Unlock Efficiency: Elevate Your Skills with Our Training & Videos

Intro

- [Scott] Creating labels within Google Contacts can be very helpful, but did you know there's an alternative way to create email groups, which gives you a lot more flexibility?

In this video, I'm going to show you how to use Google Groups, so you can contact many people with just a single email address. (machine screeches) This video is sponsored by SaneBox, the email inbox lifesaver.

With AI technology, SaneBox prioritizes essential messages, saving you hours of time each week, and by learning from your behavior, SaneBox will clean up your inbox, get rid of spam, and organize your emails into relevant folders. Best of all, SaneBox works with any email provider.

To get started, click the link in the description to get your free 14-day trial.

Contact Labels

Within Google Contacts, we have the ability to create labels, which is really another way of saying we can create groups. So, for example here, I have a label called "Client Team," where I have a collection of six different individuals.

Now, not only can I organize them here within Google Contacts, but what is most helpful is that I can then use that label within my Gmail account. So, if I start to type in "client," as in client team, there is my group.

I can select that, and now, all six email addresses have been input into my to field, and I can go ahead and send this email. But there are a couple of problems when it comes to using labels.

Problems with Labels

Number one, it's going to be much harder for me to determine, did I send this to the team, or did I just individually add these email addresses? I won't be able to filter by client team here within my Gmail account.

And number two, you may notice that if you try to access your labels within the Gmail mobile app, most often, it will not be displayed, meaning that you will not be able to access these labels from your mobile device.

But what if instead, you could create a custom email address like the one you see here, and have as many people within that group? Not only do you not have to share that information with others, but more importantly, you can now filter, and you can do special things with this new email address, which will contain other members.

So, let me show you how to set this up. To make this happen, I am using a free service called Google Groups, and to access your Google Groups account, all you need to do is go to groups.google.com,

Google Groups Interface

and you'll see an interface like what you see here. Now, in my example, I just have the one group here. You can see I have that custom email address. If I click on this group,

I can see the members of this group.

Here, you can see I have those three different members, including myself here, and this gives me a lot more flexibility in not only managing this group, but as I mentioned before, I can now have a single email address to manage, which gives me a lot more flexibility within my Gmail account when it comes to labels, when it comes to filters, when it comes to managing this group as a whole.

Create a New Group

So, let's go ahead and create a new group. In the top left-hand corner, you can see that there is this Create Group button. I'm going to select that, and we'll be prompted with a new dialogue box. Now, you can call your group anything that you want.

I'm going to call this my test group in this example. But where we need to pay special attention is the group email, because this must be a unique email address. Remember, the domain at the end will always be googlegroups.com.

That means the front end must be unique. Now, I'm going to assume that test-group is already taken.

If I attempt to say Next, oh, this is already taken.

So, let me try something a little more unique. I'm going to call this orthoplessimeter. Let's see if simpletestgroup is taken in this case, and I'm going to say Next. Mm, that's taken as well. Maybe I'll add a number at the end just to make it that much more unique.

Who Can Access

Keep in mind, this unique email address is not something that you're going to be sharing publicly, so it's all right if it has a few numbers or if it's not the easiest to read.

The important thing is that it is unique. Now, in the second step, we have a number of options here, in terms of who can access or who can be a member. So, who can search for this group?

Well, I would recommend that you leave it at group members only. Otherwise, you can make it available to anyone on the web, but that would be if you are wanting to create some type of mailing list.

So, I'm going to keep this at group members. Next, who can join the group? Well, I'm going to say only invited members, but you do have the options to allow people to request to join, or anyone can join. Again, these options would be if you are creating some type of mailing list,

so I'm going to keep it at only invited users. And then, down below, we have three other important options to consider. Who can view conversations, who can post,

and who can view members. Now, these first two options are referring to the ability to see these conversations within Google Groups. I would recommend you keep these at the group member level.

But in terms of who can view the members, you may want to adjust this to group managers or group owners. This is especially important if you do not want to share others' email addresses with others when you're sending out to these particular groups.

Adding Members

I'm going to hit Next, and last but not least, we have the opportunity to start adding our members. Now, of course, we can always add our members, but I'm going to come down here and select Directly Add Members.

I don't want to send out a bunch of invitations. Again, this might be appropriate if you're wanting to create a mailing list, but I'm going to say Directly Add Members. And here, I can simply copy and paste

the members I would like to add to my group. So, let me add a few sample email addresses here. Let's say this one here. We're going to add those two email addresses.

I can distinguish if they're going to be a member, or if I want to give them other abilities, such as being a manager or a group owner. I don't have to include a welcome message. And lastly, we want to take a look at the subscription level.

Now, each email is what we are going to keep for our purposes, but it does give us a few other options. Again, these are more in line if you are using this as a mailing list.

We're going to keep that at the default of each email, and I'm going to say Create Group. It's going to ask me for my CAPTCHA. No, I am not a robot. And in just a matter of seconds, we are now brought back to the My Groups section, and here, we can see we have our test group created with our unique email address.

Starting a Conversation

Now, if I click on this test group, the first area it's going to bring me to is to Conversations, because I can start to have a conversation right here within Google Groups.

I don't actually need to go to my Gmail account to start conversing and start sending a message. If I click this Start a Conversation link, it will prompt me with a dialogue box, which looks very, very similar to a Gmail account. I can start to add a subject and add my message down below. But I'm going to cancel this for now,

and I want to come over here to the People section. Here, you can see our full list of all of the contacts,all of the email addresses included in this group. I can see when they joined, I can change their permissions.

I've got a lot more flexibility here, and of course, I can add new members whenever I like. But the last thing that we want to stop at is the About section here. This is probably the easiest place we can go to.

Simply copy the email address itself, because this is what we want to start using

within our Gmail account, or you can really use it within any email account, and start sending messages out to this group.

Sending a Message

Now, jumping back to our Gmail account, here, you can see that we have been notified that our group, Test Group, has been created and ready to use, so it will give us a notification.

But now, if I go to compose a new message, all I'm going to do is paste in that single email address here. Remember, it's going to contain these different members down below. If you hover over it, it'll show you which members are included, but there is only one email address here. It's not going to load my to line

with 27 or 38 different email addresses. And then, I will also not know if I sent them as a group, or if it's just part of the group. Here, I know that everyone within this group will be sent this message. In this example, I'll just ask if we can meet later this week,

and to send me a quick reply to confirm. So, a single email address, a fairly simple message, and I'm going to hit Send Now, let's see what it looks like for people who receive that email.

So, here I am within one of my recipient's account, and the first thing you may notice

is that people who have been added to your group will be notified.

Here, you can see the first message they received is, "You have been added to Test Group." So, you may want to reserve this Google Groups functionality for people that you know well, since they will be notified that they've been added to that group. But up above, here, you can see they've received your message from your email account, and if we open up this email, we can see that they do not have access to the other email addresses.

They can see that it was sent to this group email, which they are a part of, but the messaging, the formatting, everything else is the same. The other thing to note is that there is some additional information at the very bottom of the email.

This is below your signature line. Things such as, "You received this message because you are subscribed to this Google group." They will also have the opportunity to unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails in the future.

This type of language, of course, is more common when we are receiving newsletters or marketing information, but the Google Groups functionality

is based on allowing people the opportunity to leave if they choose to. So, some of these things to keep in mind when you're creating your Google groups, or when to see when it is most appropriate to use this functionality. Lastly, if they hit Reply,

their reply will go to you because you are the sender, but if they hit Reply All, you will see that they still do not have access to the other email addresses in this group.

Everyone else within this group will still receive this message, so they can safely reply all and continue a group thread, but they too only have to manage a single email address, rather than replying all, or maybe being hesitant to reply all if they see that there are seven or more people within this particular group.

Last but not least, keep in mind, as we return to the Google Groups interface, you can manage and see all of your group conversations here within Google Groups. Here is the message that I just sent out.

I can click on this, and I can continue to respond. Either Reply All, Reply to Author, or Forward. But you don't ever have to come back in here unless you want to manage the people within this group, because otherwise, all you need to know is to use this unique email address, and you have your own custom and very flexible group.

Now, if you're wanting to learn even more ways to simplify your software and get more done, join me at simpletivity.com, where you can access my free guides

and additional software tutorials. Thank you so much for watching, and remember,

being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

- [Scott] Trello does not make it easy for us to export the information within our boards. I could come up here to menu. I could select export as a CSV file but when I open up this file, is this really helpful? I mean, I guess this is my entire board but I don't know what to do with this.

Well, what if you could not only export your Trello board into a spreadsheet, but also have it sync both ways? Well, in this video I'm going to show you how to set up this type of sync and also why you should consider adding this as a part of your workflow.

Hello everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

First things first, why would you want to set up a two-way sync between your Trello board and a spreadsheet? Well, depending on the way that you or members of your team work, you may just be more comfortable viewing this information within a spreadsheet.

And of course, it's especially helpful if you want to apply some formulas or other data when it comes to the information here within your Trello board.

But perhaps the most helpful reason for setting up this two-way sync is to be able to share certain pieces information with others without having to add them to your Trello board.

As a Trello user, you recognize that anyone that you add to your board has access to every single card. You can't limit a particular list or a particular card by criteria. But by setting up such a sync, I can share this information with anyone that I want.

