Week 12 Part A

 Business Specific Online Tools

  Websites and social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are great ways to start building your online presence. Businesses need to consider economy of time when considering social media presence and marketing strategies. Aim for the biggest first, then move where you need to.

  Smaller sites can make a big difference depending on your business. Yelp can break a business. Customers that post on Yelp tend to be passionate, both good and bad. Leaving the conversation to everyone else can sink a customer centered business. Sites like it include the BBB, TripAdvisor, HomeAdvisor, and Angie's List. Each one has different demographics and different strengths. Companies that rely more on B2B might find a better ROI on BBB. 

  One thing often left out until it is too late are employer rating sites. LinkedIn is a great place for professional networking, but there are many conversations between prospective employees and people that are in your company or people that deal with your company. Employers aren't the only ones that do research. Additionally sites like GlassDoor and FairyGodBoss have extensive spaces for people to research employment at your company or just read about how you treat employees. For any company that is looking to hire, getting the right employees is critical. Having a terrible reputation in spaces that workers are looking can be disastrous. Likewise, having a good reputation and being involved can show potential employees that you care and really are interested in their well-being. 

  Another place that can be critically important is in the online management space. More than ever employees are working from various locations. They may be on site, in different cities, or working from home. That means that online communication is critical. More and more companies are turning to a work OS (work operating system). A work OS can merge multiple online collaboration tools into a single space.

  Some try and operate as whole business communication and collaboration tools. Monday.com includes tools to share work, edit documents, arrange schedules, and communicate using a variety of platforms, but there are limits and costs. Google Drive can be a good way to manage a lot of data at a much lower price point. Google drive includes Docs, Slides, Sheets, Sites, Mail, and Meet. It does lack some of the features of Microsoft Office, but packages everything together as a free service. It offers online collaboration and editing tools, and all of the documents convert easily into Office formats. It does tend to work best with a google email address. Office online has many of the same features as Google drive, but is Microsoft specific.

  Others include Slack (messaging), Dropbox (file-sharing), Discord (communication), GitHub (programming), and Zoom (video chat). Each had their benefits and drawbacks. Sometimes having a variety of tools that don't work together, but are better suited to a specific purpose, is better. Sometimes a business needs a single collaborative space. each business is different and needs to examine their needs and choose accordingly.

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