Running a business in the world today isn’t easy. There’s more competition than ever before and if you aren’t adapting with the changes in place, you can quickly find yourself falling behind. Incorporating a global pandemic and working from home into the mix and what was once a simple day-to-day operations schedule, is now an ongoing mission of jumping from task to task.
Throw lead generation, customer support, outreach and social media marketing into the mix, and any of these components can quickly seem like a full time job. The good news is, as technology and SaaS continues to progress, new and exciting solutions are making the process of automation, implementation and seamless connectivity easier than ever before.
With this all of this mind, today we are going to highlight three different areas of your business or organization where you can step up your game.
Update Your Phone and Telecommunications Platforms
One industry that is continually changing year after year is the mobile and telecommunications space. Not only are mobile devices getting more advanced and allowing for in-app usage to change the way we communicate with others and run our business, it’s also changing how business is done as a whole.
Whether you are completely internet-based or running a call center, you need to make sure you have the latest technology and mobile advancements in place to make sure your organization is running at peak performance.
As recommended in this small business phone systems reference guide, some of the best platforms and solutions out there include Nextiva, RingCentral, Ooma, Freshcaller, Dialpad, Line2 and Intermedia Unite.
And when it comes to trying to figure out the best solution for your brand and business, you should be looking at the deployment methods available, if you are going to be using physical phone systems (or online), how many users you will be incorporating into the solution and of course the associated features, costs and monthly plans associated with each.
For this reason and more, you will want to spend a decent amount of time to review the different options available — as many are focused on the needs of smaller businesses, while also scaling up and catering to the needs of organizations with thousands of clients.
Improved Social Media Management and Scheduling
Another industry that continues to grow year after year, while also offering more user and customer engagement options, is the world of social media. As some popular social platforms like Facebook and Twitter continue to gain usage, they are also seeing themselves fall behind to newer platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.
With so many different social media platforms out there, it’s important to make sure your business and brand has exposure on each, as not everyone likes the same platform. By skipping out on one, it could result in the loss of thousands of new leads and customers.
This means, everyone should be using social media management and scheduling tools to help out in their SMM efforts.
As highlighted in this Forbes article, ten different communications professionals listed their favorite social media management tools, which included name like Sprinklr, Spredfast, Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, Clearview Social and Hubspot.
And just like how we broke down the many differences and features available when it comes to choosing the right mobile and telecommunications platform for your business, the same holds true for social media management and scheduling platforms as well.
With each of the examples listed above, different solutions will cater to different social platforms. Some will allow for integration with the top platforms, while some might cater to just one. In either case, it’s important to choose a solution that lets you better organize your content, schedule out and upload content, and also sticking with the most popular platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.
The good news is, no matter how much time and effort you are focusing on social media, nearly all of the scheduling tools and solutions out there are relatively cheap and will often save hundreds of hours per week (versus manually uploading and scheduling to each platform).
If you aren’t already using scheduling and management in your SMM efforts, right now is the best time to get started.
Outsource and Automate Wherever Possible
We’ve briefly touched upon telecommunications and social media management within your business and organization. These are two huge areas for nearly all organizations, but they could also be costing you a lot more in time, resources and money if not done properly.
As referenced at the beginning of the article, the global pandemic and working from home has drastically changed the normal day-to-day operations for millions of businesses around the world. Mostly for the bad, but for those who have been focused on outsourcing and automation, it’s become quite the dream come true.
In order to lower costs and increase productivity, throw away the concept of needing to fill a physical office building with workers that come and go all the time. This will quickly eliminate the high costs of rent, while also leaving more time for people to work remotely.
This is a topic that was recently discussed on Zapier’s blog, where they highlighted some of the best remote working tools for businesses and brands of all sizes. Such tools helped to improve mobile usage, screen sharing, recording, cloud storage, team collaboration and much more. The important takeaway and service of each, is to improve both productivity and connectivity amongst employees and team members.
One of the best ways to grow your business and brand, while keeping it headed in the right direction, is to implement new and exciting ways to outsource and automate tedious or costly tasks.
A Never Ending List of Solutions and Tools
The good news is, no matter what area of your business or organization you are looking to improve, there are likely a set of tools and platforms out there to help with it.
It’s also important to note that many of these applications and solutions can integrate and talk with each other as well. This is something you will want to consider when reviewing each of the solutions and recommendations referenced throughout the article.
Right now is the best time to start implementing such changes into your organization, so what are you waiting for?
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