They are up to date with what's going on within that Trello board. And in addition, they can come in here and change cards themselves if they want to change a due date or change a time estimate or change really any other field that I include here, and it will automatically be synced back to my Trello board.

So what is going on and how can you set this up for your needs? Well, to make this happen, we are using a power up from Unito. To add this Unito power up, all you need to do is select power ups, go to add power ups and search for sheets as in Google Sheets.

And the very first result here is Google Sheets plus Trello. Two way sync. Once you've installed this power up, you will see the Unito sync option here amongst your other power ups.

Now by selecting this option, you can open up the Unito sync menu without having to leave your Trello board. But once you've set up your unido account, I would recommend that you access this screen from a separate tab.

You can log in directly from Unito and have access to the exact same screen. I find this is a little more convenient so I can toggle back and forth between these tabs. Let me close that menu here.

And so here I can adjust and use my settings and here I can see what is going on within my Trello board. Now, Unito is a leader in connecting productivity and project management tools together.

When I select on connect a new tool here you can see the full list of all of the tools in which you can connect together. So whether it's from a project management tool to a CRM or syncing your calendar to other database tools you can do all of it here within Unito, but in our example we're going to keep it between our Trello board and within a Google sheet.

So here is the sync that I have set up. Here is the example board cards and I have set up a two-way sync with my sheet. Now if I click on this, we can go under the hood and see exactly what is going on.

So here, if I select edit tools, you can see that I can choose any of the boards that I want on the left hand side and on the right hand side I can choose which ones I want to sync to. Next up, we can choose if we want to sync in just one direction or in both directions. So there may be a use case where you just want to

feed your spreadsheets certain information but in this example, I find it's most helpful

if we have information going back and forth. So no matter where you update that card whether it's within Trello or within your spreadsheet everything will stay up to date. Now the third step that we need to select are the rules created.

And what this means is which cards are going to be synced which ones are going to be sent to our Google spreadsheet. So here we have a combination of if and and commands.

So if a card in this board is open, meaning it's not archived and the member is myself, we want to then create a matching row in Google Sheets. So this is very important.

I can add as many rules as I like. This is exactly where we can filter out certain cards and I can only share certain cards with others. If I want, I can select to add a new rule, and I can say and the label is, let's say, medium priority.

So I can add and layer on as many rules as I want so that the things that appear within my sheet are only a fraction of what is going on in the board. And then down below we have a rule for the other direction meaning that if a row in Google sheet, and I haven't added any rules here, we want to create a matching card in Trello and keep them in sync.

And if I'm creating brand new cards from the Google sheet side, I want them to appear in my ideas list. This is a list which is located within my Trello board. So with these rules set up, I have the freedom to create and also edit that information wherever I am.

Lastly, and perhaps the most important step is mapping our fields together. So let's select this icon. In this example, I have mapped six out of a total of 23 fields, meaning there are 23 total fields within Trello in which I could map to my Google sheet but I've only decided to map six.

Remember that first example, that huge dump of CS information? That's not useful to anyone here. You can choose exactly what you want

and only what you want on the Google Sheets side. So down below here, you can see everything from the title, description, label, due date. The link to card is just one way, and this is referring to the link directly to that Trello card. So it only makes sense

that it's going to be displayed on the Google Sheets side. And then here is my estimated time in minutes. And yes, this sync works with all of your custom fields

so you can include all of that quantitative data and have it match over on the same side. And if I need to go ahead and add any new mapping, I can just come up here and select the add mapping button.

It will give me two new dropdowns so I can select which in my Trello side will be mapped to that on the sheet side. Now the only other thing that we need in order to make this work is to add two special columns here on the Google Sheets side. And Unito has made it super easy for us to do so.

Here you can see my first column is Unito id and my last column is called Last Modified. Now, no, I didn't have to add these manually here Within my Google Sheets extension, I can select the Unito extension and select getting started. And with just a single click, it will insert those two columns in this sheet or any other sheet where

you want this synced to occur automatically. You must have the rest of your information in between these two. This is required, so Unito knows which rows to back to Trello. With our setup now complete, let's take a look at a few real world examples.

So first, to make sure that our sync is working let's take a look at how many items we have here. You can see that the last row is row number 13. I want to see if we can populate this next row by adding a new card on Trello.

So here within my Trello account, I'm going to come up here to the task list. I'm going to add a new card, and this is a new task created in Trello.  So I'm going to hit enter. And at this case, nothing is going to sync over until I am assigned to that card.

Remember, we told Unito that we only want to have cards where I'm assigned to appear within our Google Sheets.

Now, when we jump back into our Google sheet here you can see on row number 14 is our new card complete with the title, the due date, and the label, which is assigned to it.

And remember, you'll always have access to that direct link at just a single click here in this link to card row. But let's see if our sync is working in both directions.

You can see that there is no description for this card and I have not given it a time estimate. So I'm going to give it a time estimate of 60. In this case, in the description, I'm going to say let's do this in August.

And then as a result of this description I'm going to come here to the due date and I'm going to choose the August 31st, 2023

as the new due date. Let's jump back to Trello and see if everything is working. Here at the bottom of my task list, we have that same card but now the due date is August 31st. And if I open it, here's the description and the estimated time is added as well.

So a perfect sync between my Trello board and the specific cards that I want to see within my spreadsheet. So if you want to export your Trello boards in a more meaningful way or share information without having to add someone to your boards,

Unito may be the best solution for you, to get started, simply add the power up to your boards or go to unito.io. And if you enjoyed this tutorial, you'll probably like the video which is being recommended to you right now.

Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Make your tasks repeat

- [Scott] Whether you're brand new to Google Tasks or you've been crossing things off for years, I can guarantee in this video, I'm going to show you something new because we're looking at seven must know tips and tricks that every Google Tasks user needs to know.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. Number one on our list has to do with using recurring tasks, probably one of the most powerful yet simple features of any task manager.

You probably have a number of tasks that you need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, or some other interval. And rather than clicking on that task

and updating the due date manually, it is so much easier if we make it a repeating or recurring task. So here I have something called "Send out a weekly newsletter", and if I come over here and select Repeat, I can choose how often I want to repeat this task.

Well, it is a weekly newsletter, so yes, I'm going to send it out once a week and maybe Tuesday is the day that I've set aside for it. I can change that here within my screen,

and if I want, I can give it a specific time. Now this can be very valuable because if I leave this alone, it will appear up here within my Google Calendar as an all day task,

but if I choose a specific time, it will place it here within the calendar itself. In this case, I'm going to say it ends never and I'm going to select OK.

And so, now, every Tuesday, and I can see if I go ahead here on my Google Calendar, it is always going to show up. Now, one important note, when it comes to repeating tasks within Google Tasks, is that we can always come here and change the repeating interval if we need to.

If I select on this, I can come in here and change whatever I like.

However, if I want to stop repeating this task, I will not be able to add a repeat in the future. You can see here, if I click this X, it's actually going to give me a warning, do I want to remove all future occurrences?

Yes, but I won't be able to make this task repeating again. So if I hit stop repeating, it will cross it out but I don't have the option to add it again.

Add sub-tasks to your tasks

Tip number two is all about creating subtasks for existing tasks. So here, for example, you can see I have a task called "Write copy for my website homepage," and down below, I have two indented tasks.

These are subtasks which are related to this task above. And even if we change our view, in this case, I'm viewing all of my tasks in my preferred order. But if I come up here to the list options and select by date, it will mix it in depending on the due date of that task, but you can see if I come over and hover over the check mark, it will show me what other tasks will be completed at the same time.

So I can easily see what will be changed if I choose to select this one. So how can you add your own subtasks? Well, this task called "Review Q4 marketing report", I'm going to select it, and then here on the More Options, I'm going to select Add a Subtask. And here I can say this is going to be Task 1, if I hit Enter on my keyboard,

I can continue to add as many subtasks as I like, so I've added three subtasks in this case and some may have due dates, some may not, that's completely up to you.

Now in this view, by due date, you can see that the tasks are nested nice and cleanly,

they are indented below the master task. However, if you change your view to the date view, that will not necessarily be the case, here you can see we have Task 1 and Task 2 under the no date section, Task 3 is under Wednesday, June 28th, and then the master task itself is down here at July 12th. Now, once again, we could hover over

to see which tasks are related to this task. So as I hover over the master task, it's going to show me what else is related, but make note of the different ways in which subtasks are displayed, depending on which sort order you choose.

‍Using multiple task lists

Now speaking of grouping our tasks together, tip number three is all about using and adding new lists. Far too often, I see people use just the first My Tasks or default list

for all of the work that they want to accomplish. But remember, you have the option

to add as many additional lists as you like. In this case, maybe I want to create a list called Work so I can separate things from my personal life and my professional life.

So here, within this list, I can keep things separate and add things related to my work.

Moving tasks between lists

But that also leads us to tip number four, where we can move tasks in between our lists. So for example, here I am within my task list and I notice that this Email Tom

is actually a work-related activity. All I need to do is select the task options, and then I can choose down below which of my three lists I would like to put it in. I'm going to select Work, and now it will move over to my Work task.

And you can change things and move things back and forth as often as you like. This can also be a great way if you want to move things through different phases or stages.

