What software should I use to manage my tourism marketing program?

For small businesses and startups in the tourism industry, efficient collaboration is essential. Today's digital environment requires every member of your marketing team to be well-versed in online collaboration tools, particularly if they work remotely. My home in Cairns attracts workers both locally and in more remote destinations across Queensland. It can be difficult to decide what software to use, which is why we've put together this blog post of the different options available to you.

Trello In the world of marketing management, less is more. Trello is a simple, minimal project management tool based on the web, which is intended to help you keep on top of your tasks and simplify your team's workflow. The platform is incredibly straightforward and easy to use and is based on the Kanban approach to lay out tasks visually, like on a noticeboard. With Trello, you can create boards and set up teams for each of your projects while adding bespoke columns to every board, such as 'in progress', 'done', 'to be reviewed' and 'planned'. Then, you simply make a card and move it to the next column as you move forward with each of your tasks. The cards can carry a great deal of information and you can add labels, checklists, deadlines, attachments, comments and much more. If you don't require a complicated system and simply need the members of your team to be aware of everyone's tasks and the stages they are in, then Trello is the software for you. Asana Asana is similar to Trello as it is an extremely simple tool for collaboration, but it has an array of extra features. If you find that Trello is slightly too limiting, Asana might be the perfect solution for you. Asana works best with collaborative projects. In Asana, you are able to view a project's tasks in various ways by selecting either a calendar view, a board view or a list view. You can also create categories within each project, which can offer an extra layer of organisation that is ideal for more complicated projects on a larger scale that require a more precise workflow. Asana can also be integrated with apps such as Google Drive, Gmail and Slack and is accessible from either your browser or by the company's handy mobile app so that you can receive real-time notifications and updates. For fifteen teammates and under, the basic version of Asana is free, but bonus features are available for a monthly fee. Canva Canva is one of the best browser-based, free creativity tools on the market. It allows you to create a huge range of designs, including social media posts, ebooks, flyers and infographics, with no design skills required. Canva has thousands of templates to choose from which makes it incredibly easy for those without design skills to create quality designs themselves. They also have a fantastic portfolio of stock photography and graphic elements to choose from, which are mostly free. Canva is the ideal software for start-ups that don't have the funds to hire a social media manager or graphic designer. Monday.com Monday.com is an excellent project management tool due to its visually intuitive, simple layouts that make work sequences much easier to organise. Monday.com's features include project and resource management, collaboration, reporting and time tracking features. Users have the ability to attach and upload files to cards, mention teammates, make comments and much more. monday.com also has an excellent project reporting dashboard that can gather data from multiple different boards, making it much easier to track your progress. Monday.com does not offer a complete toolkit for invoicing and project accounting solutions, but it does allow you to track your timelines, invoices and hours. Monday.com is a highly customisable tool that allows you to work with whatever technique fits your marketing team well and provides you with a number of handy workflow tools to that you can automate the different elements of your process. Monday.com can also be integrated with apps such as Google Drive, Google Calander, Gmail, Slack, Typeform, Dropbox, Trello, GitHub, Jira and many more. Your ideal software to manage your tourism marketing processes will depend on your unique needs, so it is worth doing extensive research into each tool and its different features to make sure that you can streamline your internal processes effectively.