5 Great Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams

1. FREELANCER TIPS 5 Great Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams More freelancertips on www.freelancermap.com...

2. Having a Remote Team • As freelancing businesses grow, what once started out as a one-man-show can often quickly turn into a team experience. The transition can be tough, but a team can accomplish a lot, provided it is managed properly. Companies wanting to grow cannot afford an unclear strategy on their collaboration tool. Imagine this: half of your colleagues use email, the others prefer Skype and a third group only shares their ideas via text or not at all. Sounds like a disaster, right? To avoid that, you need to find the right collaboration tool for your team of remote workers. We’ve made a list, showcasing five of the best tools, which will help turn your remote team into a well-oiled machine.

3. 1) Sqwiggle • We’ll start you off with something that might seem a bit whacky at first, but actually does a pretty amazing job at simulating the office atmosphere if that’s what you’re looking for – Sqwiggle. Don’t worry – using this tool is much easier than writing its name. • Once you turn it on, it makes snapshots via your webcam a few times per minute, allowing you to see all of your colleagues at a glance. Once you click on their faces you instantly get in a voice call with them, similar to a tap on the shoulder in the office. You can invite multiple people to the call as well, and it comes at the monthly price of 9 dollars per user.

4. 2) Slack • Slack is another collaboration tool that has been getting a lot of hype recently. Its goal is to combine almost everything you would use for communication and sharing. Sending documents, short messages, longer mail-like reports and etc., Slack does it all. It also integrates perfectly with a lot of other tools, like Google Hangouts, Dropbox and even Twitter. Slack’s aim is to break down everything, so you not only have an archive of your internal communication, but also don’t struggle to find something when searching in the right channel. The Lite version of Slack comes for free, too, which is a good incentive for any team to check it out.

5. 3) Skype • Everybody knows what Skype is, but we couldn’t just skip it, as it is probably one of the most used collaboration tools. It is a chat service that doubles up as a phone, making it pretty useful for any type of work. Group calls are actually now free for up to 10 people as well. A simple word of warning though – using your personal Skype for work can be quite distracting, so I’d recommend making a separate account if you decide to use it as your go-to communication tool.

6. 4) Google Hangouts • Google Hangouts is another very commonly used tool to communicate with your team. If easy, simple voice calls are what you’re looking, Hangouts might be your thing. One of its many nifty little features is that it allows you to archive your talks on YouTube, allowing you to check them out any time you want.

7. 5) Dropbox • All of the tools listed above mostly focus on communication, but when working with a team you often need to share actual physical examples of your work, pictures, screenshots, word documents and much more. If you’re looking for a way to make that aspect of remote team collaboration easier, Dropbox is what you’re looking for. It basically serves as a remote folder on your compute which anyone from your team can access and upload things to. Dropbox comes with an initial 2GB of storage for free, which can be easily expanded.

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