Any of you who may be familiar with the Kanban method of working could set up multiple lists as you move things through different stages or different phases.

Converting email to a task

Now, of course, we can access Google Tasks from a variety of different Google products, including Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Gmail. And this last one makes it very easy for us to follow up on particular messages. Not only can we access our task list here on the right hand side, but if I open up this email

and determine that I need to follow up on this, rather than adding a note manually,

I can add a connection to this note in just a single click. Here at the top of the message, you will notice this Google Tasks icon, and if I hover over it, it tells me it will immediately add it to My Tasks.

So here on the right hand side, it will use the email subject line as the name of the task. Now, I don't need to keep it at that, maybe I want to rename this "Review RoboForm email", something along those lines.

And of course, I can add further details and add a due date. But what's most important is that you can see it has added a direct link down below. So whenever I need to go back to this email, I can do so in one click.

Let me go back to my inbox, and let's say I notice that I need to review this email. All I need to do is click on this special link and it will bring me back directly to this email. And I don't have to be within Gmail in order to do this.

Wherever I have access to Google Tasks, I can immediately open up that email in a single click.

Link tasks to Google Drive

Next, let's take a look at a special feature within Google Drive, which brings our task list together but also makes it that much easier for us to collaborate with others.

Here I am within a Google document and I have started to write out a few ideas here

but maybe I want to remind myself of what else I need to do with this document. I could start adding those tasks here within my task list but it might be more helpful

to add the list itself right here. So here within my document, I'm going to leave my cursor here at the bottom, and I'm going to come up here and add a checklist.

So here you might think that this is just a standard checklist, I'm going to say "Review the intro" for example, and maybe I'm going to add another task such as "Send to Karen for review".

But you'll note that there is a Google Tasks icon here to the left of each checkbox. If I select that here, I can assign it to someone else within my organization or I can select myself, and I can add a date at the same time if I want to, and select assign the task.

Now on the right hand side of the screen, within my standard tasks view, you can see that that task has been added to my task list. And down below, it has given me a direct link to that document as well.

Let's go ahead and assign the second task to myself as well, and I'm going to say assign. In just a second,it also will be added here to my task list. Now the great thing is, is that I can either check these off or access the document directly from my task list but either way, it will remain perfectly synced.

For example, if I've already reviewed the intro, I can check off this task here and you will notice that it has been completed here and removed from my task list.

Keep in mind you are not limited to just assigning tasks to yourself, and anyone else within your Google Workspace, you can assign them tasks directly from within Docs, Sheets, and Google Slides.

And if you want to separate out between your task list and what is only kept within the document, all you need to do is come up to Tools, and then select Tasks. This will give you a different viewshowing you only the completed or remaining tasks

Mobile widgets

for this specific document. Last but not least, let's end with a mobile tip for Tasks. Here within your mobile device, we have an option to add widgets for our tasks.

So if I click and hold on the Tasks icon, I can come up and select widgets. And Tasks gives us two very helpful options. Let's start with the one below called New Task.

Again, if we click and hold, we can put it anywhere on our home screen, and now we are just one click away from adding a new task. So when I have that new idea, I can select it and immediately start to enter in that new task.

But the second widget may be even more valuable to us and make sure that we don't let anything slip through the cracks. Here, if I select this three by three list, again, I can put it anywhere within my home screen

and we can change the size at any time. So if I want to drag these out to the right

so I can see a little more, I can do so. Now I can scroll and see all of my tasks, I can easily go through the different lists and I'm still just one click away from adding a new task from my home screen.

Checking things off and managing all of my tasks couldn't be easier with the Google Tasks widget.

Now, I would love to hear from you next, what questions do you have about Google Tasks or what are some of your favorite features? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. And if you enjoyed this Simpletivity video, you're going to love this video next.

Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive doesn't need to be difficult,

in fact, it's very simple.

Why you need and SMS Marketing

Have you thought about adding text messaging marketing to your business? If not, here's something to think about. Emails have an open rate of 20%.

Text messages have an open rate of 98%, and on top of that, 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes of receiving them.

So in this video I'm going to show you how easy it is to get started with text messaging marketing and give you tips and tricks along the way. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you are wanting to engage

with your customers that much more directly and increase your sales, text messaging marketing might be the best solution for you. Whether you want to have a two-way conversation or if you want to communicate with thousands of people at once, text messaging may be the best solution for you.

Text messaging software is easier than you think

In this example, we are using a tool called SimpleTexting which, as the name suggests, keeps things nice and easy for those of us who may not be so technically inclined, but still want to take advantage of the most recent technology including SMS marketing.

So here within my SimpleTexting interface, you can see I can manage all of my conversations here on the left hand side. Here in the middle of the screen, you can see an example of a conversation that I'm in right now between a potential customer.

And then on the right hand side, I can easily view all of that contact's information and include additional details, including notes, birthday, and other vital details.

So here, from the comfort of my own desk, I can text an communicate directly back either with an individual customer or with customers on mass. "Yes, you can come in tomorrow and pick these up."

So I can send my text whenever I need to and keep a complete history of that conversation right here on my desktop. How to acquire your text messaging audience But before we go any further with the specific features, the very first question we need to answer is

"How do we start communicating with our contacts?' And this is very, very important when it comes to text messaging. You must receive consent, or in other words, you must ensure that the people that you're communicating with have opted to communicate with you via text messaging.

And for that, we're going to make use of a keyword. Now, you've probably texted a keyword before, or at the very least you've seen other businesses invite you to text a certain word to their number.

The reason for this is that this is the most common way to opt-in to a text messaging service. So let me show you how easy it is to set this up. In this case, I'm going to select a new keyword. And because my business is all about being simple, I'm going to choose that word "simple."

Anyone who text the word "simple" to this number above will be added to my list. Now I can either choose to add it to a new list or to an existing list, and in this case, I'm going to choose to add it to a new list called Subscribers.

So anyone who texts the word "simple" will be added to this list, and then I'll be able to send them campaigns or specific messages in the future. Now down below, here is going to be

the Auto confirmation message. So what do I want them to receive after they've texted this word to me? And an added benefit of using SimpleTexting is that yes,

they have AI built in. So if I don't want to write the message myself, I can always come up here to Generate message. And so I'm going to give the AI assistant the following prompt, "Thank them for joining the list and stay tuned for special offers."

I can next select Generate a message, and then down below in just a few seconds, it will generate several messages for me to choose from.

Now as I scroll through the selections here, I like this sound of exclusive, it makes people feel special, so I'm going to select that one and say Select message. And of course, I can always continue to edit it or add more details down below.

Remember, you can always add links to your messages. So if you want to direct them to a certain landing page on your website or to another resource, you can do that here as well. But I'm going to keep it rather simple in this particular message. Now, I'm not going to add any further details.

I'm going to select Save this keyword in this case, and here you can see it has been added to my list. Anyone who texts this word to this number will be added to my subscriber list. So let's go and test it out. I'm going to go back to my inbox here,

and on my phone, I'm going to text the word "simple" to this number. Here you can see what I texted, and instantly I received this message back, "Thanks for joining,

stay tuned for exclusive offers and more." And now when I come over here to my contacts, I can take a look at my Subscribers list, and look at that, we have one new subscriber, which would be me and my test account.

So that's how easy it is to both set up a keyword and invite people to join your list.

And don't forget, you can add as many keywords as you want and have them trigger new things, either trigger specific responses So maybe in this case, I have a keyword of "apply" or "jobs", and these are people who are seeking to apply for a position within my organization, something very different than maybe just a general marketing list Getting consent to send text messages Now, adding a keyword is not the only way to have people opt-in to your text messaging list. Another common method is to include it on a form.

So if you're already collecting phone numbers, you can include an opt-in checkbox so that they give you permission to text with them. But here, within SimpleTexting, you can also create your own web signup forms.

So for example, I've created a form called New Customer Form where I can include as many details as I want including first and last name, their email address, maybe I want to capture their birthday.

If I want to send them a special birthday message via text messaging, I can do it all here. I can then send them directly to my form where they can fill out the required information

and then select Subscribe now.And here you can see we have that policy built in

that by selecting this, they agree to receive promotional messages. Remember, in order to keep your number and more importantly your brand in good faith, make sure that you have some way for them to explicitly agree to receive SMS messages from you Creating SMS marketing campaigns But enough about consent, let's move on to one of the most powerful features when it comes to using text messaging marketing and that is creating your own campaigns.

This gives you the opportunity to communicate with thousands of your clients exactly when you want to and have them act on those requests in a matter of minutes. So here I have a number of campaigns set up already, including this 25% Off Sale. So I can see when it was sent,

I can see what the message was, but I can also keep track of that history in terms of how many people received it, I can also keep track of the link that was used and how many people actually clicked that link. But let's go ahead and create a new campaign from scratch.

All I need to do is select this New button here and let's give it a campaign name. I'm going to say "Buy 1 G One", that's going to be the name of the campaign. This is just for my own reference here.

Once again, we can use AI to assist us, but in this case, I'm going to put in my own messaging. So in this example, I've said the following, "This weekend only, Buy 1 course and Get a 2nd course for FREE!

