 The meetings industry is a crazy and harried place and there are so many tasks and bits and pieces that we need to keep Organized so whether you're a meeting planner or a meeting partner Keeping all those bits and pieces organized is a full-time job in and of itself So today I'm going to talk about some productivity tools that will help keep your business more organized meeting partners, it's Leanne from Leanne Calderwood comm and Over the years of building my site selection business and now with this blog There are tasks and bits and pieces to my business flying everywhere And you might find yourself in the same place where you're trying to manage multiple programs You're trying to manage multiple priorities And now you've got some goal set over here to tackle some strategic projects And you're trying to figure out how to manage all these bits and pieces So today I wanted to talk about some of the best productivity tools that I have found to help manage both my business and my blog and Hopefully you'll find some tools that will help manage yours as well Now I should start off by saying these are not Organizational mandated tools so for example CVENT, which is a very robust large sourcing and research tool for the hotel industry Those aren't the tools I'm talking about these are tools that you can personally use to manage your Stuff your business your programs your goals Those kinds of things so I'm leaving the tools that your organization mandates what tools your hotel mandates to look at meeting space And for meeting planners the tools that potentially you're using to manage your registration and your Mobile apps those are for another blog post. So these are productivity tools that you can use starting today So here we go My first and most important technology tool is a robust project management system Now there's a couple on the market that I really like and I think they would be really good for you guys One is called Asana and one is called Trello I use Asana personally and both Asana and Trello are project management tools where you can create tasks and Create projects and you can even do it with small teams So you might find that you really enjoy this project management tool and you want to invite some of your team members Into your task world with you both Asana and Trello have free versions as well as paid versions Now I use Asana's free version and I've managed to implement some tips and tricks where I can kind of stay with the free version And it manages my business and my business hub all in the free version But take a look at it and see if there are some features of a paid version that might work better for your business or your projects and for both tools the paid version isn't that much and it really is worth every penny When you look at the time that it's saving you in getting optimally organized Technology tool number two is my Google calendar If you are a Google user and you have Google calendar and you have family members that are also Googleites This is the tool to keep your family organized So my husband has a Google calendar. In fact, he has two Google calendars a personal and a business Both of my sons have a Google calendar and then I actually have three separate Google calendars depending on what I'm doing But any family member now can look at the calendar as a whole. It's all color-coded We can see where people are at who's got hockey at what time they can see when I'm traveling out of town So if it's not Google calendar, it's got to be some kind of online calendar to help keep you organized You might even be using or calendars at your organization Hopefully it says robust as Google, but definitely getting a Google calendar in your home setting Especially with you're on your phones quite a bit is the way to go and the way to manage your family Technology tool number three is doodle. Doodle is your online Scheduling best friend. So gone are the days where you would clutter up everyone's email With trying to find a time that worked for your meeting and you've got multiple people emailing you back saying yes, this works Yes, this doesn't work. Oh, no now this does work and back and forth back and forth You would go get rid of all that email get it out of your inbox right now and set up a doodle It's a free tool and all you do is you go in and you specify days and times that would work for the meeting and Then you send the link out to everybody and then they respond through the link and all you do is you go to the link And you see all these check marks and X's on where people can and cannot attend your meeting. It's brilliant I so excited about doodle. I wish I had stock. I love doodle. Try it today the next time you're organizing a meeting Technology tool number four is Hootsuite Hootsuite is the social media management tool. I Love Hootsuite. I can go into Hootsuite and Create micro bites of content for my Twitter my LinkedIn my Facebook even my Instagram So it keeps all of my social media platforms in one place for meeting planners They tend to use Hootsuite, especially if they're managing different Twitter profiles And they can put all of those organizations Twitter profiles in one Hootsuite So you're not jumping from Twitter to Twitter to Twitter So Hootsuite is a great way to consume content because you can organize it in different places It's a great way to schedule content so I can write a piece of micro content today and schedule it a month Or a year from now and it's a great way to have one place for all of your social media platforms and posting I'm actually going to go into Hootsuite in Twitter in a great deal of detail in November so if Twitter as a meeting partner interests you watch for that stay in touch with me on that It's going to be amazing. I'm going to walk you through Hootsuite step by step I'm going to walk you through the ins and outs and best practices of Twitter as a meeting partner It's going to be fantastic. So that's coming up soon watch for it But take a look at Hootsuite in the meantime and see if that's a great tool for your social media management Technology tool number five is evernote evernote as the name suggests is a note-taking app But it's a lot more than that and I find I'm taking photos of things Throughout my life and adding it to evernote so that I have those notes for later on It's it. There's so many features of evernote. It's hard to capture in in 30 seconds on a blog post But it really is a an all-encompassing note-taking tool and it keeps your notes and task lists Organized so that when you're out and about you can just refer to your evernote and get all your lists there The biggest thing I use evernote for actually is its business card feature So I no longer have a Rolodex of business cards But rather I take the picture of a business card on my phone and I upload it to evernote which actually links to link in and finds that person's LinkedIn profile as well and Extremely searchable you can search by the person's first name or even their organization name or address and But a boop all the business cards then come up and I'm able to find that individual quickly So evernote is a robust tool. It's also a robust business card app tool So rather than having two tools to do business cards and notes you can do it all on evernote technology tool number six is Headspace headspace is a meditation app and I have it on my phone And it's a 10-minute meditation that I do every morning on the free version Now there is a paid version to a headspace which I actually plan on paying for soon It this just sets me up for success in the morning I find the meditations really pull me in to myself and I think focus on the moment Versus focusing on all the tasks I have to tackle in a day where I can use all the other apps and tools that I've outlined here But headspace it really allows me to just focus internally for 10 minutes every morning Before having to tackle the external world. So if you've tried some meditation apps, but haven't given headspace a try I encourage you to try headspace But above all else find a meditation app that works for you or find a meditation platform that works for you whether it's journaling or going for a walk or listening to Someone on an app kind of take you through a guided meditation find something that grounds you in the morning before you tackle your day technology tools seven and eight go hand in hand with one another they are pick monkey and Canva so pick monkey is a photoshop tool and if you've never used photoshop before This is one of the easiest photoshop tools that you can find on the market Super easy friendly it allows you to alter your selfies or other pictures and add layers of light and color For those selfies it can eliminate wrinkles. So I know where that feature is as well as as Lighten your hair even add some makeup if you want So this is the photoshop tool for those of us who have never used photoshop before Super easy to use and then once you've altered that image you can then potentially flip it over to canva So canva is the graphic design tool for the rest of us and it allows us to create posters Social media posts with text and color. It also allows us to create workbooks and brochures So the resources that I put out through liankulderwood.com and you can find that under resources on my website All of those pieces were created in canva Oh, I didn't have to pay a graphic designer to put those together Those were all done using the canva tool So pick monkey and canva can go hand-in-hand and create professional-looking posts and Paper products for your business That's my list of technology tools that helps me get through my day here as both a meeting partner and as a blogger I hope you found some tools that may help you polish up some of the posts and content that you're creating Or even some things that you're doing for your business and your meeting planning clients Hopefully some of these tools will keep you more organized For more productivity tips jump on over to my website at liankulderwood.com There is a link to productivity pantry, which is my space to put all things productivity and keeping organized Find some tools in there as well as under the resources page And remember if you sign up for a resource you're added to my weekly newsletter Which doesn't suck and it's gonna have lots of productivity tips on there as well that you won't find otherwise on the blog Thanks for watching. Have yourself a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye for now