Any small business or big corporation’s primary goal is developing a team culture where productivity can thrive.

Sharing an office with your team makes it easy to focus on one thing only, making it easy to be part of the flow and collaborate effectively. 

But what if you’re miles away from your marketing team? Well, building a culture and then becoming part of it doesn’t happen naturally. 

While growing a remote team is a growing trend, the question still lingers- how to get people together no matter where they are in the world, and what timezone they belong to? 

In this post, we’ll walk you through some tips on how you can effectively collaborate with your remote digital marketing team:

Stay Organized and Focused

When your team isn’t around each other, you must help stay everyone on track. One of the best ways to do that is to develop a plan on a monthly or weekly basis so that everyone stays on the same page. 

It’s also vital that you give precise instructions on the development flow of the project. Setting the right boundaries lets people in your team stay creative while ensuring that everyone understands who’s responsible for specific tasks. 

Easy to use tools like Clickup Alternative allows you to seamlessly handle all your business operations in one go, allowing you to stay focused on your goals. 

Set Clear Expectations and Boundaries 

If you’ve already created a team culture, then chances are, you already have a great framework in place. 

You should also know that everyone in your remote team knows: 

• What your specific goals are
• What deadlines you’re currently working on
• How you can measure success
• What’s expected from the coming cycle

Apart from that, it also helps that you outline:

• When should meetings be mandatory
• When are overlaps and online times expected
• When should work start and end

When you set explicit norms and boundaries for your remote team, it’s easier to avoid confusion, and collaboration will be a lot easier. 

When your employees know your vision, company culture, and expectations, it’s easier for you to set great work and to establish boundaries. 

Hire the Right People

For you to build a successful remote marketing team, you have to hire the right people. 

Apart from building an extremely collaborative team, you need to add a couple of principles to your criteria. 

The fact that your team is geographically separated and might be working on different timezones make it incredibly difficult to manage or even keep track of what they’re doing. 

If this is the case, the only thing you can rely on will be their personality and attitude towards work. 

Meaning, you should hire remote workers who themselves are organized, motivated, independent, and can do their job well. 

Build Effective Communication Lines

Another worry is that when working remotely, communication might falter because of a lack of face-to-face discussions. 

While in-house communication does have its benefits, so does remote communication. 

Online tools and constant real-time communication often aid collaboration with an online team. 

Not only this lowers down stress levels, but this also promotes effective communication because employees can focus on reading every email or listen to a voice note at their own pace. 

Set Up Recurring Meetings

Sometimes, it can be hard to find meeting times that work for everyone. 

To get rid of this obstacle, you need to find a time to work for everyone in your team and set it as recurring. 

When people know that there would be an upcoming meeting, it’s so much easier for them to schedule their lives and work around that. 

Encourage Facetime

One of the major concerns for remote team collaboration is that many things often get lost in translation with just a couple of texts. 

It’s sometimes difficult to decipher one’s tone through chats, emails, and notes. Unless, of course, it’s in all caps, and you’d know that the person is yelling at you. 

Video conferencing is a great tool that you can use to help build your remote team’s trust and rapport.

 Think about how smoothly a content meeting will go when everyone can see each other’s screen and then talk openly about a project’s challenges and other vital concerns. Just ensure that you don’t overdo these meetings, though. 

Video chat is a much more reliable and valuable form of team communication, whether written or over the phone. This tool makes you remember that everyone in your team is real people, too, allowing you to feel much closer to them.

Regularly Switch Teams

It’s essential to allow them to build strong relationships to ensure that everyone in your team collaborates effectively, even if they’re working remotely. 

So, try switching your teams regularly, as much as you can. Doing so gives everyone an equal chance to work on a goal. 

This also enhances their sense of purpose and improves collaboration and communication levels. 

Create a Culture that Fosters Productivity

There’s no doubt that productivity and collaboration are interconnected with one another. The healthier one’s working environment is, the more productive you become. 

Even the most powerful research papers out there are made up of “not so great ideas” that were made ingenious by group work. 

Meaning, every crucial aspect of any discussion, such as content planning weekly or contributing to the brainstorming process in weekly team meetings, is key to an effective collaboration with your team. 

Create Flexible Work Schedules

Time differences can have a significant impact on the overall workflow and the dynamics of your team. 

Apart from being geographically dispersed around the globe, members of your teamwork at different time zones. They aren’t staying in front of the computer at the same time. 

If you want to coordinate work across your team much more effectively, you can try timeshifting. 

Similarly, you and your team may also pick a time that covers different time zones. Or they can break up their day and spread it into intervals instead of doing it all together. 

Over to You

Team collaboration is crucial for any team out there who wants to succeed. 

By implementing the following tips we’ve mentioned in this article, you can foster a sense of collaboration within your team, helping them improve their productivity and efficiency.