Organise Your Business With Trello
What is Trello?
Trello is a free organisation, planning and project management tool. It is based on a ‘kanban’ board, which is a visual way of managing the stages and tasks of a project from start to finish. It can help you to see exactly what you need to do and how much of that task is complete at any one time. If you like lists and being organised, you will love it, if that’s not really your thing, give it a go because it might be a game changer!
How I use it in my web design business
I had tried to use Trello many times before but I didn’t really like the way it looked and found moving cards to be less satisfying that checking a box. However, once I started to take on more work and have more business tasks on my plate I really wanted to find a tool that would help me stay organised. Having tried a couple of other options (Asana and ClickUp) I landed back at Trello, this time really digging in to how it could work for me specifically and I ended up really loving it.
There are three key areas I use Trello for my business: weekly to-do list, big picture planning and managing my client work. There are other ways I use it, such as for planning content, sorting information I need to find quickly and even for my Christmas shopping list(!) but the first three I listed are the big ones.
WEEKLY TO-DO LIST
This is my most used board. I use it to track everything I want to do over the course of a week, assign dates to each of the tasks and check them off when complete. As a list lover, being able to check things off and see them in the ‘Done’ list is really satisfying! First I create a ‘brain dump’ to-do list, then a list for each day of the week and finally a done list. At the end of the week I archive all of my done tasks, then move everything I didn’t get done back into the brain dump list. At the start of the next week I reassign them, plus my new tasks throughout the week.
There are some nifty automations you can use in Trello to add dates to cards as soon as their moved into a list or to move them to the ‘Done’ list as soon as you check them off. You are allow one of each type of automation in basic Trello, for more you can upgrade to Trello Gold.
Trello Board Template
Get yourself a free copy of the Trello board from the video below by clicking the button.
2020 OVER VIEW
I have created a big picture board for looking at the whole of 2020. This doesn’t go into detail and small tasks but roughly maps out my larger goals for each quarter as a sort of guide to keep me on track. I also include my overall goals for my business so they are top of mind when I’m making decisions.
CLIENT PROJECT BOARD
This board has been so useful to keep projects with clients running smoothly, to keep all of our communication organised and to allow clients to see where we are in a project. It also looks really professional to clients you may be working with when they use a set up like this, rather than just having to rely on emails.
I map out the overall project, each list being a different stage of the project, then the smaller tasks are listed as cards within these lists. Within a card we can communicate with messages back and forth which keeps everything organised and easy to find. I can also colour coordinate tasks so its easy for both me and my client to see what needs our attention.
CONTENT PLANNER
This board helps me to brainstorm content ideas which I can then organise and plan out for future posts. A massive factor for creating this plan was working with the wonderful Alice Benham on her 6 Week Thing course, which is where the categories and lists come in (rocks, sand and water…if you know, you know!), but really it’s all about finding a system that helps you plan out what you can share with your audience.
TUTORIAL
Below is a short-ish video tutorial covering the basics of Trello and the free weekly to-do list template you can receive if you sign up to my fortnightly mailing list (or you can just watch and create your own!).
If you would like to start using Trello for the first time it would be wondering if you could use the link below - it gives me a free month of Trello Gold and will cost you nothing at all!
Trello Board Template
Get yourself a free copy of the Trello board from the video below by clicking the button.
Kirsty M Design - Trello for Small creative businesses
