Collaboration Tools – web conferencing software

Grace X Kang asked:




1. TweetDeck – TweetDeck allows you to pull up several Twitter search columns and search for several different phrases at once. If you’re a social media writer, you already understand the importance of Twitter for business marketing- this handy tool allows you to keep up with the entire Twitterverse from just one platform.

2. Google News – I used to search for collaboration news (as I work for a collaboration software company) by typing “Collaboration software” into the Google homepage. Bad idea. My results included advertisements, spam sites and any webpage that ever mentioned the phrase. Now, I use Google News each morning to check up on NEWS that’s important to me, and let Google do the spam and irrelevant search result filtering FOR me.

3. Facebook- Facebook recently reached its 300 million active members mark, there are currently 65 million Facebook users accessing the social platform from their mobile devices and more than 8 billion minutes are spent on Facebook worldwide each day. Need I say more? Facebook. Use it.

4. Blog – Blogging has evolved into a crucial corporate tool, as good company blogs keep customers or readers informed, updated and loyal to your business.

5. Digg- Digg brings the top breaking news of the web to you, so you don’t have to scour the Internet for hours on end, searching for interesting articles/sites relevant to your company. You can also publish your own articles to Digg! It is called the “Digg Effect” – write an informative and engaging article, Digg it and watch it go viral!

6. Delicious- At first I was skeptical about the importance of social bookmarking. Although it’s used by many for social networking, I simply find Delicious useful in bookmarking the sites which I find relevant to my company’s industry. Unlike bookmarking onto Firefox or Internet Explorer, you can access your Delicious bookmarks from any web browser, on any computer.

7. Google Analytics – Google Analytics will let you see who is following your website or blog, what pages they are viewing the most and how long they are spending on your site each time they visit. This proves useful in evaluating your articles and deciding whether or not you are effectively engaging readers’ interests.

8. A Good Collaboration Solution- I’ll throw in a plug here. As a social media writer, it’s imperative to stay organized and on top of things. I’m sure you’ve felt overwhelmed by the numerous web tools, social media sites and applications you need to log into each day. Using a collaboration software lets you condense all your important documents, articles, logins, bookmarks, projects and social media marketing campaigns into one online workspace. Don’t opt for just any free online tool, however- good collaboration tools should be intuitive, professional and affordable.

If you haven’t been doing so already as you read the article, bookmark each of these sites into your Delicious Bookmarks Folder or Firefox Toolbar now! And bookmark this article while you’re at it- you never know when you might need to share these tips with your coworkers or friends.

Sherry

Sabrina McOwen asked:




As the business industry develops in its expansion globally, it has somehow needs to keep up with the fast-evolving innovations especially when it comes to work collaboration.

Businesses both big and small, one way or another, experience difficulties occurring related to managing good working relationship with its affiliates located in different places around the globe. In fact, this is considered as one of the major reasons why most businesses fail and close eventually.

Good thing is, since new innovative platforms have been invented such as the Internet, associating with other business divisions both locally and internationally is made a lot better and easier through web-based work collaboration.

Online collaboration gave way to a lot of partnership opportunities using better multi-platform capabilities. This is one tool which wasn’t available in the past but since we have quickly approached a modern day era, more online based collaboration tools work over multiple platforms today.

In fact, Internet-based collaboration also became very beneficial in terms of corporate functionality. It provides flexibility to all the people working together accordingly to their tastes and needs maximizing the whole capabilities of the tool itself.

Through online collaboration, all members of a team can share and exchange ideas all at the same time. And, there’s easier and faster communication which gave way to solving occurring problems which was also a difficulty in the past.

Nowadays, there are a wide variety of collaboration tools everybody can utilize anytime and anywhere. However, only a few of these tools are reliable. Therefore, one should always be meticulous and smart when looking for the right online collaboration tools to use.

Herbert

Lorrie Thomas asked:




Social networking platforms build buzz, boost business and serve small businesses as low-cost/no-cost marketing tools. Small business owners need to understand how these tools strategically serve and support small business first so they best implement social media strategies to sell products and/or services.

