In our second Topcontent Podcast, Øystein and Tore look at the different tools used in our remote organisation. We talk Slack, Dropbox, Chromebook and which mountain in Africa you should avoid if you have an important board meeting coming up. Scroll down below for the transcript of the Topcontent podcast.
Tore: Welcome to the Topcontent podcast number two. My name is Tore, and joining me is
Øystein: Øystein.
Tore: Øystein Winje our head of sales. Today we’re going to talk about, what are we going to talk about, Øystein?
Øystein: We’re going to talk about different kind of tools that we use in a remote organization to make our lives a bit easier, for both us and our employees.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. Because there is something special about our organization, it’s not a common organization, it’s not a normal organization.
Øystein: No. We are untraditional in that kind of way. Yeah.
Tore: Yeah. We are remote first, we call it. So, whenever we employ someone or we recruit someone for our organization, we look for someone who wants to work from remote.
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: And there is several reasons for this. It’s easy to recruit. People are more happy as well, and happy employees make happy clients.
Øystein: Yeah, it does. It also makes it easier to find talent because we don’t have to limit ourselves to the talent that are in a specific area in the world. We have talent from all over the world, which means that we can get better people as well.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. We can hire the superstars, the superstars who are okay with not going to an office. Turns out there’s a lot of superstars that-
Øystein: Don’t need an office.
Tore: Yeah. There are some that needs an office, but there’s a lot that doesn’t want one … and some of them are now working with us … So, let’s see. First, let’s talk about tools. When we say tools we mean the software and the stuff that we use. Of course, everybody need the internet.
Øystein: Yeah, that’s the first.
Tore: Yeah, but that’s like saying you need electricity, and food on the table, and lights-
Øystein: Need water-
Tore: You need water, and eight hours of sleep, and stuff like that. So, internet, but our main tool, would that be Slack?
Øystein: Most commonly used, I would say Slack. Think about time spent inside a specific software. Yeah, I would say Slack and our internal software, of course.
Tore: Yeah. Internal software, you mean our back end system?
Øystein: Our back end system, yeah.
Tore: Yeah, the system we created in house for the … to produce all the massive amount of content that we produce. Yeah, so that system would be number one.
Øystein: Yeah. If we think about third party … apart from our own systems, yeah that would be Slack.
Tore: Yeah, that would be Slack because we don’t sell our system.
Øystein: No.
Tore: No. That’s for us and us only … So, Slack. What’s Slack?
Øystein: So, Slack is instant messaging service, which kind of changed I think all over the world. All kind of companies started using this. Changed the way people communicate. We have a lot less emails going back and forth. People are asking and answering questions from their colleagues a lot faster than before, and we don’t have people sitting the full day replying and sending emails to each other.
Tore: Yeah. It’s funny you say how it changed, because I remember the first time I heard about Slack. I was sitting, we had a Fika, which is a Swedish term for having a coffee, together with a couple of other business owners down here in Malta and we were talking about … how things are going, stuff like that. And then someone takes up their phone and they start messaging on their phone. I look over and I say “Oh, what’s that?” He goes “It’s Slack.” I was like “Oh, what’s Slack?” It just went dead silent and five people looked at me like “Are you retarded? Are you not using Slack?”
Øystein: It’s a new hype.
Tore: Yeah, it’s a new hype. So, everybody was using it and … so, of course for them to use it is like mandatory. So, when I revealed that we weren’t using Slack yet they were like, “You’re still in business? How does this work? How can you survive without Slack?” So, would you recommend Slack?
Øystein: Yeah, for sure. Now we used it for I don’t know, a couple years, two to three years maybe, I can’t picture a world without it. We’ve gotten so dependent on it to be able to reach your colleagues so quickly. And since it’s being like an internal messaging system, where users are being added when they get employed, it’s a lot easier than, for example, Skype, where you have to add contacts manually every time you want to contact someone. You always have everybody in the organization in the same work-
Tore: Yeah, right. So, before when we had Skype, everybody had to manually add someone.
Øystein: Add each other, yeah.
Tore: Yeah. Oh, I remember this. It’s like “Oh, I need to contact Susan. What’s her Skype contact?”
Øystein: Yeah, and you looked through your emails to find the login, or her username from her … beginning when she started.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. That was a hassle. Now we can add and remove people, and everything’s safe as well. So, we pay for it. We have a premium version, which means that all the conversations saved. I don’t know if Skype does that.
Øystein: I’m not sure, no.
Tore: I think that’s one of the things that people still complain about by Skype. Like, “Why don’t you save my conversations?”
Øystein: But when you said save, you don’t mean, because it doesn’t save personal messages does it?
Tore: No, Slack does.
Øystein: Slack does?
