Tips for Effective Collaboration when Managing Remote Teams
The evolution of modern communications has changed the way we work, and the number of remote teams in the UK has increased by 20% in the last decade. Across the globe, this figure has risen 159% since 2005. There’s a lot to like about flexible working. You can sit in on conference calls in your PJs, graze all day long, and put a load of washing on while chatting to your boss on WhatsApp. Flexible working is also beneficial for businesses: more home workers means less office space is required, which reduces overheads exponentially. It’s not all plain sailing, however. Managing remote teams can often be a challenge. If someone misses a deadline, it’s a lot harder to chase them up when they work overseas and are ignoring your emails. In fact, communication issues are one of the main problems with managing remote teams, as we are about to explore. Digital communications are often open to misinterpretation. We tend to rely on body language clues when communicating in person, but this isn’t an option when you chat on the phone or discuss an order via email. With so many digital channels to manage, it’s not surprising that information is sometimes scrambled or lost in the ether, causing unnecessary confusion. Effective collaboration can be a huge challenge when managing remote teams. Confusion and misinterpretation can lead to anxiety, poor morale, a lack of engagement and productivity, and zero innovation. To avoid frustration and conflict, you need to set rules and explore more effective ways to collaborate. Set boundaries Technology is both a blessing and a curse. Thanks to emails and IMs, we can talk to our colleagues all day and all night. But, let’s be honest, who wants to? Without boundaries, communications can easily intrude into personal time, so it’s important to set clear rules about when communications can be sent and when replies are expected. For example, let your teams know that emails, IMs, and phone calls are not welcome after working hours unless it’s an emergency. Establish set communication channels Decide as a team what communication channels are most appropriate. Some remote teams utilise platforms like Slack whereas others use WhatsApp. If you prefer to reply in your own time, then email is a better option. Pay attention to individual styles of communication Make a note of how different people communicate. Some people have zero sense of humour and are easily offended by jokey banter whereas others don’t mind being copied in on silly memes. Learn to communicate clearly Corporate-speak should be avoided at all costs. Telling an employee to “think outside the box” isn’t helpful in the slightest. Give them clear instructions on what you need them to do. Never make the assumption that others know what your abbreviations mean. When remote workers have nothing to go on but a terse email, you can’t blame them if they misunderstand you. Remember, less isn’t more when you are explaining something via email or IM. Be as clear as you can be and be prepared to explain further if necessary. Don’t micromanage It’s easy to fall into the trap of micromanaging people when they work remotely. We’ve all been there. We send an email and when no reply is forthcoming immediately, we follow it up with a text message and then a phone call. Give people a break! Choose the most suitable communication channel for your message. If it’s not urgent, email. If you need a timely reply, phone them. Let someone know when they don’t need to respond (for example, if they have been copied in for information purposes only). Don’t CC every man and his dog Be sensible about copying people in on communications. Too often, multiple recipients are needlessly copied into an email when only one person actually needs to see it. All this does is provoke annoyance when people are forced to read umpteen irrelevant emails. It’s not all doom and gloom. Digital communication channels are a godsend for shy, introverted types. These people are often intimidated in in-person meetings whereas they are more likely to speak out in a group chat online. Encourage team spirit It’s important that you make remote workers feel a part of the wider team. Give each person their own avatar for communications channels. Acknowledge birthdays with e-cards and organise social gatherings online if you can’t get together in real life. Here at Ink Elves, managing a remote team is the norm and we have learned to make it work for us. For some businesses, it makes sense to hire remote workers to produce content for their brand, but it isn’t easy managing freelancers. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with remote workers, you are much better off outsourcing your content creation to a team like us. We can deal with all the headaches while you worry about running your business. Doesn’t that sound better? Contact us today if you need some fresh content for your website, blog, or link building campaign. We can handle anything you give us!
How to Use Emotional Marketing to Boost Your Brand and Win New Customers
All businesses should invest in marketing. From online ads to radio slots, marketing helps to spread the word about your product or service. When done well, it builds your brand and broadens your reach. Conducting a continual re-evaluation of your marketing strategy is important. Trends come and go and customers change. What works one month might bomb the next. Businesses that fail to evolve die. Marketing is no different. In a couple of decades, the field has shifted from offline ads to online ads and it’s now a lot harder to make an impression in an overcrowded crowded marketplace. This is where the benefits of appealing to your target customer’s emotions can pay dividends. What is emotional marketing? There are some adverts that really resonate and speak to our emotions. The Real Beauty campaign from Dove was a bonafide tear-jerker. Its message was: “you are more beautiful than you think”. You can watch it here if you missed it the first time around. As part of the Dove campaign, a police sketch artist drew two portraits of various women: one based on how they described themselves and the other based on how a stranger described them. All of the women focussed on aspects of their appearance they didn’t like whereas the stranger saw them as a whole. The results were very telling. Many of the women were moved to tears when they realised how much they put themselves down. This is a great example of emotional marketing. The Always brand’s “Like a Girl” campaign is another. It encouraged girls to break stereotypes, be themselves, and follow their passions. This campaign won many awards, as well as a lot of media attention. How does this help you and your brand? The online and offline world is awash with advertising in many forms. Every time we click on a website or turn on the TV, we are bombarded with ads; some subtle, others less so. It’s really hard for brands to stand out. Emotional advertising is very effective in this regard. It taps into a consumer’s emotions, which holds their attention and influences their purchase decisions. And let’s not forget, modern consumers have a very short attention span! If you can tap into a consumer’s emotions, they are more likely to buy your product/service. Emotions have