I’ve been using Slack for a while for my business, and it’s revolutionised my freelance communications. If you haven’t used it before, it’s like a collection of chat rooms for businesses, removing a lot of the clutter from your inbox and really improving the speed of communication and decision making. With more and more businesses hiring remote talent, it’s becoming one of the easiest way to check in with everyone.
Slack have just announced their app directory, full of bots and apps you can integrate with your Slack channel. App integration isn’t entirely new, I’ve had Asana integrated into my Slack for a while thanks to my VA Jo Shock, but it does make it a lot easier to search for and add new ones.
Here are a few of my favourites so far for freelancers.
- Growbot – If you’re working in a team, this is a nice app to measure acknowledgements and ‘wins’, boosting team morale
- Birdly – I’m still testing this one, but in theory you upload your expenses (either a screengrab or pdf) and it will process it for you
- Trello – If you’re a big fan of the project management tool, you can now import it into Slack so you’ll get updates in there every time you update it.
- Asana – As I mentioned, this is one I already use. Every time an item is added or ticked off my Asana list, a notification pops up in Slack
- Wunderlist – Although I use Asana for some of my project management, Wunderlist is my go-to for quick lists. The Wunderlist app will now update Slack with your progress
- 99designs task – I know quite a few freelancers use 99designs to outsource small design jobs, and this app will update you with the progress of each task within your chosen Slack channel.
- Google+ Hangouts – Yup! You can start a Hangout from within Slack!
- CatFacts – Just for fun (and because cats power the internet)
You can find all the above in the Slack App Directory (lots more to come apparently).
P.S If you use Slack, you might also like the Slack Hacks at SlackStacks, and this tutorial for importing your Google Analytics into Slack.