proofing tools can be very useful and timesaving. There are many advantages of using these tools such as:

• The go-to place for quick back and forth.
• Easy to read and easy to write, presentable file structure.
• Tasks made doable by providing a way to supervise.
• A way to suggest changes instantly.
• Easy to store and categorize documents.

Here are some of the tools that help you with the same and more!

GoVisually

Grab approvals, send reviews and always be on the same page – these are just some of the things that GoVisually offers. This is a proofing and review management software platform that is highly versatile and hence can be used for files of all kinds.

It has a very interactive interface that makes it easy to use and easy to access. Software platforms such as this one are largely used because of their collaborative features that can exclusively benefit marketing teams. GoVisually has many features such as:

• It is made for devices of all kinds.
• Get feedback from all your team members and clients with instant notifications.
• Drag and drop feature for files and documents.
• Submit and deliver projects, tasks, files and documents of any kind.
• No getting stuck in email threads.
• Review, discuss and resolve changes easily.
• Keep track of reviews and conversations for future reference.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a tool that offers easy collaboration with its mark-up tools. It is a review management software that allows you to document your progress and review the changes in real-time. With an illustrative interface and the ease of sharing files and documents, your team can readily connect.

It is a solution-oriented app which comes from a no-code background, with flexibility that will adapt to every need of your team. It’s a tool that has integrations with other platforms so that all your work is synchronized. Here’s what makes Smartsheet a solid choice for proofing:

• Manage remote teams better with displaying charts, images, etc.
• Review and share key metrics of your business and productivity statistics.
• Easily create customizable dashboards that facilitate the centralization of data.
• Create portals that help you compartmentalize files and tasks.
• Attach files easily and save them in your hard drive along with the cloud.
• Send alerts and notifications to your team members for approaching deadlines.
• It presents a familiar and flexible solution to file storage and collaboration.
• Establish hierarchy and allow conditional formatting.

Filestage

Filestage is a software platform that helps remote teams out there thrive by providing excellent features for reviewing documents. It helps you easily make changes to your documents. It will help your team oversee the ongoing process of back and forth reviews.

This tool helps you easily add comments and suggestions directly attached to the files. Feedback can also be documented easily and changes can be readily made with the help of Filestage. For collaboration, this tool works perfectly since it has the following features:

• Archive comments and export reviews and feedback.
• Create reviews faster.
• Use custom branding.
• Use it on any device.
• Easy to use and interactive interface.
• Excellent data security.

3. Instant Messaging and Chat Software Platforms

Another must for your remote team is chatting software. For a marketing team, quick back and forth is really important both within the team and with other teams. Along with giving reviews and discussing big picture stuff, the team also needs to support each other and try to be on the same page.

A platform for quick communication is a must for your remote marketing team. Chatting software platforms also help you share files that facilitate ease of working remotely. Task distribution becomes easier and the connection between teams becomes stronger. There are many chatting and instant messaging platforms out there that can help you work remotely. Here are some examples:

Google Hangouts Chat

Google Hangouts Chat works flawlessly for staying in touch with your employees. It helps you create groups for communication in which you can add as many team members as you can. In addition to easy collaboration, it also helps marketing teams promote businesses.

Sharing information and providing demos is also easy with online marketing tools like this one. Reaching your potential audience in the time of this lockdown is also easier with a tool that is as easy to use as Google Hangouts Chat.

• Add files to your chats with ease.
• Set up selective notifications.
• Easily search in chats.
• Start video meetings.
• Manage and snooze notifications.

Chanty

This is a software platform that helps effectively increase productivity and employee engagement. This is a tool that will cut your work time in half by erasing the need for unnecessary communication. Chanty is a tool that has been a trusted partner for remote teams for years now.

What makes it the easiest-to-use communication platform is the fact that it is AI-powered which saves you a lot of time. In addition to that, it also provides you a way to conduct audio and video calls to stay connected more effectively. The key features of Chanty as an instant messaging platform are:

• Highlight and talk directly to team members using “@mention”.
• Save and archive ideas with “pins”.
• Optimize and streamline workflow with Kanban boards.
• Create and manage tasks with ease.

Slack

Slack is the go-to software platform for instant messaging. Keeping everyone involved and engaged is easier with slack. It helps with contact management and sorting conversations. Needless to say, it is a handy software platform for instant messaging.

You can use it to share updates on projects, make people aware of changes and also have discussions as a remote team. It facilitates easy sharing of information as well, making it an amazing platform for telecommuters. Here are some of the best features of this tool:

• Pin messages and links to different channels.
• Set reminders easily to track performance.
• It helps by providing easy navigation.
• Customize and streamline your sidebar.
• Search with “advanced” features.

Related: Top Tools to Work From Home – The Ultimate Guide

Conclusion

There are many kinds of communication tools out there that can provide you different kinds of platforms to convey your messages. I hope you will go over all the above-mentioned software platforms to know which one will suit the needs of your remote marketing team.

_

About the author: Vartika Kashyap is the CMO at ProofHub and has been one of the LinkedIn Top Voices in 2018. Her articles are inspired by office situations and work-related events.