Social Media, simply put, serves users and organizations in marketing in three ways:

1. Communication
Marketing is all about building relationships — relationships start with communication. New web tools like blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning), podcasting (BlogTalkRadio), video distribution (YouTube), event coordination tools (Meetup), wikis (Wikipedia) photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), and product review sites (epinions.com) allow small businesses to communicate, educate and share information directly with their current and prospective customers.

Content in the form of blog posts, audio, video, comparison/review sites, tweets and social network messages help share information in a less-formal way that builds the know, like and trust factors that influence decision making. Content is no longer just text. Small businesses can use audio or visual content for a “show me” and “tell me” to make communications a pack more interactive punch.

Social media’s direct communication distinction serves and supports small business as it brings the people you want to attract directly to you and makes direct communication possible. Social Media makes communication a conversation so small business owners can share, receive feedback and connect on equal ground with their target markets.

2. Collaboration
When small businesses empower their target consumers, they feel powerful. When your target market feels powerful, it trusts you, buys from you, and stays with you. Social networking collaboration transforms consumers into “prosumers”. In an era of social media prosumers, it’s people (not companies) who make, shape, or break purchase patterns.

Small businesses can ignite collaboration for marketing by creating their own communities and/or joining communities. By doing so, they can listen and connect to their target customers and build a free forum to bring their market together. Collaboration = Marketing Acceleration.

Social networking collaboration tools like review sites, video sharing sites, blogs, wikis and more allow users to self-serve, collaborate, and potentially serve as an endorser for your small business. Social media works as a marketing tool because people are more likely to trust peers rather than companies.

The power of mass collaboration serves and supports small business owners in a distinct way. Tapping/creating valuable collaborative options can bring people together to share ideas, exchange information, and help each other — and support relationship growth. Removing the “company/client” disconnect can break down elitism and boost marketing mind power.

3. Entertainment
The most important reason that social networking works as a marketing tool is simple — because it’s fun. People want to go where they feel they belong, have a voice, are listened to, and enjoy themselves. Small business owners need to be where their target markets are — and these days, the masses are on Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Linkedin, Photobucket, YouTube and more because it has entertainment value.

Remember the Will It Blend? campaigns by Blendtec? They were a perfect example of social media marketing in brilliant action. Videos were relevant as they showed the product, were entertaining (they blended an iPhone!), and they were viral! People could easily share the fun with friends due to the ease of social media sharing widgets.

You can’t put a dollar amount on free promotion. The way social media stores data as an “Interactive Rolodex” also has an entertainment factor. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming the “new databases” because they are fast, easy, and fun. People are more likely to update their Facebook and LinkedIn information than a sterile address book because it is fun.

Small business owners use social media’s entertainment factor to build their online database of contacts and connections, be visible to prospective customers, and get the word out in creative ways like YouTube videos, blog posts, images, podcasts to make people smile and spread the word.

How Social Networking Helps Small Businesses Sell
Social Media Marketing helps most small businesses boost sales indirectly by increasing relationships. Understanding that social media marketing serves users for communication, collaboration, and entertainment is the first step to considering how to strategically implement the multitude of social media marketing tools and choose the ones that work best for your unique organization.

The key thing that small businesses need to remember when using social media to help sell is that efforts must have value. There has to be value to your content, community, and execution to get people to engage with you or your organization. Social media doesn’t sell things — people sell things. Engaging in social media marketing starts the relationship-building process. Start small and snowball. Social media takes understanding, passion, effort, and commitment to make it work. Give your small business an authentic voice with social media and commit to providing value and you will be off to a smart start.

Steven

Sabrina McOwen asked:




Getting tired of using your local network in managing projects and group collaboration? Well, you no longer have to worry anymore! Online collaboration tools are now available within your reach right at the tip of your nose.

Web-based collaboration tools, what are they?

Collaboration solutions are management system software which helps users to execute schedules, assign tasks, monitor progress and serves as a great communication platform for leaders whenever they need to discuss business matters together with their team or clients when necessary.

Sounds great huh?

You bet! And that’s not all! There’s a lot more into these collaboration tools you might get surprised. Web-based collaboration servers also allow other communication applications such as e-mail messaging, video and data conferencing and instant and real-time messaging. These features let you share ideas spontaneously without worrying about any distractions; you just have to get online, log in to your account and you’re good to go!

