The Benefits of Project Management Software
When I first started out as a Virtual Assistant, I used spiral notebooks and post-it notes to organize my work. I had six clients and six notebooks and it worked like a charm – for a while. As my work got more complicated and the number of clients grew, I started to use project management software to stay organized. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'm going to talk about the importance of thinking a project through, from start to end, all in one sitting, and the benefits of project management software.
TRANSCRIPT
Hey everybody. I'm Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl. Today we're going to talk about the benefits of project management software.
When I first started my virtual assistant business, I had a couple of clients and it was nine years ago, so a lot's changed, but I had notebooks. I bought these notebooks at Staples and I had one for each of my clients and it was easy to track and it was comfortable and I was able to manage everything. Pretty quickly, what happened was things got a little unwieldy and I decided it was time to move it onto the Cloud and I worked with Asana for a while. Asana is a great tool. I was in it just the other day with one of my clients. She loves it. It wasn't exactly for me though. I decided to try Base Camp and then later Trello, and I finally settled on Teamwork.
Now, there's lots and lots of project management software. It's really the one that works for you. I like project management software for a lot of reasons, but one is that it takes everything out of my head and puts it some place tangible where I can work through it. When you're using project management software, don't feel like you have to use the most popular one or the one that other people are using. Just make sure that it works for you and that you feel comfortable and also confident that it's doing the job for you.
Let's talk about a couple of ways we can think when we're using project management software. The first thing I want to do is make sure that you understand some of the power. Now, I could have project management software and for today I could have the task to create Michelle's newsletter, and that might be enough for some people, but what I've realized is that having very specific steps, sort of a step by step approach, is much more useful for a few reasons. One is that I probably do, I don't even know, 15 or 20 newsletters a month, and each client has a little bit different spin on the newsletter. Some of them want me to post a LinkedIn as an article, some as a link to their website. Some of them want it to be the Thursday after they published. This is how I can collect all of those nuances for my client work in project management.
Let's look at these steps here. If I'm creating a newsletter, and this might not be your first step. The first step could be remind the client to give you the content, but we're just going to start here. Create the test in MailChimp, send a test, check images and links, send the test to the client. Again, very step by step. After client approval, schedule the newsletter. The reason that this is important is today, for example, I'm in the middle of four different newsletters. One has been sent, two are in the testing and checking phase, and one of them I haven't started yet. It would be easy for me to confuse the details because the work is very similar. This is how I know where I am on any particular project.
Post to LinkedIn. The point I want to make here is that this way of thinking is very valuable, but I call it, "What do I have to do?" thinking. It's very tactical. Do this, do this, do this. I want to talk about the magic that can happen in project management software if you think more about, "What am I trying to accomplish?" Do you see the difference there? One of them is just checking things off the list, which there are some tasks where that is ideal, but if you sit down in project management software and you think through an entire project, whether it's doing a newsletter or planning an event or launching a course, whatever it is, if you think through all of those steps at once, you start to get some magic because your thoughts are all together and you're able to pull out some interesting things.
Let me show you what I mean by that. Here on our list prior, we had posted to LinkedIn. Well, what am I trying to accomplish by posting to LinkedIn? It's not just really about posting to LinkedIn. It's about getting as much exposure for my newsletter or my client's newsletter as possible. Look at how I changed this task when I started to think about it from what am I trying to accomplish. Post the newsletter content to LinkedIn as an article and include a client bio and a link to sign up for the newsletter. See, that's the magic.
I want to show you an example of exactly that because I want you to do that. Here's what's at the bottom of every newsletter that I publish. You see here, it establishes my area of expertise, the name of my company. It talks about who hires me, and if they want to subscribe to my newsletter, they can. They can click and go right to a page on my website where they can subscribe. I've accomplished a lot there.
Right under that is going to be my picture and a link to my LinkedIn profile, but that requires an extra step. This is something that, because I was thinking of the project as a whole, I was able to add more value. That's one of the things I love about project management software and why I like using it so much. Yes, to keep me organized and yes, to help me click off, literally click off, the tasks as I accomplish them, but also because I want to make sure that I'm thinking about the whole project at one time.
All right, everyone. It wouldn't be the RocketGirl Show if I didn't invite you to my free online classroom. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection. We're on Facebook and it's a wonderful community. It's an online community for people who are thinking about being a VA, who've been one for a while or somewhere in between. Lots and lots of valuable information. Today, we hit 3,500 members and there's so much activity and so much sharing and hand holding and community that it's just actually it's a thrill to be part of. I invite you to come over there and join us. You can find us by typing "The Virtual Assistant Connection" in the search bar at the top of Facebook.
All right everybody, have a great rest of your day. I'm Belinda Wasser, RocketGirl, signing off until next time. Bye. Bye.