Tore: Yeah. I don’t think Skype does.
Øystein: As an employer could you go in and read the messages of your employees then?
Tore: So, we actually looked this up once and it turns out that you can’t. You can’t do that, but Slack can give you those messages. They have it saved, so they can do it. But they’ve written somewhere on their website that there has to be some extreme case for them to do that for you as the account holder.
Øystein: Right.
Tore: What they can show though, is how much each individual use Slack, like how many messages they have sent.
Øystein: Yeah. I think you can see that as an administrator. You can see that as well, from an analytics side of it.
Tore: Yeah. So, you can see if someone, if there is a disciplinary matter you can see if someone has been … active. I was going to say working, but typing things in Slack doesn’t mean that you are working. Yeah, but you can see if someone’s been active or not and in which way they’ve been active … So, that’s good. I do think it’s good as well that you can’t see. That me, as the owner of the account, can’t see the personal messages of others. I kind of like that.
Øystein: Yeah. I think it must feel assuring as well for people who are writing, that they feel they can write things in confidence.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. And having the ability to see it would create that distrust thing between management and employees.
Øystein: Yes. And even if you do trust your employees, having that ability to go and do that so easily would be maybe too big a temptation for many managers. They would spend their day snooping around what their-
Tore: Yeah, time wasted.
Øystein: Yeah, time wasted.
Tore: Yeah. But we write a lot in public chats, so Slack is not just amazing on its own. You need to use it correctly, right?
Øystein: I agree. I think that using the public channels instead of writing direct messages to each other helps spread knowledge, especially when you have channels where many people are members of. If you send that message into a private conversation, nobody else can take knowledge of the discussion or the problem you two solve together. So, if the information that you’re about to write to your colleague can be useful for others, we always use the open channels so more people can learn.
Tore: Exactly. And when we talk about open channels, we don’t mean public in the way that anyone can access it. It’s people at our company only, but anyone in our company can see any channel.
Øystein: Yeah, exactly. You do also have the possibility to have private channels. We don’t use that a lot.
Tore: Yeah. Transparency is a key.
Øystein: Yeah, absolutely.
Tore: Because in any organization, and especially in a remote organization, spreading knowledge is a problem. That’s the challenge, how to spread knowledge.
Øystein: The biggest challenge I would say, spreading information quickly to everybody. Everybody knows that they’ve been informed of what’s going on is really difficult-
Tore: Yeah, exactly. So, creating private groups and private channels, it’s just stupid because it stops the spread of information.
Øystein: Yeah, exactly.
Tore: And we … Yeah, public channels for the win.
Øystein: Definitely, yeah. I don’t think we have a problem either that, because we use public channels, we don’t have a problem that everybody’s using their entire day reading on public channels because everybody’s writing to each other. I think you would notice that as well.
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: But that could be. There is two sides to the coin. There could be others as well, because there’s so much information available for everybody that people just spend their time reading conversations that they are not necessarily getting any benefit from this information.
Tore: Yeah, that could happen. But for us, I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, when I’m traveling, I travel a lot, I use Slack to read up on what’s going on. You get this black notification when something new is being said in the channel. That’s like Facebook notifications for me.
Øystein: Instead of scrolling your feed you scroll through Slack what’s going on in the company.
Tore: Yeah, it’s true. And then whoever I’m traveling with is like “So, you’re on your phone again.”
Tore: I’m like “I’m working.”
Øystein: Yeah, that’s your social media now.
Tore: Yeah, it’s my social media. Slack is my social media. I love the Random channel.
Øystein: Yeah. We talk about the random channel, why do we have that.
Tore: Oh yeah, so the random channel. I think that’s a default channel in Slack, actually. It’s random.
Øystein: Oh, right.
Tore: I’m not sure. Now I get … I don’t know, is it?
Øystein: I don’t know. We had it since we got it. We had descriptions on every channel to explain what the use for this channel is, and our description for the random channel it’s non-work banter and water cooler conversations.
Tore: Okay, yeah. That sounds like a Slack … default Slack one.
Øystein: I thought you wrote it.
Tore: Maybe I did. No, I think random might be in every Slack. We have to ask some other organization.
Øystein: Yeah. Maybe if anybody else listening to this Topcontent podcast knows, they can let us know so we don’t have to wonder about it.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. So, the random channel is used for memes and funny stuff.
Øystein: Yeah, mostly memes.
Tore: Mostly memes, yeah. How’s the emoji production now?
Øystein: It’s going well. So, you can have customizable emojis … in Slack. You basically upload a PNG to their system, and it generates a custom emoji for you. So, we have emojis of, a lot of employees have their own emojis and … memes turns into emojis and yeah.
Tore: Yeah, so we have the angry for different people.