Moreover, making use of collaboration tools also let you take advantage of freely monitoring and tracking changes within your project management and group work. You can easily view updates and how your group progress as time passes. In the past, this is one instance which can make or break a business, but since collaboration mediums have been designed business communication management is no longer a difficult challenge to overcome.

Effective collaboration is the key to a business’ success. It plays a vital role to keep a good working and communication relationship between and among the people within the business. It also serves as a guarantee that work is being done, developed and solutions are applied whenever a problem occurs. In this way, objectives are set promptly and goals are achieved with the best possible means there is at hand. With a reliable collaboration tool to back you up, you are certain to be on the right track!

Bertha

Shahab Kaviani asked:




Connectivity, Functionality and Price – these are the three-pronged characteristic of high-performing online collaboration tools that every small or medium-size business should have access to, in order to stay viable in the arena of global commerce.

What was implausible even to the imagination became conceivable through the power of convergence on the internet. It has now become easier for small, medium or large businesses with employees, clients, partners and vendors all over the world, to gather and share valuable information, brainstorm for decisions, draw up and implement plans of action, without unnecessary costs and delay.

When subscribing or buying a collaboration tool – make an informed and intelligent choice.

The internet is swarmed by intranet and extranet solutions that choosing the suitable tool for a small or medium-size business becomes a tall order. Most of the power-packed solutions come with a price that a growing business may not be able to afford at the onset. Features of high-end solutions are also customized for the use of large businesses; paying for product features that your small business cannot use, is not a viable decision.

On the other hand, low-key solutions may come with buyer-friendly prices, but may also lack intrinsic features necessary for effective online collaboration and communication. Where does a buyer draw the line?

Connectivity. Opt for a solution that is entirely web-based and does not require an independent IT expertise to manage it. It also has to be compatible with most browsers and platforms.

Functionality. Unless your intranet suite does not comprise all of the following features, most likely, it is not the best:

>Email capability

>Synchronicity with Outlook

>Document Management

>Contact Management

>Online Calendar

>Group Calendar

>Opinion Polls

>Task Manager

>Announcements

>Discussion Forums

>Security

>Data Integrity

>SSL Encryption

>Disk Storage

>Data and Info Imports

>Branding

>Site customization

Price. Steer away from solutions that require you to put up big capital investment up front, unless you are a large business. Sure, there is sharepoint alternative; one that delivers similar top-notch features, but at considerably low price. The best choice yet for most businesses, including yours – discover it.

Effective collaboration powers success – make your collaboration suite the perfect vehicle.

Try this at no cost to you! Yes, many extranet solution providers believe that unless first-time clients experience the benefits of what a collaboration suite can do for their business, they won’t action. You may avail of an offer for hosted solutions 30 days free trial, and start to see the difference.

Rick

James Mathew Smith asked:




Business collaboration software opened new doors for businesses engaged with building partnerships and expansions. Today, both small and big organizations make sure to take benefit of the different advantages which web-based collaboration tools promises to offer them.

Project Management

When it is about task and project management, the online business collaboration software emerges as an exception. It plays a significant role in pledging work progress and success. It serves to be a great means to manage the work collaboration trouble-free.

Access Information at Any Time from Anywhere

Business collaboration software tools prove to a useful means to access data and information. Nowadays, these tools have developed to be an essential means to carry forward business activities for clients, business owners and stock holders. It ensures easy access to information from any location all around the world. In addition to this, work discussion and communication can also be freely carried on a real-time basis.

Decision Making

With the use of collaboration tools, decision making no longer looks difficult. As every member of a corporation or a team gets to communicate whenever required, getting hold of concerns and solving issues is completed with much more ease and confidence.

Connecting Work Stations Ensuring Better Productivity

Benefits of business collaboration software are manifold. It is the tool which has been associated with the diverse aspects of work. While working on any single project, such a tool will be useful in involving multiple users from different work stations and at different time intervals as well.

A Collaborative Process

Collaboration between the business and the technical people is essential to the success of any start-up business. With the use of the software, users will be able to collaborate with the clients and the internal team easily like never before. This also lets you to execute the business projects effectively.

