Communication and collaboration are crucial factors in a freelancer’s workflow. Without the right tools, freelancers can be overwhelmed by sticky notes, Word documents, e-mails and calendars. But there are many tools out there that can make your life easier as a freelancer. In this article, I’ll share three of those tools that I personally use daily as a writer and blogger.
Freelancer tools for communication and collaboration
Communication is key for any freelancer. If you are working in a team, and someone doesn’t reply to your emails, it can be very frustrating. Here are 3 insanely useful tools that you can use to communicate with people in your freelancing organization.
Slackand
Slack, the popular messaging app, has been a favorite among teams for years. It’s not just for team communication, though—it’s also for collaboration.
If you want to work together with your team in real-time, Slack is great for that. With channels, you can specifically create channels for your project and everyone on that channel will see the same messages and information. It’s like having a playbook where everyone on your team knows what they’re supposed to do—and it makes it easy to keep everyone working from the same page. You can even share files or connect a voice or video call within a channel.
Slack also allows you to connect multiple tools and apps so you can stay on top of all of your workflows. There are three pricing levels based on how many people are using it: free; $6/user/month; $12/user/month
Boomerang
Boomerang is an email productivity app that’s designed to help you respond to emails when you have time, but schedule that email to be sent when you want it to go out. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help you write more readable emails and elicit more responses.
Freelancers can also use Boomerang’s scheduling feature to make scheduling a meeting less of a hassle. The “Inbox Pause” feature will stop new emails from appearing in your inbox until you’re ready for more. There are four pricing levels, including basic—which is a free plan—personal, pro, and premium.
SaneBox
If you’ve ever found yourself overwhelmed by the number of emails you receive, SaneBox is for you.
SaneBox uses AI to analyze your previous email use and learn what you find important. It then keeps important emails in your inbox and automatically moves distractions to another folder you can deal with later. If it makes a mistake, you can move the email back and teach the AI to better predict your organizational needs.
Additionally, you can email SaneBox to create a reminder to follow up on a specific date. The folders you use for SaneBox will automatically show up on any device you use to check email, including Android and iOS devices. SaneBox also has a “Do Not Disturb” feature to help you catch up distraction-free.
There are three levels for SaneBox: “Snack” for one email account, “Lunch” for two email accounts, and “Dinner” for up to four email accounts. Within each level, you can pick pricing that is monthly, yearly, or biyearly.
