Table of Contents
Working as a remote copywriter can be challenging. This article presents KanBo as a solution for streamlining the remote copywriting workflow.
While doing remote work as a copywriter, it is essential to build a workflow that assists you in managing your day to day tasks and communicating with clients online. Previously, working remotely was all about managing a chaotic inbox full of work orders and client feedback. For copywriters who handle their own clients, the process can be even more nerve wrecking. Ultimately, instead of doing some actual copywriting, many copywriters find themselves spending more time organizing their orders, making sense of client feedbacks, handling a mountain of revisions and much more.
No matter how hopeless it may seem now, the remote copywriter workflow can easily be streamlined through various productivity tools that are available to us today. One such tool is KanBo, a system specially made for self-organizing teams and remote workers to boost their productivity. This article introduces you to a remote copywriter’s experience working with KanBo and how KanBo can help you build your own workflow as a copywriter.
Basic Board Structure in KanBo
At the most basic level KanBo is made up of three important elements:
Boards: The KanBo Board is a digital representation of an area of work such as projects, portfolios, departments and more. If you want to start a new project, you can start off by creating a new KanBo board.
Cards: KanBo cards are the specific work contexts that you perform work in. In the case of a copy writer, these cards can be work orders from your clients.
Lists: Inside each KanBo board are lists that represent a certain area within your project or process. These lists are containers for KanBo cards and make it easier to organize them into meaningful groups. As a copywriter, you can start by making some basic lists such as:
1.New content Order: This is the list where client will add a new work order (a new KanBo card) for you to work on.
2.Committed: Once you have viewed a card from the new content order, you can set a date for the order and commit to it by moving it to the committed list.
3.Doing: Once you start working on the order, move it to the Doing list. This lets the client know which work orders you are currently working on.
4.Ready for review: When you are done with an order, you can move the card to the Ready for review list. From this list, the client can review all the work orders and approve it or ask for any necessary changes.
5.Ready to publish: If the work order requires no further revisions, the client will move it to the ready to publish list.
6.Published: This list contains all the orders that are published.
KanBo gives you the freedom to create unlimited lists depending on your work style (more about KanBo and Work Styles is here). The aforementioned lists are just as example of a configuration that might work for you as a copywriter. You can add or subtract as many lists as you like to create a board that suits your unique workflow.
A Remote Copywriter’s Workflow in KanBo
From getting new orders to handling revisions and finally publishing the content, KanBo makes it easier to model the workflow of remote work as a copywriter in the digital realm. Here are some aspects of remote copywriting and how they can be handled in KanBo:
Getting new Work Orders
At the most initial stage, you receive new work orders from the client and ensure that you have understood their requirements. This stage is critical as the success of each work order depends on it. It is important that the work orders are well described and reflect the client’s vision.
In KanBo, each work order is a card. To submit a new work order, a client can create a new card which contains all the necessary documents, instructions and even components such as to-do lists. These cards show up in the New Content Order list. Any kind of discussion about a work order can take place within the card associated with it. This way, you have all the information you need to start working on a new order without any ambiguity.
Collaborating with the Team
Performing remote work as a copywriter can sometimes make collaboration with teams a challenge. With KanBo, this is simply handled by its intuitive system that requires no extra work. You and your clients can interact within the context of various work orders, so nothing is ever out of place. The card activity stream assists you and your team to stay up to date on all the actions performed by each team member in the context of that card. Meanwhile mentions allow you to engage people in discourse related to particular work orders. KanBo also has an option of board chat that helps team members conduct meaningful discourse within boards. Copywriters can utilize this to talk to their clients about overall work order delivery, rates and other general topics.
Remote Work and Communication in KanBo
Working as a remote copywriter teaches you the value of meaningful and productive communication without the luxury of face-to-face meetings with your clients. It gets even more difficult once you factor in the time differences that make work asynchronous. KanBo deals with this issue by allowing you to work out loud.
For copywriters, it is important to stay up to date on new orders or client feedback to deliver work promptly. KanBo’s assists you with that through a real-time notification system that keeps you in the loop regardless of time zones and locations.
Handling Documents
If you have been doing remote work as a copywriter, you must be familiar with the constant exchange of documents between you and your clients. Clients often require multiple revisions or tweaks which results in a lot of back and forth and countless number of documents that can easily get jumbled up. KanBo simplifies it with an elegant document versioning solution withing each KanBo card. You can easily upload documents within the workorder, so no document is ever out of context.
KanBo also reduces the hassle of dealing with a growing number of documents by versioning all of them so you can keep track of the changes. The document search functionality allows you to search all documents across the board and easily find the ones you are looking for.
KanBo vs. Other Methods/tools
Remote copywriters can work with many kinds of tools to kickstart their productivity and handle their daily workflow. The simplest way practiced by most is communicating through email. While email may seem like the easiest and fastest way to establish contact with the clients, it is often not very efficient or practical in a long run. Managing long email threads soon becomes too tedious for you and the client. Furthermore, email does not allow you to collaborate with a large team of individuals. To achieve true collaboration, adding people in the cc is simply not enough!
On the other hand, there are productivity tools that combine multiple aspects of a remote worker’s workflow to provide an all in one solution. KanBo is one of many such tools with a wide variety of features that make remote work possible.
KanBo’s platform may not have all the features and offerings provided by specialistic content writing management tools on the market, but its simplicity and universality are what makes it the best option for copywriters who are new to working this way. The intuitive interface and a generic set of functionalities are just what you may need to build a simple yet effective workflow that is much more efficient than your regular email. Ultimately, the tool you choose depends on you but KanBo is an option worth exploring.
Do you have questions?
Maybe we have an answer!
If you have any questions regarding the topics we discussed in this blog, go ahead and send them to us.