Project Tracking

Project tracking is considered a clear benefit with such software. Tracking projects is obviously easier and manageable. It offers efficient performance measurements and the timely cautions to avoid poor performance.

Assessment

In terms of assessing the work done by the entire team, the depth analysis and a clear explanation, business collaboration software can’t be second to none. Moreover, the software also offers companies with up-to-dated information, reports and data that everyone in the team can discuss and view upon.

Facilitating Better Exchange of Ideas

It allows effective exchange and sharing of ideas on a continuous basis, especially in times of implementing much more improved business processes, which are intended for achieving the work objectives more successfully.

Conclusion:

With this software, you will be a position to easily track down and execute more time on your projects. For a small business, a software of this kind can be able to work together well with clients, partners and others.

Collaboration tools involve features which make the process of collaboration much easier. These involve features like project management, files, address book, applications, discussions etc.

Overall, this software aims at increasing the business productivity and efficiency for both small and large businesses. This reduces the liability and the risk through the communication management.

Andre

Adrian Gates asked:




Hosted Exchange gives you all of the benefits of an Enterprise level messaging solution for your small or large business with lower costs and complexity.

Exchange Hosting Features: Hosted Exchange, Managed Exchange- Hosted Exchange Overview; Exchange 2007 Features and Benefits; Outlook Web Access; Mobile Messaging.

Hosted Exchange gives you the freedom to work. Location, time zone are no longer barriers. An increase in productivity follows.

Key Features:

o Your data is available online and is secure. This removes the risk of losing important e-mail stored on your local drives.
o Create mailboxes just by few clicks: The administrator can create an e-mail box just by few clicks. Assigning distribution groups is very simple.
o Unified messaging.
o Follow tasks and manage team projects.
o Collaboration tools.
o Manage tasks on the go from anywhere.
o Access your private and shared calendars.
o Access e-mails/tasks/calendar anytime: Since you e-mails/tasks/calendar is stored at a centralized location, you can access them from anywhere.
o Wireless Synchronization: You can read and reply to an e-mail schedule appointments and meeting from your wireless device and the changes gets synchronized with the central server. This way you can make changes from your wireless device and continue to track it from your desktop when you are back in the office.
o You can track availability of meeting rooms and participants schedule with Smart Scheduling.
o Backups ensure that you don’t loose your e-mails. We have a 14 day back policy. This will ensure that you never loose any of your important e-mails.
o 24/7 support by Experienced Microsoft Certified Professionals: We have experience certified Microsoft Certified Professionals who are on standby to assist you, should you need any assistance.
o Outlook Web Access: This is a web based version of Outlook 2007 that coupled with Exchange; gets you the best of both the worlds – easy navigation and enterprise level communication engine.

Ronald

Christine Harrell asked:




In today’s interconnected world where more organizations are collaborating with partners and clients, and coordinating virtual staff, online team collaboration solutions have become a ‘must-have’ to keep everyone on the same page. Trying to juggle communication between partners, staff, clients and other team members through email alone often leads to serious bottlenecks, lost information, and more project lag-time than necessary. Password protected extranets or secure online workspaces offer organizations powerful tools to collaborate online and work more efficiently and effectively.

However, with so many team collaboration tools available today, how do you know which one is the best solution for your particular business or organization? Companies and other organizations that work with clients and teams around the world suggest evaluating three critical things before investing in a team collaboration system:

How Steep is the Learning Curve?

Many team collaboration tools are loaded with tons of features for added selling points. Oftentimes, these features are more valuable as a ‘buzz’ factor rather than an actual tool to help teams communicate efficiently. If the project collaboration software is too complicated to use, it can be very difficult to get people on board with using it.

Most people are already busy enough and don’t want to take hours out of their week just to learn how to communicate with you. Clients especially tend to get frustrated if they have to adopt a complicated system just to work with you. For this reason, it is essential that the team collaboration project you choose be simple and not bloated with features that aren’t essential.

Does the Team Collaboration Solutions Provider Offer Some Sort of Online Training?