Make your picks now." And then I've included a link to the landing page. Now here on the right hand side of the screen, it's going to give me a helpful preview of what that message will look like. And the first thing that you will notice is that this big, long link

is going to look rather ugly and maybe a little intimidating, and actually maybe take away from the rest of the message. Well, SimpleTexting has a feature called Shorten URL. So all I need to do is select the URL, and I'm going to select that Shorten URL.

And here's an example of what it will now look like to the recipient. Nice and short, the focus is on the message, and they are still just one click away from making their selection.

Now, immediately down below, you will see that there's a section called Unsubscribe message, and this is also a best practice, reminding those whom you are communicating with that they have an opportunity to unsubscribe or stop receiving messages from you.

In this case, the word is "stop", so as long as they text the word "stop" in reply, they will be removed from this list and no longer receive messages. I'm going to come down here and just hit Enter on my keyboard just so there's some separation between that message and the link that I want them to click.

Next, I need to select which group I want to send this campaign to. So I'm going to select this and come down and choose Subscribers. Now, I can choose multiple groups if I want to, but in this example, we're going to stick with just subscribers.

Lastly, I can choose if I want to send this campaign immediately, if I want to schedule it for the future, or if I want to set up a recurring schedule for this particular campaign. In this example, I'm going to stay with Immediately and hit Next.

I am then brought to the summary screen where I can review one last time what this message will look like, and when, I'm happy I can hit Send now, and then brought back to the campaign screen. And if I go back to my inbox, I can see with this test user account

that yes, this campaign has been sent, including this very nice and short and very clickable link rather than the very long and intimidating link that I first pasted in.

Free resources & pricing options Now, if you're still not sure if text messaging is right for your business, SimpleTexting has provided a vast library of guides for each and every industry. So no matter what type of business you are running, you can get started and see best practice examples. For example, maybe I run an accounting firm

and I want to see what others are doing and how they are using text messaging

within their particular business, this is a great resource and will get you off and running in a matter of minutes. In addition, if you are worried about pricing and how much this will cost you, SimpleTexting makes it easy. All you need to do is figure out how many messages you will be sending per month so you'll know exactly how much

you'll be spending in the future. I particularly like their Build a Plan screen where you can type in exactly how many contacts you plan to message, whether you're going to be messaging consistently or maybe just seasonally, and how often per month

you'll be messaging that client as well. This will give you a very accurate number,

so you can eliminate any future surprises. So to learn more and to get started for free, go to SimpleTexting.com or select the link in the description down below.

And if you have any questions, be sure to let me know in the comments. Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Why you need to consider SMS marketing Have you thought about adding text messaging marketing to your business? If not, here's something to think about.

Emails have an open rate of 20%. Text messages have an open rate of 98%,

and on top of that, 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes of receiving them. So in this video I'm going to show you how easy it is to get started with text messaging marketing and give you tips and tricks along the way.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you are wanting to engage with your customers that much more directly and increase your sales, text messaging marketing might be the best solution for you.

Whether you want to have a two-way conversation or if you want to communicate with thousands of people at once, text messaging may be the best solution for you.

Text messaging software is easier than you think

In this example, we are using a tool called SimpleTexting which, as the name suggests, keeps things nice and easy for those of us who may not be so technically inclined, but still want to take advantage of the most recent technology including SMS marketing.

So here within my SimpleTexting interface, you can see I can manage all of my conversations here on the left hand side. Here in the middle of the screen,

you can see an example of a conversation that I'm in right now between a potential customer.

And then on the right hand side, I can easily view all of that contact's information and include additional details, including notes, birthday, and other vital details.

So here, from the comfort of my own desk, I can text and communicate directly back either with an individual customer or with customers on mass. "Yes, you can come in tomorrow and pick these up." So I can send my text whenever I need to

and keep a complete history of that conversation right here on my desktop.

How to acquire your text messaging audience

But before we go any further with the specific features, the very first question we need to answer is "How do we start communicating with our contacts?' And this is very, very important when it comes to text messaging. You must receive consent, or in other words, you must ensure that the people that you're communicating with

have opted to communicate with you via text messaging. And for that, we're going to make use of a keyword. Now, you've probably texted a keyword before, or at the very least you've seen other businesses invite you to text a certain word to their number.

The reason for this is that this is the most common way to opt-in to a text messaging service. So let me show you how easy it is to set this up. In this case, I'm going to select a new keyword.

And because my business is all about being simple, I'm going to choose that word "simple." Anyone who text the word "simple" to this number above will be added to my list.

Now I can either choose to add it to a new list or to an existing list, and in this case, I'm going to choose to add it to a new list called Subscribers. So anyone who texts the word "simple"will be added to this list,

and then I'll be able to send them campaigns or specific messages in the future.

Now down below, here is going to be the Auto confirmation message. So what do I want them to receive after they've texted this word to me? And an added benefit of using SimpleTexting is that yes, they have AI built in.

So if I don't want to write the message myself, I can always come up here to Generate message. And so I'm going to give the AI assistant the following prompt, "Thank them for joining the list and stay tuned for special offers." I can next select Generate a message, and then down below in just a few seconds, it will generate several messages for me to choose from.

Now as I scroll through the selections here, I like this sound of exclusive, it makes people feel special, so I'm going to select that one and say Select message. And of course, I can always continue to edit it or add more details down below.

Remember, you can always add links to your messages. So if you want to direct them to a certain landing page on your website or to another resource, you can do that here as well.

But I'm going to keep it rather simple in this particular message. Now, I'm not going to add any further details. I'm going to select Save this keyword in this case, and here you can see it has been added to my list. Anyone who texts this word to this number

will be added to my subscriber list. So let's go and test it out. I'm going to go back to my inbox here, and on my phone, I'm going to text the word "simple" to this number.

Here you can see what I texted, and instantly I received this message back, "Thanks for joining, stay tuned for exclusive offers and more." And now when I come over here to my contacts, I can take a look at my Subscribers list, and look at that, we have one new subscriber, which would be me and my test account.

So that's how easy it is to both set up a keyword and invite people to join your list. And don't forget, you can add as many keywords as you want and have them trigger new things, either trigger specific responses or have them added to a particular list. So maybe in this case,

I have a keyword of "apply" or "jobs", and these are people who are seeking to apply for a position within my organization, something very different than maybe just a general marketing list.

Getting consent to send text messages

Now, adding a keyword is not the only way to have people opt-in to your text messaging list. Another common method is to include it on a form. So if you're already collecting phone numbers, you can include an opt-in checkbox so that they give you permission to text with them.

But here, within SimpleTexting, you can also create your own web signup forms. So for example, I've created a form called New Customer Form where I can include as many details as I want including first and last name, their email address, maybe I want to capture their birthday.

If I want to send them a special birthday message via text messaging, I can do it all here. I can then send them directly to my form where they can fill out the required information

and then select Subscribe now. And here you can see we have that policy built in

that by selecting this, they agree to receive promotional messages. Remember, in order to keep your number and more importantly your brand in good faith,

make sure that you have some way for them to explicitly agree to receive SMS messages from you.

Creating SMS marketing campaigns

But enough about consent, let's move on to one of the most powerful features

when it comes to using text messaging marketing and that is creating your own campaigns. This gives you the opportunity to communicate with thousands of your clients exactly when you want to and have them act on those requests in a matter of minutes.

So here I have a number of campaigns set up already, including this 25% Off Sale. So I can see when it was sent, I can see what the message was, but I can also keep track of that history in terms of how many people received it, I can also keep track of the link that was used and how many people actually clicked that link.

But let's go ahead and create a new campaign from scratch. All I need to do is select this New button here and let's give it a campaign name. I'm going to say "Buy 1 G One",

that's going to be the name of the campaign. This is just for my own reference here.

Once again, we can use AI to assist us, but in this case, I'm going to put in my own messaging. So in this example, I've said the following, "This weekend only, Buy 1 course and Get a 2nd course for FREE! Make your picks now." And then I've included a link to the landing page.

Now here on the right hand side of the screen, it's going to give me a helpful preview of what that message will look like.

And the first thing that you will notice is that this big, long link is going to look rather ugly and maybe a little intimidating, and actually maybe take away from the rest of the message. Well, SimpleTexting has a feature called Shorten URL. So all I need to do is select the URL,

and I'm going to select that Shorten URL. And here's an example of what it will now look like to the recipient. Nice and short, the focus is on the message, and they are still just one click away from making their selection.

Now, immediately down below,you will see that there's a section called Unsubscribe message, and this is also a best practice, reminding those whom you are communicating with that they have an opportunity to unsubscribe or stop receiving messages from you.

In this case, the word is "stop", so as long as they text the word "stop" in reply, they will be removed from this list and no longer receive messages. I'm going to come down here and just hit Enter on my keyboard just so there's some separation between that message

and the link that I want them to click. Next, I need to select which group I want to send this campaign to. So I'm going to select this and come down and choose Subscribers. Now, I can choose multiple groups if I want to, but in this example,

we're going to stick with just subscribers. Lastly, I can choose if I want to send this campaign immediately, if I want to schedule it for the future, or if I want to set up a recurring schedule for this particular campaign. In this example, I'm going to stay

with Immediately and hit Next. I am then brought to the summary screen where I can review one last time what this message will look like, and when, I'm happy I can hit Send now, and then brought back to the campaign screen. And if I go back to my inbox, I can see with this test user account that yes, this campaign has been sent,

including this very nice and short and very clickable link rather than the very long and intimidating link hat I first pasted in.

