Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I’m part of several virtual teams, which is just exactly how many knowledge workers live their work lives today. As such, I’ve used three online collaboration tools exhaustively for the past year, and they’ve each saved my bacon, my gas/phone bills and my sanity. Here they are, in no particular order:

SnagIt

What is it? Free for a 30-day trial period, but worth the $39 investment many times over, SnagIt (download SnagIt here) is a screen capture utility that will not only allow you to capture and edit (resize, crop, add borders, etc.) screen shots; it’ll allow you to save them in a plethora of file formats (GIF, JPEG, BMP, PDF) which is useful for people who work in a mixed Mac/Windows environment.

How do I use it? My favorite (saved my bacon) use was to translate graphic images for a client that I captured on a Mac but wouldn’t show up on Windows 2003 (the most popular version in enterprises today). One client could see all the graphics in a presentation, another could only see some of the graphics - talk about frustrating. But with SnagIt, I was able to open every graphic and save it in a universal format that everyone could see. Whew. I don’t have the need for PhotoShop, so SnagIt fits the bill perfectly.

I’ve also used it to explain (saved my phone bill and my sanity) visually how to use another of my favorite collaboration tools - Google Docs and Spreadsheets - to another one of my clients. (In fact, I’ll use it to describe how to get that set up below…)

Google Docs and Spreadsheets

What is it? Google Docs and Spreadsheets allows me to create the equivalent (almost) of a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet online, and share it with anyone I invite to do so. It is great when you’re working with a group of people who need to capture and share information around a particular project.

How do I use it? In one case, it works like a free, mini-CRM tool for small businesses. I have one client for whom I’m creating a marketing database of prospects. We add prospects into the spreadsheet, and I can comment on- and update every aspect of marketing and sales activities around each one. That way, Steve always knows the current status of every conversation his team is having. And (saving my gas bill) I don’t have to be on-site in order to help him out.

In another case, I’m collaborating on a marketing plan with three other team members, and we can use a document I’ve set up to capture ownership, schedules and activities that each of us are working on. This takes a bit of flexibility in terms of how people like to structure their documents (I love an outline with owners and deadlines!), but the first person to come up with the master document has the opportunity to shape her own future with it. (We’ll cover how to find these tools at the end of this post…) Everyone can see who’s doing what, and we’re all on the same virtual page.

Google Calendar

What is it? A simple calendar system with reminders, which is easy to use and share with your teammates if you like. Every single client I have has a calendaring system, and invites me to meetings using their own system. Who needs to keep track of five calendars in my own land-locked Outlook system?

How do I use it? I keep my calendar and appointments in Google so I’ll have access to it from any internet connection. Plus, it sends meeting alerts to my Blackberry (saves my bacon for sure!). No matter where I am (saves my sanity), I can gain access to my calendar and be alerted to appointments.

Read on for more specifics on how to get the free Google tools…

Setting up your personal Google account

Go to google.com, and up in the upper right corner you’ll likely see a ’sign in’ or ‘create account’ link, which will take you to a sign in page:

Choose your favorite email address and password, and that’s pretty much it. You’re in.

Now when you open Google, you’ll see your email address in the corner and your option to sign in or out to your account. You can sign in to your account from any pc connected to the internet.

Once you’re signed in, you can choose Documents and Spreadsheets… or Calendar… from the More menu on the Google menu bar.

Then you can go in and create new documents or spreadsheets and begin sharing. I’ve uploaded both Excel spreadsheets and Word docs, and they’re fine. Or you can create your own from within the environment. It’s all very familiar.

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