How to Use Flipboard to Stay on Top of Your Competition and Your Industry
Because we're all busy all the time, it almost becomes a chore to seek out news online. And yet it's vital that everyone — executives and managers most of all — stay on top of their industry's headlines in order to monitor the competition. Information is key. The problem is your Facebook feed is dominated by Buzzfeedy articles and clickbait. And assembling your RSS feeds in Feedly might seem like way too much of a time investment. How then does one collect relevant news and consume it in a pleasing UI? We have a suggestion: try Flipboard. What is Flipboard? Flipboard is a web-based content platform with well over 100 million users, and adding 250,000 additional readers every day. It gives users a sleek magazine interface to consume news articles in choice topic areas. Instead of venturing to individual websites and collecting RSS feeds into a feed reader such as Feedly, you can simply choose to follow generic topics such as "project management" or "marketing," specific people such as Madonna or Robert Scoble, or other user-created magazines such as Productivity Works! or Startup Spark Up. The entire user experience was designed for mobile first (they only just released the desktop/web version of Flipboard in February 2015), and is easily one of the most satisfying app experiences around. Articles are presented in a magazine-style layout, allowing you to swipe through pages. Flipboard allows you to become a magazine editor. You can "flip" content from across the web into your very own magazines by using the app, or a bookmarklet/browser extension on the web version. Your magazines can revolve around topics you enjoy, and there's no design work involved. The app automatically displays your curated content in a neat magazine layout. 5 Tips on Using Flipboard to Monitor Your Industry & Competition If you really want to make the most of Flipboard as a one-stop news reader, it is important to set it up properly. Here are five tips: 1. Follow topics, people, and magazines in your industry/niche Feel free to follow the topics/people/magazines you enjoy personally, but also find Flipboards that will inspire and inform your work. Follow your competitors. Follow your industry. The things you follow will determine what articles show up in your feed, so it's important to put thought into choosing what you follow. 2. Explore Flipboard's suggestions After Flipboard acquired Zite in 2014, it beefed up its recommendation algorithms so that people could more easily discover user-generated magazines. It now does a very good job of recommending magazines based on topics you follow, another reason why it's integral to follow stuff you actually want to read about. 3. Or... simply read the Daily Edition for Flipboard's curated news If all that still seems like way too much work, there is a final alternative: the Daily Edition, which is Flipboard's version of the daily print newspaper. A team of editors hand-picks articles for this section every morning, and just like a newspaper, there's a definite end. Unlike the regular feeds, there's no infinite scroll — there's a point where you can say "I've finished reading today's top news stories." 4. Connect a Read Later app You can't always read something as it appears on your feed. If you connect a read later app such as Instapaper, Pocket, or Readability, you can easily check out the post that caught your fancy at a more convenient time. 5. Connect your social media accounts Once you install Flipboard on your mobile device, connect your social media accounts so that you can flip anything from your social feeds straight into your magazines. Note: if you sign up for Flipboard on the desktop, you might miss out on this feature since it's only available on the mobile app. Start By Following These 4 Flipboard Magazines If you're looking for suggestions on magazines to follow, we put together four of our very own. Check them out: + Productivity Works! for tips on getting work done, to-do list strategies, productivity tech, and tips for becoming more efficient. + Social Project Management, for everything related to project management methodologies, project management tips, and articles that of interest to project managers. + Startup Spark Up for entrepreneurial advice, startup culture, growth hacking, and other emerging business articles. + Marketing Speak for content marketing, advertising, social media, and all things digital marketing. What Are Your Favorite Flipboard Magazines? There are probably thousands of magazines available on Flipboard. We'd love to hear your recommendations on what else to follow. Drop your links in our comments section!
How to Evolve From Using Prehistoric Tools to Using Wrike
We've recently talked about the inevitable "Work Dino" in every office — those outdated tools or processes we use that are no longer as effective as they once were. Like using email to manage projects or spreadsheets to track task status, and holding weekly or even daily status meetings to talk about progress face to face.