Free resources & pricing options

Now, if you're still not sure if text messaging is right for your business, SimpleTexting has provided a vast library of guides for each and every industry. So no matter what type of business you are running, you can get started and see best practice examples.

For example, maybe I run an accounting firm and I want to see what others are doing and how they are using text messaging within their particular business, this is a great resource and will get you off and running in a matter of minutes.

In addition, if you are worried about pricing and how much this will cost you,

SimpleTexting makes it easy. All you need to do is figure out how many messages

you will be sending per month so you'll know exactly how much you'll be spending in the future. I particularly like their Build a Plan screen where you can type in exactly

how many contacts you plan to message, whether you're going to be messaging consistently or maybe just seasonally, and how often per month you'll be messaging that client as well.

This will give you a very accurate number, so you can eliminate any future surprises. So to learn more and to get started for free, go to SimpleTexting.com or select the link in the description down below. And if you have any questions, be sure to let me know in the comments.

Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

One of the most challenging things with using a mind mapping tool is just getting started. Okay, I'm going to grab this shape here, and I'm going to call this my new idea. And then I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to say that this is step one of that new idea.

This is going to take a long time. Well, what if instead you could create a full mind map, like the one you see here, in a matter of seconds? Let me show you how. (light ting) Hello, everyone.

Scott Friesen, here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And, as we take a quick glance at this mind map,

you would probably assume that this took me a full hour, if not longer, to brainstorm.

And maybe I had to collaborate with others and rethink how I was going to group everything together, but I didn't do any of that. In fact, I created this mind map in just a few seconds. So let me show you how.

Create a mind map in seconds

Here, within Miro, I can come up to the Settings icon and select the Command palette. And here I have a variety of AI-assisted prompts that I can get started with.

Now I can do an awful lot, but for right now let's look at generating our mind map.

And so, in this example, I want to generate a mind map for a new pet grooming business and what areas I should be focused on. All I need to do is hit Enter on my keyboard, and in just a few seconds, I have a complete mind map, which is going to give me a variety of different areas, including ones that perhaps I didn't think about,

where I can continue to brainstorm or to edit and group things together.

So, in this example, I've got everything from location to what services am I going to offer,  supplies, finances, legal, staffing, marketing, and target market. A number of things that maybe I wasn't going to consider.

Now, just like with any other mind map, I can group things the way I want. If I want some things on this side together, if I want to perhaps make a connection between ear cleaning and shampoo and conditioning,

I can do all of the editing features that I'm used to here within Miro.

Expand your ideas with AI

But our assistance from AI doesn't stop here. Let's come up here to target market. And I want to think a little more deeply about the different types of pet owners.

So I'm going to select this, and you'll notice that we still have this AI icon available to us. If I select this, I can expand and continue down this path. I can either expand with questions, expand with ideas or expand with topics.

Because I'm still in brainstorming mode, I'd like to think of some questions I should be considering as I'm exploring different pet owners. So I'm going to select that option here.

And, again, in just a few seconds, it's going to spit out a number of different questions that maybe I will want to include on an intake form. Maybe it's some questions that I want to ask myself when it comes to marketing and who I am going to be targeting.

These are fantastic questions, and they're very specific to pet owners and things that are related to a pet grooming business. Now, of course, I can come up here and maybe remove some of the ones that I don't think are as relevant, but just look at how quickly I've gone from a very simple idea, a simple set of instructions, into a variety of things that is going to help me set up my business for success.

Beyond mind maps with AI

But, of course, because Miro is such a flexible tool, we are not limited to just mind maps and drawing things with shapes and connecting them with lines and dots.

In fact, one of my favorite features of Miro is using their sticky note feature. So let's see how AI can help us in this context. So, in this way, I want to maybe generate some questions for an upcoming workshop.

So, in this example, I'm asking, "Give me 25 icebreaker questions for a business budgeting workshop." Let's see what it comes up with. And, again, in just a few seconds, it's given me exactly what I'm after.

And, unlike ChatGPT or some more text-based AI tools, it's so much easier for me to group these things together. What I love about sticky notes is that, in just a matter of seconds,

I can group maybe some like-minded questions together. I can, of course, color code them as well if I want to maybe make things that are related to financial lessons in pink. And I can still make those connections as we would come to expect when it comes to any type of mind mapping tool.

Summarize ideas fast

But it gets better than that because, remember, we have AI tools at our disposal.

So, in this example, I'm going to select all of those sticky notes, and I'm going to come up here to our AI tool. I can choose to summarize all of these Post-It Notes, which may be very useful if you are collecting user data  or maybe this is feedback from your clients. I can cluster them by keywords or I can cluster them by sentiment;

meaning are they more positive or negative or neutral. In this case, I'm going to choose cluster by keywords because I want to see what some of the themes are

amongst these questions, and maybe I want to make sure that I spread them out

or have a nice mix of these icebreaker questions available. So, by selecting this option, you can see it's grouped it by more expenses, budget and process.

Here is a little more lesson, philosophical. This one is related more to tools or apps.

So maybe, for my upcoming training, I'm going to select one from each of these categories, or maybe for a certain part of my meeting, I'll just focus on all six of these

if we're talking about goals.

Cluster ideas by theme

Now, in this next example, I'm sticking with my sticky notes. And here I've collected

a variety of feedback from actual users who have been customers of a pool company. So I've got a mix of feedback here, which is probably going to take me some time to sift through or go through one at a time.

But, why don't we use AI to make it that much easier? Here, I'm going to use that option again. And this time I'm going to say Cluster by sentiment. Now it has broken out all of those comments

into three categories: positive, neutral, and negative. So let's say I just want to focus

on these negative comments here. What I'm going to do is select five of these comments, and I'm going to say, "Summarize it for me," rather than going through each and every comment.

What is the theme here?Well, "Good customer service but a high price. Excellent recommendations but delivery and installation issues or damage." So think about how much more time consuming it would be if I had a hundred or maybe a thousand pieces of feedback.

Now I can summarize it and share it with my team or act on what I see here. So, if you want to generate ideas and strategies that much faster and with the assistance of AI, be sure to check out Miro.

Miro AI is currently in beta, but available for all users. To find out more and to get started, click the link in the description down below. Thank you so much for watching.

And, remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

I've said it before and I will say it again: please do not use Trello as a CRM unless you are using a particular tool. Trello is so fantastic for managing a variety of projects,

including deals, including a pipeline, and managing all of your sales and contracts.

But out of the box, it is not designed to manage customer relationship data, especially if you want to track that customer amongst multiple cards or multiple boards.

For that, you want to use Crmble; and in this video, I'm going to show you a feature which makes Crmble even better so you don't have to go elsewhere to manage your emails. Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And here I am within a sample board,

which I do have the Crmble Power Up enabled. Just as a brief review, not only does Crmble give us a variety of different details within the cards themselves, but it gives us a variety of very powerful reporting features; we can see all of our contacts in a single screen in a single place. This is definitely where you want to be managing

your customer relationships. But let's go back to the board itself, because what is brand new is bringing in an integration with Gmail so that you can not only communicate directly with your customers, but you can see those replies and never have to leave your Trello account.

So, here I've got a sample deal, this Scott Testerson deal. I'm going to click on this. And as you may already know, we've got so much valuable information available to us. We can add that customer card right here.

We can also add other important information such as the size of the deal, where did this potential customer find us, the creation date, what kind of lead is it? I'm going to say this lead is hot, so I can filter that or I can view that in my reporting, and maybe I can also record what is their projected budget versus what I feel the deal is worth,

or what I'm hoping we can sell this contract for. But the new feature, or enhanced feature, is the ability to see our conversation's complete threads right here from within the card.

So, here you can see, when I select the Mail link, down below, I can see a full history of my communication with this client. I can see what has been going on. I can, of course, load more threads if I want to as well. I can either review a previous message, or I can start to compose that message as well.

Let's start by clicking on something that we've already sent. And here at the top of the screen,

we have a nice condensed view of our previous conversations, the back and forth that we've had. So, I can see exactly what was said, so for our next meeting or for my very next email, I can say the appropriate thing.

But the other bonus is that, on the right-hand side of the screen, I still have all of that information available to me.

So, if I need to reference the deal size, if I need to reference when we have started

our communication with each other, or if I need to record if this deal has been won or lost, I can do so here within the same screen as well. I don't need to toggle back and forth or have multiple tabs open at the top of the screen; I can do so right here.

But you'll also see that I can start to compose my message from this screen as well.

So, just below the thread view up top, you can see that we can actually add multiple email addresses. So, this can be great if you are managing your Trello and CRM boards with multiple team members and you want to respond from a particular address, or maybe you don't want to use your personal address, maybe you're chiming in with a different address that you have.

So, you can add multiple accounts here. Here is whom I am sending the email address to. Of course, I'm not limited to that, but because I'm within this customer account, that only makes sense.

And then, we have our subject line, and then, of course, our message down below. And you can see we have a variety of editing options that make it easy to access, so we can start to compose our message.

But all the way at the top of the screen, you can also see that we can create our own Gmail templates, and I don't mean templates that you've created within Gmail; we can create those templates right here from within Crmble.