The project portal should be simple, intuitive, and not overwhelming to new users. If the project management system is too difficult to learn, you’ll find yourself spending a great deal of time training current employees, new employees, and customers how to use it while the productivity of the project itself dives. Regardless of how simple it is, most new users will need some sort of light training on how to use the system effectively.

You could spend hours on the phone teaching employees, partners, and customers where to click, how to upload, and how to interact with the system. Another option would be to create your own training documents or screen-capture videos to send to new users. However, to save yourself more time and frustration, look for team collaboration tools that already have published videos that show new users how to interact with the system. This way you can simply send them a link and new users can be off and running.

How much structure should the collaboration tool have?

There is an inherent trade-off between the amount of built-in structure a collaboration tool has and the tool’s ability to be adapted to different groups needs. Some tools have too much structure and hierarchy and it can be confusing to users where to click to find the right document library or discussion group.

SharePoint, for example can be difficult to set up in a way that is intuitive and simple to use for users. It can be packed with features, but if only the most sophisticated users can figure out how to perform the most basic actions, getting users to actually adopt and use it can be a real challenge.

The real value of any team collaboration system is in its ability to keep a team up to date and on top of the latest developments in a project. Nothing can slow a project down faster than when team member B thinks he is waiting for team member A to complete a task only to find that the required task was already complete but went unnoticed.

An excellent online collaboration tool should offer “portals” or workspaces for individual projects and message threads within those projects that different members can subscribe to and receive message alerts by RSS or email. Those who do not need to follow communication on every thread should be able to remain off of that thread to avoid information overload. At the same time, it should be simple and fast to add a new project member to an existing thread if the discussion turns into one that they need to be aware of.

Documents relating to specific projects should be grouped into one place without users having to sift through endless threads to find a particular document. Without this feature, an online collaboration tool ends up having the same problem as email where messages with important files attached become lost in the growing stream of communication. There’s a lot of buzz these days about wikis as online collaboration tools. Wikis are collaboratively editable web pages and are great tools for some situations. They are very flexible and allow groups of people to contribute to a shared body of knowledge (e.g. Wikipedia). They work very well for developers and others who need to develop software documentation, frequently asked questions, policies, human resources information, etc.

In some cases they work very well for groups that need to collaborate on projects and activities. However, they are not as good a choice for groups that need to share documents, manage tasks, maintain a shared calendar, and have discussions.

Wikis can be too unstructured. For some groups wikis don’t work well for team or project collaboration because they don’t provide enough structure. For groups that primarily need to share and collaborate on documents, manage tasks, and have discussions, it can be cumbersome to post these to wiki pages and organize them so others can find and update them later. Some groups should consider an online collaboration tool that has more structure out-of-the-box so that groups can just start using it – documents, tasks, discussions, and news can be posted with one or two clicks and don’t need to be organized or managed carefully to keep them from getting lost.

Wikis can take more time to set up and administer. For administrators, some tools that start off with the right feature set in place can often be far easier to set up because they already have an intuitive navigation structure built in. Wikis sometimes require a lot of effort to set up a skeleton structure of pages that can organize the groups content effectively. In addition, less sophisticated user groups often require more training on how to interact effectively with the wiki. This can be a real problem for groups that need to set up hundreds or thousands of workspaces.

In conclusion, there are a number of factors to consider when choosing an online collaboration tool. The most important are simplicity and ease-of-use, strong help documentation and online training, and the right amount of structure to ensure your teams don’t need to figure things out for themselves.

Whatever collaboration tool you choose for your organization, they offer powerful and effective ways to help organizations share documents, manage tasks, and coordinate more effectively with staff, partners, and customers.

Chester

Simon G Ford asked:




No matter where you go, whether you are working offline for a brick-and-mortar company, or online for a digital one, you want more than one brain to have the marketing machinery going. Collaboration is still the name of the game: you need to utilize your strengths in talking about the great stuff you have to offer, however you need to fill in your weaknesses by consulting with people who get expertise in fields you know little or nothing about.