3 Work Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Tools That Should Be Extinct
Your workplace has dinosaurs — those outdated work tools or processes that used to be able to handle the job but are no longer viable in this day and age of increased connection and collaboration. It's time to update your jurassic methods, or else get ready for extinction.
Key to Adopting New Project Management Software from Day 1
Yet Adrian McDonagh, Managing Director at the U.K.’s leading Internet recruitment service, EasyWebRecruitment.com, was able to find a solution that was thoroughly adopted by his team of 15 people from the first day of use. Does he know some kind of secret? Well, this secret is simple: successful adoption is not about the tool. It’s about your team being able to use it. Adrian knows that when you look for a new software solution, it’s important to pick an application, which ties in with the technologies your employees already use and love. This lets you sneak the new system into your team members' hands while providing a familiar interface. So if you don’t want to put additional training pressure on your staff, find a system that fits the existing workflows and integrates with apps that your team members already know. This was exactly what Adrian did when he offered Wrike to his team to use for project and task management. “Our major challenge with all the project management systems was adoption. The team was already working very hard, and we did not want to add something to their day that would take a lot of time and training to get to grips with, or add to their administrative burden. It was completely different with Wrike. I was pleased to see that, once I showed the team how simple Wrike was, even the more skeptical members of the team were quickly convinced, ” says Adrian. What became the key to 100% Wrike adoption by the EasyWebRecruitment team? Read the whole interview with the company’s managing director to find out.
3 Tips for Maximizing LinkedIn's Connection Tools
LinkedIn is not just a social network for keeping up-to-date with colleagues and clients, it's also a powerful business connection tool that gives you the ability to communicate directly with industry influencers, job candidates, and prospective clients. But it only works at its best if you invest a little time in optimizing your profile and learning the ins and outs of its powerful features. We put together a slideshare to describe some of the not-too-obvious ways you can use LinkedIn to connect with anyone. Tips include: Did you know that if you are in a LinkedIn group with someone, you can message them directly even if they're not in your network? And no need to pay for InMails either. Simply join groups where your much of your target audience congregates and you have an easier way to contact prospects. Find a target's colleagues by checking out the "People Also Viewed" column on the right side of the profile. More often than not, the people listed there are coworkers or clients of the target. You can sometimes find a person's direct email address, even if it's not listed anywhere in their profile page. The secret is to click "Send InMail." Some people choose to show their email addresses in the "Contact Advice" area right next to the message box. For the complete set of 10 tips for optimizing your profile and using LinkedIn to connect with people outside your direct network, check out the slideshare: Unleash the Secret Power of LinkedIn Do you have any LinkedIn tips to share with us? We'd love to learn more from you. Hit the comments! Photo by Juliana Coutinho - Creative Commons Attribution License https://www.flickr.com/photos/10217810@N05
Letting Users Take the Lead in Choosing their Tools Can Benefit the Whole Business
Recently I came across an article about how hard it can be to introduce new enterprise business intelligence technologies to a company. This article reflects an important corporate phenomenon: “mandating and forcing users to adopt a standard practice or technology will often create resistance and political backlash.” The author underlines that transforming and changing the way people do business is never easy, and she advises the heads of IT departments on the best ways to implement the changes.Why is it so hard to make users adopt the new software introduced by IT departments? One of the reasons is that sometimes the choice of software is made levels above the actual users. In these cases software is adopted without taking users’ opinion into consideration. Often users have no budgets and little decision power, and that is why all software vendors’ marketing efforts are targeted at top management and heads of IT departments, who make the final choice of software. Many experts agree that this fact is convenient for the IT departments, because they get as much control as possible over users’ operations. Top management sometimes may not know the specific character of their employees’ work. That’s why the managers’ choice for software may become an additional barrier for effective collaboration, instead of being a helpful solution. As a result, people can be forced to adapt to the imposed tool that does not answer their requirements and can be hard to master. They may have to spend weeks or even months on training. Still, after all the training efforts, the IT-introduced solution might turn out to be ineffective for successful team work. Information can often