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Staying organized can be crucial to keep your business running smoothly and profitable. Our personal favorite tool for productivity here at Kolor Addikt is Trello. If you’re unfamiliar with Trello, Trello is an online tool that allows you to organize your task lists, resources and other key pieces of information.
Trello is an excellent tool to keep track of different aspects of your business like marketing workflows, client project management, and overall business operations tasks. If you’re struggling to stay organized, need better visibility in your business, or just desire a better, easier system to use then keep reading.
The Anatomy of Trello
Board
Trello board is inspired by the Japanese Kanban board, which features 3 columns: To Do, In Progress, and Done. The general purpose of this board is to keep track of the company workflow and what is being completed throughout a period of time. Some examples of boards we have are creative projects, marketing, and boards for individual coaching clients.
Using multiple boards gives us room to get an overhead view of different areas of Kolor Addikt without it all being jumbled together. If someone wants to review marketing assets, it will be on that board. Do yourself a favor and separate your tasks into different boards. It might sound tedious, but it allows you to separate and compartmentalize better.
Lists
Lists are the designated categories for each of your tasks. As stated above, as a beginner, the three categories are to start with To Do, In Progress, and Done. You also have the option to add more lists to your board, for instance, a backlog list for tasks that aren’t a priority but will be needed at some point in the future.
Set up your board with any categories you see fit. This can change depending on the board and what you’re using it for. For example, our Marketing board also has a list of items that need to be reviewed/edited, which is helpful when you have a team working on different tasks. In short, use the lists to supplement your specific workflow.
Cards
Cards are where the magic happens. Here, you add your tasks to the board. Within cards, you can add details like descriptions, assigning team member(s), due date, start dates and attachments like references needed to complete the task.
Need clarity on a specific task? It’s as easy as tagging another team member in a comment on a card. On our team, we also use the IN REVIEW reminder on our cards, to show when an item should be reviewed before the actual due date. There are so many different ways to change up Trello, you can tailor it completely to your own needs.
Maximize Your Boards
Now that I’ve helped you get familiar with Trello, I’m going to tell you how you can get the most out of it! Here are a few things to get the maximum productivity, whether it’s just you or if you have a team.
Different boards
One of Trello’s most convenient features is that you can make designated boards for each part of your business, like a general board, a marketing board, a client board, and any other board you need. With separate boards, it's much easier to get visibility of all the tasks in your business.
Use labels
Trello lets you create and add labels to any card within a board. They’ll show up at the top of each card which makes it easier to classify task types at first glance. We like to use them to label each card with the month of the task, and also the type of task i.e. Blog Post, IG Post..
Add Checklists
If you have specific instructions or steps for a task, add a checklist to cards. They can be as long or as short as you need them to be! Use these to make sure you don’t miss anything in your process.
Get Power-Ups
One of the best parts of Trello is the ability to have power-ups, which connects you with third-party apps to make your job even easier. There are so many to choose from like Calendar, Card Repeater, Custom Fields, and even more. You can also set up automations with Butler or even connect it to a spreadsheet with Zapier for automatic card creation.
By now, you should be able to confidently use Trello with its most basic features. What are you waiting for? It’s a free and easy way to help streamline your business processes.
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