There are mainly four fields essential to Internet marketing. You will need programmers who could guarantee that your website is secure and presenting the right scripts, and who can make sure that any external scripts you are using will not jeopardize the integrity of your site. You will need content providers who could assure that your website content is not only reader-friendly, but search-engine attractive. You would need graphic and web designers to design a website that could be easily navigated, as well as offline marketing tools, such as posters or business cards, to make sure that people still know about you long after they get turned off their Internet connections. Lastly, you will need people to coordinate all these marketing arms and make sure that you are creating all the right marketing moves.

Getting a secure website is essential to Internet marketing. Hackers could easily destroy websites, adding lewd or offensive pictures, or modifying valuable content. Without security measures, a website is continually in danger of being damaged. Programmers are thus the Internet marketing community’s defensive army, and could ensure that there are websites in which marketing can be made in the first place. To hire good programmers, you might need to outsource from companies that provide such services online. Although this might cost you more money, it can be a good security measure: such programmers are accredited, and cannot put any bugs on your site because they represent a programming or software company.

In the online world, content is still king, and content providers are essential in keeping the integrity and informative quality of a website. For successful Internet marketing, you would want search engine optimization specialists, who have their own pools of writers who specialize in writing search engine-friendly articles that are likewise useful for real people. To look for such writers, you can search through online forums and groups, particularly those devoted to Internet content writing. Ask for sample articles on your topic of choice before hiring any specialist, and watch how the writing style suits you. Hire a specialist only after you get scanned three or more prospects.

A well-designed website could maintain customers coming back for more, and will be easy to update. Online sites should also be complemented with offline marketing methods. To create both of these, you would want skilful graphic and web designers who can create attractive websites. There are lots of freelance designers online, and you can look for them through ordinary search engines. The best graphic and web designers must have well-designed and attractive websites, and should offer you all the services you want for a reasonable price.

Putting all this together demands better management skills. A marketing coordinator must be able to get the brightest and best designers, programmers, and content providers, and utilize the strengths of all three branches to come up with a product that is suited to the current needs of the market. You could ask for such services from virtual assistants, whom you could also find online.

If you need to do the coordinating yourself, then you get various online collaborating tools to talk to your marketing people and get your marketing act together. The most fundamental way is to meet all of them personally, but if your marketing group includes of various experts living in different countries, you may have to make use of a chat program to discuss things online. A mailing list or private forum could also be better in coordinating your efforts and getting everyone updated.

You could also use blog software so you could update each other in real time. Encourage the members of your marketing group to blog about their experiences, and to create suggestions on how your marketing methods could be improved. Moreover, encourage your experts to keep individual blogs, and to solicit information from visitors; this could assist you understand your market better, and therefore fashion your marketing ideas to fit the needs and whims of your online market.

Internet marketing is a work that cannot be brought out by individual persons. The best Internet marketing happens thanks to the efforts of various experts all coming together, so use your online collaborative tools to have your marketing machinery going. With a little assistance from your friends, you could earn money and get your popularity soaring.

Neil

Sabrina McOwen asked:




Easier and faster exchange of ideas and real-time communication amongst team members are the main idea behind online collaboration tools. It all circles to sharing information, tracking reports, solving occurring problems, and instant communication so the whole team can work more effectively. Therefore, as the head of a team, it is your task to look for a collaboration tool which has all these capabilities.

Actually, searching for one is not difficult at all. In fact, hundreds of them have been invented and ready to use. However, not all of them are reliable and suits your requirements. Thus, a key to easily finding one is making sure, you and your whole team, can very well adapt to the functionalities the tool is capable of providing you.

Nowadays, web-based collaboration is very effective. It allows instant communication and sharing of ideas to achieve common goals especially if you are into business ventures. Such mediums are modified in ways like easy to learn, easy to access, and capable of providing direct support which are very necessary and beneficial as well to help your team work and collaborate more efficiently.

In fact, since the application is running on a secure network provider with no specific security problems, you can easily customize the application with specific features you want to apply. And, you can easily make use of online collaboration solutions through simply holding, and inviting people who you want to collaborate with.

Internet-based collaboration mediums offer various advantages. You just need to fully understand how your business can benefit from it more to be certain that you are focused on selecting the best solutions possible. Different software offer several features and communication applications you can easily take advantage it just all boils down to selecting the right software which is capable of extending itself not only to you but to your whole team as well.

Duane