be hard to find, as it is kept in disconnected files. Sometimes lack of built-in collaboration vehicles in an IT imposed solution can slow down the whole business. Change in enterprise management software adoption All these factors are making the top-management of many companies change their views on the IT department’s role in the adoption of a new business solution. Now there is a strong tendency of transformation in enterprise software adoption due to growing user sophistication. Social networks, blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies people use at home help them find similar tools for more effective work in the office. People find new ways to work together and collaborate without any help from IT departments. These ways are Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and they turn out to be more efficient. Why? An Enterprise 2.0 online collaboration platform can make team-work frictionless, as it is more flexible. Second-generation software is designed with user needs in mind. Team members can customize their collaborative space and make it specific to their own needs. The new-generation software is easy to use. Simplicity has become a key driver of technology adoption, especially in the last 10 years, as advanced technologies have developed simpler user interfaces. For example, blogging can be called a revolution of simplicity. To blog, all you need to do is write a title and, some content, and then click publish. It is that simple to share your ideas with the rest of the team and get their feedback in the comments. Collaboration software can do even more for business productivity. It may be the key for streamlining the work process and may help companies avoid unnecessary paper work and phone calls. Everything is kept in one place – a collaborative space that can be accessed by all the team members. Many companies today realize these benefits and take advantage of them by letting their employees choose the software, which will correspond to the end-users’ needs. As an example we can take SightLines Consulting – a consulting company where employees had lots of complaints on complexity of their CRM software. The application was chosen by the top-management. The tool was stable, but end-users kept saying that the application is inflexible and hard to use. The sales people - the end-users of the software – tend to spend most of their working time out of the office, on the road. The major inconvenience was that the application was impossible to access any other way than through their internal network. However, “sales people are motivated to produce” says SightLines Consulting president Thomas Foydel. This means, that they are motivated to find ways and tools to be more productive. The end-users turned to Enterprise 2.0 technologies. When they found a solution that adds actual value to their everyday job, they adopted it. The result was doubling the speed of sales team work and improved customer satisfaction. The whole business became more successful. The top executives at SightLines Consulting are now sure that they made the right decision by letting the sales team choose their tools. Enterprise 2.0 software brings new ways of collaboration and is adopted according to different standards. It’s easy to use, effective and flexible. This software is brought to the enterprise the bottom-up way, and very often is suggested by end-users themselves. It’s no surprise that the second-generation software adoption and usage are more thorough than those of traditional software. Peter Coffee, a recognized software-as-a-service advocate, said that the software that end-users had before might have been stable, mature and predictable, but “it was not transforming people's ideas of how they do business”. I would add that it was not giving them enough space for implementation of their ideas. IT-departments should not ignore this fact. Changing IT-staff altitude towards the new-generation technologies will benefit the whole organization. IT departments need to learn to evaluate the new opportunities. In particular, IT needs additional competency in evaluating and administering service agreements. Enterprise 2.0 is not just software. It represents another way of managing IT. This means that IT departments should now shift their focus toward managing Enterprise 2.0 vendor relationships, as operational responsibility over the actual hardware and software moves to vendors. Some CIOs have already begun to move in this direction. For example, Alastair Behenna, CIO of Harvey Nash, says that their IT staff is looking into emerging technologies and trying to stay in the loop. “We have a lab where our team—from the help desk to the Web folks—is encouraged to spend as much as 10 percent of its time figuring out if there is commercial benefit to something [new] and doing a proof of concept if so,” - Behenna confirms. Of cause transformation of the software adoption process will be different in various companies. Some enterprises will still preserve the old ways of choosing software without taking the end-users’ opinion into consideration. Others have already realized the benefits of letting their employees take the lead in selecting their tools and making teams more productive. Examples of companies like Shell, Harvey Nash and many others, prove that allowing end-users choose the software according to their needs can make the whole business performance better.