a greater influence on us than cold, hard logic. This is why we buy chocolate when we are feeling sad – even though we know it’s bad for us. How to use emotional marketing Think about how you want your product/service to make a consumer feel. Research has shown that inciting different emotional reactions can lead to different outcomes. Happiness encourages people to share content with their friends and family. Fear causes people to see your brand as a shining beacon of light in a mad, bad world. Sadness leads to empathy and altruism Anger can generate viral content, which is why provocative tweets are far more likely to go viral By tapping into these emotional responses, you can generate much better results from your advertising campaigns. Colour theory Use colour to trigger an emotional response. Red is associated with love, passion, and excitement whereas green is linked to health and nature and black with corporate branding. Storytelling Telling a story is another way to connect with your audience. You can reach your target audience by chronicling a story they can relate to. Remember the Gold Blend adverts? The Gold Blend couple fell in love over the course of the ad series, and Nescafe sold a lot of coffee in the process. Inspire your audience Red Bull gave us wings and helped their audience believe in the impossible. Arguably, Lynx did the same for a lot of nerdy men. Start a movement The ‘Like a Girl’ ads fall into this category, by inspiring a generation of women and girls to break gender stereotypes. The Aussie Metro Trains “Dumb Ways to Die” campaign was another huge hit, thanks to a healthy dose of black humour. It helped spread the message to young people that playing around trains was not a smart thing to do. Sell an impossible dream Ads that show us a glimpse of how amazing life could be if we buy into their product are selling us a dream. Old Spice did very well on the back of this, by using humour to imply that a male partner could transform into a hot and sexy beefcake, simply by using Old Spice products. Know your target audience For emotional marketing to work, you have to nail your target audience. Think about who your customer is and what will resonate best with them. If your customer’s emotions are perfectly aligned with your ad message, you are on the right track. Naturally, as we are sure you are aware, content marketing is a critical part of any advertising campaign. Without great content, your marketing campaign will suffer. Contact us today if you need help penning content that hits the right mark – our Ink Elves are experts in the art of emotional prose!
What to Do When a Developer Holds Your Site to Ransom
Many small businesses pay a developer to create their website. This makes sense for a number of reasons, not least the fact that the end result will be more professional. However, what you might not consider when you hand over your money is that the developer has you over a barrel. Some developers keep their clients in the dark as much as possible. It’s in their interest to withhold key information so you stay with them and they can continue charging a monthly fee for hosting and site updates. The client probably doesn’t care. He’s handed a flash new website, so he is happy. But what he fails to realise is that the developer controls every aspect of the site. If the client wants to switch to a new (cheaper) hosting deal or hand the site to another developer, he won’t have the information he needs. Why is Site Access Important? Not all developers are reputable or in it for the long-term. Some of them are only interested in making a quick profit and disappear without a trace overnight. That’s not great if they take your website details with them. It’s also not nice if they hold you to ransom when you tell them you want to switch to a new developer. There is a lot that can go wrong with websites. Payment methods fail. Emails stop working. Sites get hacked. Your hosting company goes bust. And so on. Without key information, such as what hosting company you’re using and what platform the site is built on, you’re in a tight corner. Sure, the site belongs to you (allegedly) because you paid a small fortune for it, but if you don’t have access or control, your asset is worthless! What To Do Next Speak to the developer and see if you can come to an amicable resolution. It could all just be a misunderstanding. If you can’t get through to the developer or they are being deliberately obstructive, find out who is hosting your site. Visit whois.com or icann.org and type in your website URL. If the information is public, it will be listed. Some developers make the information private, in which case you won’t find out anything useful. Larger sites are often hosted on a dedicated server rather than a shared one. If this applies to you, someone in the company may have access to it. If so, you can check who the hosting company is from the nameserver information. Chances are you are not on the cheapest package and it is prudent to switch to a cheaper deal to save money. However, bear in mind you might need to migrate your site over if you move to a new hosting provider (if in doubt, ask for help). Check who your domain registration company is. Reset your login if necessary and verify all payments are up to date. If the developer registered your business’s domain in their own name, ask the domain company to transfer it to you. Pro tip: never let a developer register your company’s domain in their name. If you do this, you are storing up a lot of trouble for the future. Find Out Who Your Email Host Is Many businesses have a custom email address, for example, admin@mycompany.com. To find out who your email host is, log into your domain panel and look at your site’s DNS settings. The domain name in your MX records is your email host. Once you have this information, you can contact them directly to find out any settings you need. If in doubt, speak to your hosting provider and ask them to verify who your email provider is – this information might be in your records. Last Resort If none of the above helps and you are still locked out of your own website, you might have to cut your losses and start from scratch. This time choose a reputable developer and make sure they give you all the information you need, at every step of the way. Remember, this is your site and your business. If you don’t understand anything, keep asking questions until it makes more sense. A good developer will be happy to go over things until you are both on the same page. True Story One of our clients had this problem. He wasn’t able to access his site and the original developer refused to hand over control. In the end, he was forced to engage a different web designer to build a new site and we provided all of the content. Not ideal, but he couldn’t do much else, sadly! A business website is an important asset, so treat it with the respect it deserves. You have probably paid good money to a developer for the site. If they can’t or won’t work with you and provide the access details you need to manage the site, follow the above steps. And if you do have to start again, don’t panic. A website refresh could give your business a much-needed marketing boost. Contact us for your content needs. We can also recommend website developers who won’t rip you off!