Chances are you find your small business facing a new challenge: working from home. You may be feeling disconnected from your team and your customers during this time.

Luckily, Frontier Marketing leads the way in remote working. Since our whole team works remotely, we are experts at keeping a business connected.

Here are the tools for remote teams you should use to keep on working during this time!

Communication from your team will be vital when working remotely. After all, you still have a business to run, which means checking in on employees, getting updates on projects, and running team meetings. All of that is possible with these team communication tools.

At Frontier Marketing, we use Google Hangouts Meet all the time! The free online program offers face-to-face video conferencing with the ability to put multiple people on one call. Hangouts Meet also lets you share your screen to present information to your team.

Does one of your teammates lack a webcam? No problem. Google Hangouts Meet also lets you dial in to the call with a phone.

The program is also fully integrated with G Suite. This integration allows you to can dial in from a Google Calendar event.

We like how simple Google Hangouts Meet is to use. Therefore, it’s one of the tools for remote teams we use most often to talk about projects and stay in touch.

Google Hangouts also has an instant messaging option called Google Hangouts Chat. The service allows you to chat with up to 150 people at a time. It’s a great way to get quick updates, ask a question, or loop several team members into a conversation at once.

Google Hangouts Chat also works on IOS and Android, so you can stay in touch on your smartphone.

We at Frontier Marketing also use Google Hangouts Chat every day to stay in touch.

Zoom is another video conferencing call option. Like Google Hangouts Meet, you can have conference video chats with multiple people. They can also dial in if they don’t have a webcam.

Zoom also has an instant messaging system like Google Hangouts Chat, which allows for file sharing and group chats.

If you’re a small business that works with other partners or many departments, Slack might be able to help you.

Just like the other tools for remote teams, Slack has multiple-person capabilities and instant messaging. However, it also allows you to designate different channels for different areas.

For example, you can designate specific channels for your departments or your outside partners to organize your communication. It will also organize your instant messages and gives you a search option.

Managing remote teams might seem like a juggling act, with so many things happening at once. But managing teams with these employee communication tools makes it a lot easier!

Frontier Marketing works on different projects for several different clients. And each of our team members is doing something different at any given point.

Monday.com lets us see every area we need to cover and every individual project. There are tabs and options to give status updates as well.

After every accomplished step, we update our Monday board. That way, anyone can look at the board and know what the status of any project is.

We can also communicate with each other on a specific project by posting messages on the project board and tagging each other. This feature helps us stay organized while keeping us on track with all our work.

Does your business have projects that require multiple people working on them at once? Google Drive is a handy tool for sharing documents with multiple team members. When you save a document to the Drive, other team members with access can work on it as well.

So, instead of sending large email files to your employees, we’d recommend using Google Drive. It saves on loading time and won’t bog your team down with too many emails. It is also one of the simpler remote collaboration tools out there.

How does your small business track your employees’ time? If it’s done through a system in-house, you will probably have to use a virtual tool when working from home.

Toggl is an online application that tracks employee time. It also allows you to track how much time your employees spend on certain projects or tasks as well. That way, you can keep track of your employees’ time, even when you’re not together.

Social media is going to be one of the biggest ways you can keep in contact with customers. Here are some ways social media can help.

Facebook is probably going to be the best way to get out information to your customers. After all, it is still the most popular social media platform.

You can use your Facebook business page to post information about your business. Customers will want to know about your updated hours, if you’re open or closed, and other information during this time.

You should also periodically check your posts to ensure that none of your customers’ questions go unanswered. It helps to set up designated times throughout the day for monitoring your comments and messages.

Sendible is an all-in-one social media posting platform. If you are regularly posting on social media, you can do so across all channels in one place.

You can also schedule posts to go out at certain times. It helps for budgeting your time and making sure all your social media posts for customers are coordinated.

Groove is a customer service platform that lets you answer customer questions and respond to comments. You can also use it for email management and use the live chat option to speak with customers in real-time.

Do you have a dedicated email list that you send updates to? You can use it to communicate with customers. You can send out a lot of information in one email blast or just use it as a weekly update.

Programs like Robly and MailChimp help you set up email newsletters to send to your customers to keep them better informed. They both use a simple blocks technique of designing your emails, which makes it user-friendly.

And really nothing is going to replace the power of email for interpersonal communication. As one of the most common tools for remote teams, you can use email for:

• Direct correspondence with customers
• Sending out information to a large group
• Communicating with your team
• Sharing news and updates

Customers will most likely be emailing you as well to find out information or stay updated about their projects and needs. Customer service is incredibly important right now, and having a direct link to them will help.

We can answer them! Frontier Marketing’s entire team works remotely, and we are here to help with any questions about making that transition.