How to De-Stress by Building Relationships & Deleting Apps (Work Management Roundup)
In this week's Work Management Roundup where we bring together the best reads in the last seven days (or beyond) concerning productivity, working more effectively, mindfulness, management, and more. This week, we look at how to get rid of stress by deleting addictive apps and making time for nurturing relationships — whether it's with friends or your direct reports. Read on! How I Cleared My Mind and Became Less Stressed: Deleting All My Apps (The Next Web): Sound too extreme for you? If you can't delete them, here are some concrete steps to disentangle yourself from your apps. Hint: use the mobile browser. Happiness Hack: This One Ritual Made Me Much Happier (Nir and Far): Science proves it: having high quality friendships keeps you healthy. But how do you make the time for nurturing these relationships instead of simply giving them what's left over after your to-dos are done? Productivity author Nir Eyal shares his answer, and it lies in the Hebrew word: kibbutz. A Brief Guide to Better 1:1’s — For Makers and Managers Alike (Medium): If you keep canceling or moving your 1:1, you're sending the message that work is more important than your people. Here are 8 tips to starting, and sustaining your one-on-ones with your direct reports. How to Keep a Bullet Journal (YouTube): This analog method of journalling or keeping your to-dos needs only 2 things: a pen and a notebook. But what it gives you is an effective way to capture your tasks on paper rapidly, record work done for the day, and organize items for future action. In short, it's an analog version of Wrike for people who like working offline. Tech Companies Need English Majors Just As Much As They Need Engineers (LinkedIn): In this interview with LinkedIn New Economy Editor Caroline Fairchild, she says that you need both liberal arts graduates as well as technology experts to build and sell products people want to use. More Work Management Reads Think About This: 4 Common Mistakes New Employers Make (AllTopStartups) 5 Great Invisible Apps - Apps with no UI (Medium) Building a Growth Machine - The Scientific Method: How to Design & Track Viral Growth Experiments (Slideshare) Go Try This: How To Manage Your Time: 5 Secrets Backed By Research (Bakadesuyo) How to Pull Employees Out of Hibernation this Winter (HCM Essentials) Browse The Work Management Roundup on Flipboard If you use Flipboard on your mobile device, then you can check out these links via The Work Management Roundup magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine.
How Marketing Agencies Use Timesheet Apps to Measure Project Profitability
When a business works on multiple accounts or projects, being able to time track is key for profitability. An employee timesheet app can make your team more efficient and productive. Find out why with Wrike.
Wrike as Marketing Project Management Software
We prepared a video in which our users, Philip and Laura, tell you how Wrike helps them with their marketing project management. Additionally, you will learn how to: create tasks attach files to tasks set the due date of tasks add folders organize tasks in folders delegate tasks to your associates give the responsible party 24/7 access to tasks be notified about changes in tasks and, finally, how to get control and a unique visibility of operations Watch the full-sized video: How a manager plans a Product Launch in Wrike Feel free to ask questions and make comments. We’ll be happy to give you additional details about how you can benefit from Wrike.
3 Questions to Make Your Marketing Technology Stack Even More Powerful
Marketing technologies can be powerful assets, helping you automate routine tasks, improve customer engagement, and coordinate and collaborate with your team. But you only reap the full benefits when your tools work together, fitting naturally into your established processes and tangibly moving the needle when it comes to converting customers. Just because a tool seems useful, doesn't necessarily mean you should use it — and adopting too many just gums up the works. So when it comes to setting up or revising your marketing technology stack, ask yourself these three questions to identify where adding a tool might be helpful, as well as where you can easily streamline. 1. "Where does this tool fit into the customer journey?" As a marketer, your customer personas and detailed buyer's journey should always be top of mind. Take a look at your customer journey and list which of your tools contribute to each step. This will help you see gaps where new marketing asset management software could help you out, as well as identify unnecessary or overlapping technologies. 2. "Does this tool help convert prospects?" A popular tool may help you tweet 1,000 times a day, but if your customers aren't on Twitter, what's the point? Look at the data and be realistic about which technologies make a real difference when it comes to conversion rates and team productivity. 3. "What if this tool didn't exist?" Although it’s only a hypothetical, taking this question seriously can help you see other ways of accomplishing the same objective, think creatively, and streamline the number of tools you're using (and paying for). What's Next? Asking these questions will help you be strategic in building an effective marketing technology stack that helps you accomplish — and even exceed — your goals. Free Marketing Tech Map Template Download our free eBook, 5 Steps to Transforming Marketing Operations For Maximum Growth, for a simple template you can use to start building or improving your own marketing toolkit.