So, for example, maybe I want to check in; and I've already spent time creating

this template down below. Here you can see I have the appropriate links, I've got the appropriate message, and I even have the appropriate signature down below.

So, I can quickly and easily add this template, come down here, and hit Send.

And I've never had to leave my Trello board; I've never had to leave this card at all.

I could continue to manage this relationship and then see those messages and see those responses down below.

Now, since the Mail link is not open by default when first opening up a card, the deal details will be visible, which makes the most sense, because this is where we have the most important information. But if we scroll down to the Activity window, you can see that it will also record those messages, those emails within the comments.

So, here are the last three emails which I have sent,

including the last one just a minute ago, so you can always reference them here, as well, in addition to the Mail link here. Now, speaking of those email templates,

where do we go to create new ones or edit existing ones? Well, we're going to jump back into our Crmble Power Up, which, again, will not send you to another tab

but keep things here right within Trello. And we're going to come down here to Toppings. Here, you'll see a full list of the additional toppings in which we can integrate with other tools, and I'm going to click on Gmail.

So, this would be the place you go to link your account.And of course, you can add multiple accounts if you wish to. You can also choose if you want to enable or disable Gmail tracking and viewing those Gmail threads.

And down below, you can see the three existing email templates, including this Checking in template which we used a moment ago. But if I want to add a new one, I simply need to select this plus button. and my email editor will be brought to the forefront. So, here I can give it a name; that's just a reference

for myself or other users. And then, down below, the subject line; and then the message itself. And then, once I've saved this template, it will be available to me not only down here, but more importantly, when we jump into our cards. And remember: this functionality is going to be available on each and every one of your cards.

So, if I have yet to reach out to this contact, I can either come here to the Mail link, but don't forget, you can also click this Gmail link directly on the contact themselves. So, their email address has already been input. I'm already halfway there, and I can come in here and start sending that email. Last but not least, one additional bonus feature

is that you can allow Crmble to bring in your default signature from Gmail.This is not something which I've created here within Crmble, it has brought it over directly from my Gmail account. T

here is no need to add or create a new signature here within Trello unless you would like to. Now, if you'd like to see all of the features within Crmble and see if it's the best fit for you and your Trello account, I'd invite you to watch this video next, where I give you a full tutorial and setup guide.

Thank you so much for watching, and remember: being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

What is the Side Panel?

I want you to look up, way up here, in the top right hand corner of your screen.

And you're going to notice something that looks, well, a little bit like a square. It's called the Google Side panel. And this has quickly become one of my favorite features of Google Chrome.

So in this video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know about the side panel, along with tips and tricks, so you can get the most out of this feature. This video is sponsored by SaneBox.

The AI email manager that lets you focus more on the messages that count. SaneBox works seamlessly with your Gmail, Outlook or iCloud account, so you can manage your emails more effortlessly.

Do you want to regain that valuable storage space? Use the email deep clean tool and get rid of the emails you no longer need. Or maybe you're just sick of managing all of those rules and filters.

Let SaneBox do the heavy lifting for you and organize your inbox in a matter of minutes. To sign up for your free trial and get a $25 credit, go to sanebox.com/simpletivity.

Now the Google Chrome side panel is not exactly new but it has been getting some additional attention, along with some new features, year by year. Essentially, by toggling the side panel on or off, you will get this side panel on the side of your screen but have options to a number of different things, including a reading list, your complete bookmarks bar and I'm going to show you why this is actually a lot more valuable than the bookmarks bar at the top of your browser.

Journeys, which you may be seeing more frequently these days

but also some additional features so you can customize your Chrome experience.

Now just before we go into each area of the sidebar,

Settings

let's get comfortable with the basic settings. First off, you can increase the size of the sidebar to essentially, as large as you want. So this makes reading and navigating that sidebar that much easier.

So for example here, if I go into something like my bookmarks bar and I expand a folder or collapse a folder, I've got everything at my fingertips. So it's nice and large, so you can keep it as small or as big as you like.

However, if we come into our Google Chrome settings and then if we come over here and click on appearance, you can also choose which side the side panel will be displayed on. So maybe I prefer it here on the left hand side and have my browser window here on the right hand side. Again, we can still expand it here if we need to.

But you can decide what your preference is, as to where it is located. And just as a bonus tip, if you ever find it difficult to read the font within Google Chrome, under appearance, this is where you would make that change as well.

Alright, so getting back to the actual options that we have here within the side panel. You'll see that there are three.

Reading List

A Reading list, Bookmarks and Journeys. Let's get started with our reading list.

So what this is used for, is when you come across a website, let's go to one of my favorite websites that I like to browse once in a while, lifehacker.com. And let's see here if there's something, "10 Security Settings that Protect Your iPhone from Thieves."

Now, I don't necessarily have time to read this right now but I would like to review it later. Since I'm already on this screen, all I need to do, is select, Add Current Tab.

And you'll see that it's brought in a link right over here. Let's just stay within this site, for an easy example. I'm going to grab something else here. How to financially prepare for your parents or in-laws to move in.

And again, I'm going to select, Add Current Tab. Now if you don't want to use this function here, you can also go to the tab itself and if we right click, you can see here is, Add tab to reading list.

So a few different ways in which you can add it here. But remember, I don't have time to read this right now, so I'm going to close this and get on with the rest of my day. But whenever I want to, I can come back here, open up that reading list and now I'm just one click away from those things that I would like to review.

And better yet, when I'm done with them, I can come over here and cross them off, so I can keep track, if I want to, of a history of the pages or the articles which I've read. I can still go back to them in a single click.

But I can easily separate between the things I have already read and things that I have yet to review. So why is this Reading list valuable?

Well, for many years people have recommended that I use Pocket or Flipboard

or a variety of other tools to capture articles and to capture things and categorize them and use them for later. And while it is true that both of these apps, especially Pocket, have a lot more features available to you, it is another app. It's something else I have to go to. It's another tab or another extension that I have to install.

Meanwhile, this reading list is built right into my browser. So I can access it here.

And I can also access it on my mobile devices as well. So if you're looking for something that is simple and straightforward so you can pin or save articles

and pages for later, do so right here with the Reading list.

Bookmarks

Now next up is, Bookmarks. And you're probably thinking, well, how is this that much more helpful than the Bookmarks bar here on the top of your screen? For many years I thought this was the easiest and the best way to get to places that I wanted to go,

especially with the addition of folders. So I can group a collection of webpages together and go exactly to where I need to. However, you'll notice that you are somewhat limited with the amount of space up here.

And depending on the size of the screen that you're using, your eyes need to shift quite drastically from the left and right hand side. But more than just the real estate, either the lack thereof or too much to scan, there's a bunch of additional features that we can use here with the Bookmarks side panel.

Let me give you a quick example. There are many times where I wish to hide the bookmarks bar up here, for convenience. And I've often found myself coming up here to my settings, coming up here to Bookmarks and unchecking, Show bookmarks bar.

Yes, there is a shortcut key but because it involves three strokes, I have typically forgotten it, so I have to come this way to turn it off.

I'd love to toggle it on or off in a quicker manner. Well, we can do just that with the side panel here. So here you can see, I can enjoy more real estate of the website that I'm on or wherever I am reading.

And I can also include a fuller description of each and every one of those bookmarked pages. In the past, what I have often done with the bookmarks bar, is abbreviated a number of these titles, just so I could fit more on the screen up above.

But I don't need to do that here. In fact, I've got an awful lot of real estate. And if I want to expand that, I can do that here as well. This can also make things easier when you are managing and rearranging your bookmarks,

especially when you're moving things in between folders. So for example, I think I should put Walling under reference but first I need to open up reference, just to double check, okay that is where I want it to be. But here with the side panel,

I can expand or collapse anything I want. So I didn't have to make that extra click.

I can say, yes, I do want to move Walling down there. Perfect. I can group that together. So it's just an easier way to access and manage those bookmarks but also hide them at a click of a button, whenever I want to.

Journeys

Now the third option you will see within the Google side panel, is something called, Journeys. And recently I have been seeing this come up more and more frequently,

including when I am searching for something, especially something that I've perhaps searched for in the past. What Journeys is doing, is creating a bit of a history but it's more than just a history, it's grouping like-minded things together and it's also giving us some suggestions.

So here you can see, this is a much easier way to read my history and see where I have been and what I have been doing. But you'll also notice that down below, it's giving me some search suggestions.

These are not things that I typed in as a part of this history. But these are things that it believes I might find helpful. So under Pocket, maybe I want to search for Pocket App, Pocket Firefox or a Pocket game, whatever the case may be.

But it's grouping things together, as you can see, by the pages or the searches that I have done recently. So I can quickly and easily go back in time. If I want to come up here and use the search bar, I can do that as well. I'm going to type in todoist, for example.

And now everything will come back very, very quickly and easily. So if I want to jump back into something that I had forgotten about or if I want to review something from the past, this Journeys can make it that much easier. What I especially appreciate, is that even if you've gone

down a bit of a rabbit hole, maybe you've been searching on a page such as this, you can see that everything I did within Life Hacker, it's easy to read. I can see the full title and I'm just one click away from those pages that I visited in the past. So this Journeys continues to be developed and built out. Stay tuned for more features in the future.

