Posted by: Nicole Ravlin, Co-founder of People Making Good
Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blogger is Nicole Ravlin, Co-founder of People Making Good, a public relations company based in Burlington, Vermont.People Making Good is a public relations and social media marketing firm focused on promoting healthy, socially responsible brands. In six years we’ve grown to ten employees and have a wide range of clients across the country and around the globe.
Over the past several years, we’ve been limited by our IT solutions, particularly since our clients are in multiple time zones and our staff travels frequently. Important tasks like scheduling meetings or tracking product launches often were made more difficult than they needed to be. About 18 months ago, our IT consultants recommended we try
Google Apps for Business to help simplify our work processes. Not only has it kept us organized as a company, it’s also helped us stay in line with our core values, one of which is to be as paperless as possible.
Google Calendar has completely transformed the way we schedule meetings with clients, book trade shows, and schedule launch events. For one client we set up a shared calendar to manage events in multiple cities for the launch of a new product – everything from tracking industry events to meetings with retailers and press. Our client could see their schedule come together in real time, and it automatically synced with their mobile device. They knew exactly where to be and when, no matter what time zone they were in.
With Google Docs, we’re able to work with clients all over the world. Before, we’d email back and forth, and critical information got buried in people’s inboxes or lost for good. Now, we share documents directly with our clients and quickly work through things like media lists, press releases and blog posts. We often make comments and chat directly in a doc so we can avoid the hassle of multiple phone calls and emails.
Google Apps has helped us streamline our processes, even while we’re on the go. This gives us more time to continue our quest to help socially responsible companies tell their stories.