Why Project Management Tools Are the Key to Great Customer Relationship Management
What is customer relationship management and how can project management tools help you take it to the next level? This post covers everything you need to know about elevating and building client relationships and the benefits of customer interaction management.
How to Improve Collaboration With Task Management Software
Collaboration between teams and individuals is the key to success within project management companies. But what is the best task management software and how can PS managers use it to better collaborate? Find out how task management software can help.
Gantt Chart Software: A Key Tool For Project Management (Infographic)
When you're managing projects, it's all too common that tasks slip and releases get pushed back. To remedy the situation, you need to learn from your mistakes and improve planning in the future. Online Gantt chart software is a great way to help your team organize your schedule so that you hit every deadline on time. If you've never heard of or used a Gantt chart before, take a look at this infographic. It highlights the key ways you can use Gantt chart makers and proper project management to make sure work stays on track. Learn something new from this infographic, or want to spread the knowledge? Share this infographic on social media, or paste it on your blog using the code below: Infographic brought to you by Wrike Why do you use Gantt charts? If you're already using an online Gantt chart for your project management, tell everyone about it in the comments. How has work improved since you started using them? What are some tips to help make using a Gantt chart easier? We value your input in helping us teach people better ways to manage work. You can also get an in-depth breakdown of how to use a Gantt chart for project management here.
Why do companies choose Software as a Service?
The growth of popularity of Enterprise 2.0 on-demand software is remarkable. This growth is not gradual. The pace of on-demand software adoption grows each month and equals 150 % year-over-year, according to Saugatuck Technology research. On-demand software, or software delivered to the customer via the Internet as a service, turned out to be a revolutionary concept in the late 1990’s. Back then, it seemed unbelievable to replace the traditional on-premise software, which you have to buy and install on your computer, with a service. The situation has now changed as businesses and the software vendors serving them are serious about on-demand software delivery.In 2005, IDC announced in its report that on-demand software will represent more than 3.8% of all spending, or $10.7 billion by 2009. In 2006, on-demand software was announced to be the future of software development by many of the authoritative media, such as Forbes, the New York Times, EWeek, and BusinessWeek. Today, business magazines announce that on-demand software customers are becoming more comfortable with the model and that, according to recent research, nearly 36% of large and small companies are considering bringing software-as-a-service technologies into their organizations. About 80 percent of those considering it say they plan to adopt it within the next 12 months. Additionally, 90% of enterprises that are using on-demand software have already stated that they plan to expand their use. Today, we have a great number of examples of software delivered as a service. The applications range from project management to CRM services. Factors influencing the enterprise Why is software delivered as a service adopted by more and more companies all over the world? There are certain external and internal factors which influence the software development and the development of other industries. Here are 2 major external factors: Fast-paced development of the telecommunication industry transforms and expands the former boundaries of software development. Telecommunications are affordable and available from almost any computer. Information workers enjoy high-speed connections to the Internet at home and at work. Almost 300 million people worldwide are now accessing the Internet, using fast broadband connections and fueling the growth of social networking and business software applications. Penetration of broadband services is seen as a key for developing businesses all over the world. Fast Internet enables companies to use software applications for storing, editing and exchanging information online and accessing it anytime they need it. Outsourcing development opened new opportunities for businesses. Business strategists started to pay more and more attention to outsourcing of non-core operations since the 1980s. In the early 2000s, IT outsourcing became a very important cost-cutting measure for thousands of companies. Today, it is increasingly viewed as a strategic planning and outcomes optimizing tool. A recent survey of American and European executives conducted by Accenture shows that 25% of respondents report first-day improvements in business processes with an outsourcing model. The benefits of outsourcing are incontestable: instead of building their own infrastructure and supporting it, companies outsource it to a third party and focus on the core of their businesses. They save on money, time and effort. As