Bonus Tip

Now one additional feature of the Google Side panel, is that when you open up any new tab, you may be familiar with this Google screen, which will show you either your most recent websites or a selection of shortcuts, which you have already added.

In the bottom right hand corner is this customized Chrome option. But if you happen to be on this page, you'll also see it here within the side panel. Now it doesn't matter which one you select, in fact, I'll just show you, if I collapse the side panel and I select customized Chrome, it's automatically going to expand that side panel and give me some options here.

So if I want to change the theme and if I want to be a little more creative here, I can do so. If I want to go back to a more traditional white background

or maybe I like something like this, that is really going to stand out, I can change my theme or customize it to my own color here. I also have a few other choices as well.

If I don't want to show those shortcuts, I can turn them off, perhaps if I think they are a little too distracting. And I can also toggle between my shortcuts, which you see here or most visited websites.

So depending on what you would like to appear here when you are opening up a new tab within Google Chrome. So whether you want an easier way to pin things to read later. If you want a better way to manage and also access

all of your bookmarks. Or quickly see where you have been and jump back into the action, the Google Side panel is worth checking out and is especially a better solution

for the Bookmarks bar up on top. Now I would love to hear from you next. What questions do you have about the Google Side panel or anything related to the Google Chrome browser? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

This video is brought to you by SaneBox, more about them a little later on. Nearly five years ago I released this video, "How to Use Gmail filters and Labels," and it has certainly become one of my most popular pieces of content, receiving more than 1.2 million views. Now, no, this is not about boasting about one of my successful videos,

it has to do with the subject matter, specifically, Gmail labels. And here's the truth, I don't use labels, I never have and I don't intend to. And I want you to reconsider

your use of labels or folders within your email account. So in this video, I'm going to give you three good reasons why you should forget your labels in order to spend less time within your email. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you

to get more done and enjoy less stress. And here we are inside of my actual Simpletivity business email account. Now, of course, I've masked my incoming emails

to protect any sensitive or personal information, but where I want you to focus your attention is to the left hand side of the screen, here, under labels. You'll see that there is absolutely nothing shown here under my labels heading. Now, there is a more button, and if I select that, you're going to say, "Wait a minute, Scott, you've got labels,

I'm looking at three right now." While technically these are labels, I did not create them, nor do I ever click on them or apply them. These are related to a Gmail extension, which I use, so they can manage when an email is returned to my inbox.

But you'll notice there is nothing here, no other label that I have created. No colors, no special text, nothing that is being labeled on the front of my emails either. So why do I not use any labels at all? Let me give you three good reasons. Number one, labels can be incredibly time consuming. The amount of effort it takes for us to create,

manage review, click, and go into our labels and adjust them or re-edit them, can far outweigh any of the promised benefits of using such labels. Furthermore, there are many of us who get so attached to our labels that we start to drag each and every one of our emails into some type of category.

Now, there may be some argument for this three step process of things that are requiring my action, things where I am waiting for someone, and things that I have completed, but even this type of routine

can waste an awful lot of my time, and maybe more importantly, an awful lot of my energy. I've worked with people who are taking spam emails or in this case, a daily notification and dragging it and putting it somewhere else.

And of course it doesn't really matter where you access those labels, wherever you're going to click or apply those labels, it's requiring an extra step to do so. And the question I want you to ask yourself is, how often do you actually come back here and click and use these labels,

or are they simply a repository, a place where they have a specific color or title attached to them but you don't actually make use of them? And that brings us to reason number two why I think you should reconsider using your labels.

And the hard truth is this, your labels and the emails that are contained within them are not nearly as accurate as you think they are. Now, it is true, Gmail does give us the ability to attach multiple labels to a single email.

This is not always the case with other systems or other email clients because perhaps this email is related to two different areas. So I want them to appear in those areas. But we often put way too much trust

on what is being contained within such a label, thinking, that, well, if we've been diligent and we've dragged everything over and if we always put a label on an email,

everything related to my manager or everything related to something over here should be contained within that area, and that is simply not true. Labels are only as good as the individuals who set them up or the individuals who apply those specific labels, so don't always trust that your labels are going to be representative of everything that that label is listed as. A really good example of that is those

of us who may have a label for a specific customer. So let's say this is going to be a customer name, and this could be a client, it could be some other purpose. And I want to make sure that I can quickly and easily put their information all in one place

and then get to it in just a single click. Far too often I've seen people put their faith

in that this label is going to contain everything related to this customer, or from a particular individual. But really the only way to trust or make sure that is the case

is by entering in the email address itself. And of course, we have much more powerful features here within the search bar if we want to filter it by specific users or by specific timeframes as well. Now, while you might argue that this took me more

than one click to get all of this information, here is the overarching benefit. I know for certainty this is all of the email that I have received for this particular individual. I can go back and still continue to sort, or filter or use some of the other options available

to me here at the top of the screen. And that brings us to my third reason why I feel

that labels are not necessary and often eat up too much of our time. The ability to search for emails within Gmail or other clients, such as Outlook, have become so much more powerful, it is that much easier to get and find what we are looking for.

Getting familiar with some of the basic search functions here within Gmail can not only save you time, but can save you the headache of jumping from this label,

hmm, it's not in there, jumping to this label, still can't find it, maybe it's in this label,

and wasting our effort going through our different categories here on the left hand side. And going back to point number one, sometimes, because we've put in all of the effort and all of the work, we feel that we owe it to ourselves to come here and both manage and search for things within our labels, when it can be so much simpler

for me to simply type in a keyword such as request, and I know that it had an attachment, and now I've narrowed it down to these eight emails. Yes, this took me two or three clicks, but only when I wanted that information. Think of all of the other clicks I saved by not having to drag or apply and put labels on the majority of my emails. Now, the one exception to these three reasons would be if you are using a filter within Gmail to automatically apply specific labels. So for example, here, I wanted this particular email course to not block up my inbox. I didn't want any of those emails to appear here and I wanted to quickly be able to review them here

on the left hand side. So just to be clear, none of these emails had a label applied by me manually. I applied a Gmail filter, so it was looking for specific information, including the combination of the sender, and what was included in the subject line. This can be a helpful way to keep things out of your inbox. And that is exactly where I spend the majority of my time on this video, showing you how to make use of filters

so that you can keep that inbox nice and clean and spend as little time in your email as possible. Now, another great way to leave your labels behind and spend a lot less time with your email is by using SaneBox.

SaneBox creates a number of smart labels for you so you don't have to, and you don't have to manage them either as well. Within Gmail, Outlook, or any email account, SaneBox will create a number of smart labels or smart folders such as this SaneLater, where I can go and review certain emails that I don't want to see within my inbox, but best of all, it learns from me

so I can keep my attention on what matters most, and SaneBox can hide those other distractions or other emails that I don't want to see on a regular basis. So if you'd like to get rid of inbox clutter and spend a lot less time with an email, try SaneBox. Click the link in the description below to get your 14 day free trial and receive a $25 credit

if you want to continue the service. Thank you so much for watching. And remember,

being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Adding a form using Google Forms

In this video, I'm going to show you how to quickly create and add a form to your Google Site, but I'm also going to show you how to create a more impressive form that looks like this, so you can wow your visitors.

Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And here I am within my Google Site's account, and I am setting up a website, and what do I need, is a contact form.

And of course, forms can be used in a variety of different purposes,

but let's see how easily we can add a form to our site. So in this example, I've got a special event here, and I want to find out some more information. So I would like to add a form just below these images here. Now, Google Sites makes it very, very easy.

Here, on the right hand side under our 'Insert' menu, all we need to do is scroll down

almost all the way to the bottom, and you can see that there is the 'Forms' option.

Now by selecting this, it's actually going to open up a Google Forms preview. So depending on which Google account you are using within Google Sites, you will see a full listing of any forms which you've created within Google Forms before.

Or of course, we can start from scratch. Now, if you have not yet created your form, you will need to go to Google Forms, and either you can start a form from scratch or you can use from one of their many templates to get started.

And Google Forms gives us an actual customer feedback form here, which is great. So we can, of course, adjust any of the questions, anything that we see here, a number of different templates for us to get started with. 

Now, once you're finished creating or editing an existing form, you will see it here, within Google Sites. So for example, here is that customer feedback form, which I just selected a few moments ago. But in this example, I'm actually going to come down to this CRM Intake Form.

I'm going to select it, and down below, it says,

"One has been selected." At this point, I'm going to select 'insert'. As like with other elements, the form will be inserted where the cursor or where the last attention was here, within our site.

But of course, we can click and drag this to any other section or drag it to, let's say if we want to center it here on the page, if we want to center it here on the screen. So now, in just a few clicks, we have our form ready for visitors to fill out.

Now of course, this isn't going to be visible until we hit 'Publish', so I'm going to hit 'Publish', but I want you to be wary of something. If we click on the 'Preview' button and come to this page,

Fixing common form display issues

there is that form, that looks great but wait a minute, we've got this, we've got this scroll bar to the right hand side, and if I don't touch the scroll bar, the 'Submit' button is kind of hidden down below.

This can be very off-putting and not look very professional on your site. So, how can we fix this? If we go back into the Google Site's editor, you will see that yes, that 'Submit' button is still hidden here.

