Running an agency that’s productive and happy can be difficult to achieve. Which is why we thought we’d share with you all our wisdom on the matter. When we say wisdom, we mean a range of tools and methods we have adopted over the years of working in team Bulldog.
Below, you will uncover the key ways we work as a team and how you can do the same for your agency.
Tools for a productive agency we use at Bulldog Digital Media
We love a helpful tool. From sharing work with colleagues to organising our time, tools and software give us a place to get our team running efficiently. Here are our favourite tools for a productive agency.
Hubspot
A brilliant inbound marketing and sales software that we have recently started using. The newest member of our team introduced us to Hubspot and it has made work life much easier.
You can use Hubspot to link your agencies social media channels and blogs. It makes posting blogs on our social automatic and less time-consuming.
You can see what else makes Hubspot so handy for collaborations by reading their ‘what is Hubspot?’ page. A few of the features it explains are; email, sites, SEO, marketing automation, landing pages, analytics, social media and blogging.
It’s quite literally the tool for bringing everything together.
SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the best software out there for competitor research. It allows us to check out a competitors site authority, traffic, keywords they’re ranking for and how many keywords they’re ranking well with.
Additionally, searching for keywords on SEMrush is helpful to increase a sites’ rankings.
Buzz Carter, head of outreach
“SEMRush is a massive help to any search agency, with the ability to see not only your organic traffic but also see what you are ranking for & where you are ranking for! Also the ability to see how individual keywords rank with their search volumes, it’s really easy to find quick wins and help your clients drive their rankings up”
Trello
A useful time management and task listing tool that many of us use every day. It allows us to group our tasks onto different ‘boards’ and drop & drag tasks under the ‘cards’ you make.
These ‘cards’ can have as little as a brief task overview to comprehensive details about the task. For example, you can set a deadline, a description, share with other colleagues on Trello and link to Slack (a tool we will talk about next).
Slack
Slack gives us a place to instant message with our colleagues, send documents over, organise our day and easily collaborate with each other on projects.
It’s described as a ‘digital workplace that powers your organisation’ in their article ‘what is Slack?’.
Office manager, Adam Symes
“Slack makes it great for teams within the agency to collaborate on projects together, whilst also being able to stay connected with the rest of the workforce from a single platform. It also makes sharing files, assigning tasks and helping others a cinch.”
Geekbot
One feature you can use on Slack is Geekbot. This little bot reminds you to write up a short stand-up for your day ahead.
It gives us all a chance to plan out our work and view what others are doing with their day. Giving everyone the opportunity to plan their workflow accordingly.
Station
Station is helpful for those of us that need fast access to different tools and apps. On my station, I have got Slack, G-mail, Trello, AirTable, Dropbox, Google drive, Google calendar and WordPress. I can quickly flick between each application using Station.
Jeremy Bolton, relationships manager
“Station is my desktop ‘desk tidy’ and my favourite app by far…
If you’re anything like me you probably have loads of tabs and programs open at any one time as you need to access your favourite tools on a regular basis.
This practice tends to mean jumping around from tab to program to access your email, drive files, Skype, messenger, slack etc. Station puts everything, and I mean everything in one place and the best part..it’s 100% free.”
Buzzsumo
This website is brilliant for content marketers to find out how well a topic is doing for other competitors. You can type in a topic or domain and up comes a list of all the pieces of content related.
Facebook engagements, LinkedIn shares, Twitter shares, Pinterest shares, number of links and total shares, are all measured and listed alongside the content. You can use Buzzsumo’s free option, however, this does limit you to only a few searches in one session.
Our head of design, Ryan Toomey
“buzzsumo makes such a difference when finding hot content across the internet – it allows you to find relevant blogs and journalists, view backlinks and social sharing stats. It’s the content marketing tool every creative content agency needs!”
AirTable
The spreadsheet cross-database, AirTable, is a way to organise, assign people to tasks, prioritise tasks and attach documents, images and comments.
You can also set different accessibilities for different employees. You can download their mobile and desktop apps to give everyone the freedom to collaborate at any time.
Dropbox
Lastly, we use trusty Dropbox to store and share our work with each other. You can drag and drop documents into Dropbox, make folders and give access to the people who need it by sharing a file.
What tools does your agency use?
The type of tools you use will entirely depend on how your business operates. But, with the above in mind, you’ll have everything you need to kickstart a more seamless workflow! It’s also worth checking out DigitalSupermarket to check out what other type of tools your business can work with. This will help to ensure that you get it right from the get-go.
Well, that it’s from us! Time for you to give them a try. We hope these tools for a productive agency are useful for your team. Let us know of any more tools that your agency uses and why they’re so effective in the comments.