a form of outsourcing, on-demand software penetrates deeper into the way businesses are built nowadays. Major benefits for the enterprise There are also very significant reasons why many business owners and CEOs choose to adopt a new online service, rather than use on-premise software. These are the internal factors. Let’s have a look at on-demand tools from a CEO’s point of view, and we’ll see the advantages for the business growth immediately. As opposed to on-premise software, software as a service has 4 basic advantages; 1. It is cost-effective for small and large companies. On-demand software offers lower prices and lower total cost of ownership (up to 50% and more for project management software implementation, for example). Business owners get a faster return on investment. Companies "pay as they go," so hosted solutions often carry little or no upfront cost. The savings can be really huge. For example, in 2005, the town of Stratford estimated that upgrading and merging its two in-house Microsoft Exchange 5.5 environments — one placed at town hall (250 users) and the other at the police station (100 users) — as well as the underlying 10-year-old server, would run $180,000 to $250,000. Instead, the town authorities decided to sign a contract with InfoStreet, an on-demand service provider, to host the Exchange e-mail servers. The representatives of the town authorities do not disclose the exact terms of the contract, but they do say that they paid 20 times less than they would have paid for Microsoft to replace their Exchange environment. 2. Software as a service implies a short-term commitment, which results in dramatic financial risk reduction for businesses. By acquiring traditional software, companies pay significant amounts of money (over $100,000 for CRM solutions) and still face the high risk that the software may not fulfill the business requirements. In this case, there is no refund option. Instead, a SaaS product manager can start implementing software as a service by purchasing 3 or 4 accounts. The users will test the application’s features and determine whether the software complies with the corporate needs. Then the organization can gradually involve more users and acquire more accounts. Otherwise, the company can make a decision to move to another software provider that offers better service conditions. A good example would be Superior Industries, a company producing conveying equipment. They had turned to an on-demand solution when their top management realized that they could save up to 90% of their expenditures on CRM software. Later the executives of the company reviewed the return on investment they were receiving from their CRM service, provided by Salesforce.com, and decided to reevaluate their approach. Their switch to SugarCRM resulted in even greater savings, up to $70 000. 3. SaaS reduces the burden on IT staff. Moving to software as a service contract template means reducing the IT headcount, cutting the cost of hiring and training IT support and reducing IT operating costs. Internal IT personnel don't have to purchase and support the server infrastructure necessary to install and maintain the software in-house. The onus of maintaining a labor-intensive patch and upgrade process is taken by the software providers. With traditional licensed software, companies typically have to wait months for the next release of an application, which internal IT staff will then have to test and deploy. Very often, these installations are time-consuming and do not run smoothly. On the contrary, using software as a service means that a company will receive all the software patches automatically and usually much more promptly. Moreover, by using the SaaS product management, enterprises ensure that subsidiaries in all locations are using the correct application software version. 4. On-demand software usage usually means instant deployment. Traditional application implementation cycles inside companies can take years, consume massive resources and yield unsatisfactory results. With on-demand software, a company can start using the service the moment the provider activates the company’s accounts, which usually happens minutes after the payment is made. So taking into consideration all these advantages, it’s not surprising that more and more companies choose to adopt on-demand software and that analysts believe that this model of software delivery is the future of the software industry. McKinsey Quarterly named software as a service a disruptive force and called for traditional software vendors to focus on integrating on-demand software into their product lines. More and more, companies introduce their on-demand alternatives to traditional on-premise software. One of the best examples would be the project management field, where next-generation, Web-based applications have already displaced MS Project from its leading position, as they offer greater opportunities for easy and productive collaboration. Today, the IT landscape is changing, opening new competitive advantages for early adopting customers. What we observe is, while some companies are struggling with the pain and cost of installation, others are wisely spending their time and money on their core business and become market leaders by leveraging all the benefits of the new technologies.