All you need to do is select on the form element like you see here, and now I can click and drag, and I'm going to drag well beyond. I'm going to give it almost a good inch below the last thing that is presented here, within my form.

Now I'm going to hit 'Publish' again and let's hit that 'Preview' button. And this time, you'll see that that scroll bar is no longer apparent, and we've got nothing else that is hidden down below.

So, pay attention depending on the size or the length of your Google Form if you need to make some minor adjustments. Now, although adding a Google Form is very easy and straightforward, there can be a downside to using Google Forms.

Number one, you are very limited with the number of editable options available to you. Other than changing the background of the form, and this highlight color, and the color of the button, the layout of your form is very, very standard.

Creating better-looking forms

So how can we make something that is a little more impressive and fits better with your website? Well, I think one of the best ways to both impress your visitors, but also keep them more engaged is by creating a sliding type of form, like you see here.

So I've got a great big invitation to start on this particular form.I'm going to first, enter in my first name. I'm going to go next. Let's enter in a fake email address .com and we're going to hit 'Submit'.

And I even get a nice professional "Thank you," with this graphic here as well. So what am I using and how can you include this within your Google Site? For this purpose, I'm taking advantage of JotForm, a much more robust and powerful form builder, which is still super easy to integrate with your Google Site.

Here, within JotForm, you can create any number of different forms and know they will not look static or standard. And on top of that, you can customize it to your heart's content, whether you want to choose a preset theme, or you can customize virtually every single color element here, on the screen.

In addition, you can add payments to any of your forms and a number of advanced features, including signatures and even the ability to book an appointment. But in our example, let's keep things relatively simple.

I've got a welcome page at the beginning, I've got the thank you page which we've already seen, and here are the only two things that I'm asking for people to fill out. When I'm ready to add to my site, 6all I need to do is go to the 'Publish' area and I'm going to choose this second one, which is called 'Embed'.

Here, I'm going to select 'copy the code', it's automatically copied to my clipboard,

and then I can return to my Google Sites editor. In this example, I'd like to include this form between the RSVP button and these images down below. So no, we are not going to come down to 'Forms'. Instead, we are going to select the 'Embed' button

at the top of the 'Insert' tab. Here, I'm going to select the 'Embed code' option and I'm going to paste in the code which it gave me. I'm going to select 'Next,' and it's going to give me a preview of what that form will look like.

Now, I can select 'Insert' and there it is, exactly where I want it to be. And just like with other elements, we can move it to other parts of our page but I'm also going to choose to actually expand it out, so it actually has the width of most of this page.

It's still centered, but it's going to take up most of the width here. Now, I can hit 'Publish' and the next visitor to my website will see a much more engaging way to interact with my site.

To learn more about JotForm, go to jotform.com or click the link in the description down below so you can start creating fantastic looking forms and add them to your site in just minutes.

And if you're wanting to create a free mobile app to go along with your website, be sure to watch this video next, where I show you how to create one step by step.

Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Easy support system

Would you like to make it easier for your clients to connect with you and would you like to make it painless to manage that entire client relationship and respond to requests and services all within Trello?

Well, in this video I'm sharing with you a free Trello power up that gives your users an amazing experience and will also allow you to save so much time. We're taking a look at a power up called Hipporello, which yes,

gives you a complete customer portal experience like the one you see here, so that your clients are not only going to be impressed but makes it easier for them to connect with you.

Now, Hipporello is a creator of several different powerups including Hipporello apps, which allow you to create your own custom apps right here for Trello. But for this video, we're focused on the Hipporello service desk so that we can respond to support, complaints or create any number of forms which we would like to manage right here within Trello. With the Hipporello powerup installed, you'll see

that we'll have some additional options here in the top right-hand corner. But before we go into the details of how you can set up and manage your own forms and how clients connect with you, let's take a look at the customer experience.

Custom customer portal

Hipporello allows us to create a customer portal like the one you see here. So you can present your brand in a professional manner and go beyond just giving them an email address or a simple Google form.

In this case, I can add my own branding, my own logo, my own color scheme and add as many different forms as I like.

You can also give your users a handy search bar so if you have a number of different forms to look for, they can find it easily and you can have those forms listed here all within the same page. So in our example, I'm going to pretend that I'm reaching out for further information.

I'm going to select this Contact Us form. Now keep in mind you don't have to use the customer portal as you see here, you can create your own custom forms and then embed them directly on your website. So in this example, I'm pretending to be a customer and I'm wanting to find out some more information

about their new features and some of their new pricing plans, at this stage, I'm going to hit submit. Now you're probably used to receiving something that tells you thank you for submitting or we'll be in contact with you shortly, but this is where Here, I can either submit another new request or I can view the request details, and this is what takes your level of support to the next level.

'Cause not only does the user have complete access to what they submitted, when they submitted it, they'll even see the automated response. Here you can see that an agent has already sent an email thanking them for contacting us and telling them that this particular request has been opened.

But up above we can go even further and share this request with someone else. We can give it a rating in terms of how satisfied we are with this request, and if I want to follow up, I can reply to this request directly from this screen.

So instead of some other customer service forms where the user just hopes that that message was delivered and that it was created, you can reassure your clients that you are on top of their request or their application or their feedback 1and they can also keep track of it themselves.

Keep it all within Trello

But let's jump back into our Trello board here. Within Trello, you can see that that new request has appeared within this specific list. I've told Hipporello, anyone who fills out

that Contact Us form, I want it to appear under new requests. And Hipporello also makes it very easy for us to see which ones have been responded to and which ones in which we are waiting for a reply.

So for example, for these two messages, you can see this blue label which says auto messages sent. So yes, we immediately sent a message telling them that we have received the request but we still need to carry it forward, elsewhere, You'll see that we are waiting for a user to reply.

We've already responded to these particular requests and in this job application example, we can see that the user has replied and is now waiting for a response from us. But let's open up these cards to see how much more additional detail that Hipporello gives us,

here within the Trello card itself. Under the description, we have the entire message

including name, email, address, and what they wrote but it's down below where the true power of Hipporello becomes so apparent because not only do we have all

of the tracking information, including the rating that that user gave us, but you can see that we can also reply to this message directly, that's right. No longer do I need to jump back to my email account, no longer do I need to copy and paste this email address or set something up in a CRM system.

I can go right here within my Trello card and hit the reply button and now I can quickly and easily respond to this message.

Now that I've sent my quick reply, I've got a full record of what is being shared. Here is my response to the client and I can also see if they have read

or not yet read my message to them so I can keep track of the entire customer relationship right here within Trello without having to use other details.

Settings and form setup

Now that you have a better understanding of how Hipporello works, let's take a look

at some of the further settings and how you can adjust your forms, by clicking

on the Hipporello powerup in the top right-hand corner, we can access our hip admin account. And remember, you are going to stay right here within Trello, not having to manage multiple tabs or logging into a separate account.

Here under the form to board tab, you can see the list of all of my forms including a bug tracking form that I currently have disabled. But here is that Contact Us form for example

and if I come over here to Actions and select Edit you can see the additional features that we have available to us. So for example, if I select Edit Form, you can see how easy it is to create and customize your forms.

On the right hand side, you can simply drag and drop a long list of different features a long list of different options available to you.

So for example, if I want to add a select box under email, I just need to click and drag and now I can start asking additional questions and giving them additional options. So whether you are creating a form from scratch or editing a template

or copying a previous form, Hipporello makes it super easy for you to create something customized just for your purposes. But in addition to just creating the form, you can set different levels of access and other automations, here under Set Access Policy.

I can customize as to who has access to this form, since this is a general contact us form, I've set it to public, but if I open up a signed policy, I can create a private policy so that perhaps only email domains ending in a certain domain can have access to this particular form.

This is a great feature if you are wanting to use this for a select group of customers or if you're wanting to use it for internal purposes. We can also create other automated rules such as which message gets sent as soon as the form is submitted.

And if you want to add other automation or other triggers, you can do so here as well.

Lastly, if you don't want to use the customized Hipporello customer portal, you can choose to add the embed code. So if you want to take any of these forms and simply put it on your own website, you can do so and take advantage of all of these additional features as well.

Email integration

But keep in mind that Hipporello is so much more than just forms and if you want to

use their email to board feature, you can do so as well. Perhaps you already have an email address that starts with support or help or maybe you want to create one from scratch.

In this example, I've created a custom support email address so I can hand this out to my clients or maybe I can add it as a part of my email signature so they don't always have to use the form or not use the form at all.

Here within my email account, I've pasted in that support email address and I'm pretending to be a customer who is wanting to learn more about their features. Now jumping back to my Trello account, here, you can see that that request appears in that same dedicated list.

So now I can start that conversation with this new user who didn't use a form, but simply use the email address and here's a bonus feature that I really love

and will save you a lot of time. You can create your own quick text right here within Hipporello, so if you have a number of canned responses or templates you'd like to use. here I am just one click away and now I've got that response directly within the message.

All I need to do is hit submit and now I can move on to my next request or next task right here within Trello. So if you'd like to provide the best customer service possible and keep it all within Trello, be sure to check out Hipporello at Hipporello.com or click the link in the description down below.

And if you're wanting to get even more out of Trello and save time, be sure to click on this video next where I walk you through the most powerful Trello automation.