Øystein: Yeah, angry and sad and happy.
Tore: Yeah, angry and sad and happy.
Øystein: Yeah. We also have branded emojis so we can add our own logos to it and-
Tore: Yeah, and that’s fun … So, what you hear in the background is-
Øystein: It’s Bo.
Tore: It’s Bo, yeah. He’s our company pet. He doesn’t have a Slack.
Øystein: No, he doesn’t. He should have one though.
Tore: Yeah, he should have one.
Øystein: He’s our office dog if anyone-
Tore: Yeah. So, Bo is our office dog yeah.
Øystein: Company pet sounded strange.
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: He’s our company pet.
Tore: Nice guy. Yeah, so the random channel. Yeah, emojis. I think it’s slackmojis.com have a lot of emojis you can add to your Slack channel.
Øystein: Yeah, so even websites building around Slack now. How crazy is that?
Tore: Yeah. So, one thing that we really like about Slack is that you can customize it, you can build extensions to it. Okay, the emojis is one thing, but you can also install a Slack box that does things, and you can even build your own Slack box.
Øystein: Yeah, and it should be easy to build them as well.
Tore: Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why we are still actually using Slack because we did evaluate other communication tools just recently, right?
Øystein: Yeah. Evaluating the benefits of Slack. Why do we need Slack? I think the integration’s a very big part of that.
Tore: Yeah. So, we looked at, because there are free versions. I mean, open source kind of … that do the same thing, but it’s cheaper.
Øystein: Yeah. And Slack also has a free version, but that limits your amount of integration you can have. I think that’s the deal breaker for us because we use a lot of integrations, such as Pingdom, to check if our sites are open or up.
Tore: Yeah. And Metabase, like we have these automatic statistics that comes in. It’s posted into Slack.
Øystein: We also have a Pipedrive integration there, which tells me. We talked about Pipedrive on the previous Topcontent podcast, and we even have Slack integration for it, which lets us know if someone sold something, they win a deal in Pipedrive. We get a notification in our own sales team channel, so we can celebrate each other’s victories.
Tore: Yeah, instant gratification.
Øystein: Yeah, in a second.
Tore: Yeah, in a second. That’s like we have that instead of that bell.
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: Ding ding ding ding. That they ring on … in the call centres. Whenever someone does a sale, gets to ring the bell and gets high fived by everybody.
Øystein: That’s the tricky part of running a sales team. I’m used to working in call centres and working in sales like that, and ringing the bell has a really efficient, I would say psychological, effect on people. That’s something we don’t have in a remote organisation but this is one of the things that have a similar effect.
Tore: Yeah, the deal won.
Øystein: The deal won, yeah.
Tore: I tried to go, you can also like put feelings or emojis, reactions, I think they call it reactions-
Øystein: Reactions, yeah.
Tore: To posts, right?
Øystein: To messages, yeah.
Tore: Yeah, to messages. So, whenever someone … adds a project or asks for a deadline, I usually go there and react to it.
Øystein: And react to it.
Tore: Yeah, react to it positively … And I think when we did evaluate … Bo. Do we need to cut his nails, Bo?
Øystein: Yeah, probably.
Tore: Probably, yeah. So, I hope this won’t disturb the Topcontent podcast too much, Bo walking around … Anyway, so when we did evaluate different alternatives to Slack, one of the deal breakers was the integrations. It was our development team that said that they really needed Slack-
Øystein: Yeah. They use it for a lot more integrations than we are aware of.
Tore: Yeah, because they build their own, so they really like-
Øystein: Of course they do.
Tore: Of course they do, they’re developers. Don’t really know what they’re going to do.
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Tore: Yeah, okay. So, Slack is the one where we spend most of our time, except for our back end.
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: So, what else do we use?
Øystein: Although we started using Slack. We still spend quite a bit of time sending emails in Gmail. We do that, and I think because a lot of the communication that we do through Slack is more urgent stuff or quick questions. If we have longer, or if we send a report or sending a long message and it’s not urgent for anybody, it goes in an email. But it seems like emails are the second priority when you want to check what’s going on. If you know, if it’s in the email you probably don’t have to react right away. But yeah, we spend quite a bit of time in Gmail.
Tore: And that’s also good. I mean, when you send a message to someone, being it an email or Slack, it’s not always you need an urgent instant reply. Sometimes it’s okay, I’ve sent these questions. If I have them by tomorrow or by Wednesday, that’s fine. Then you want to send them by email because you don’t want to disturb someone, you don’t want to put unnecessary stress on your colleagues.
Øystein: No, exactly.
Tore: And by sending them in an email you’re kind of showing them okay, you don’t need to stop doing whatever you’re doing and reply to me. Just finish your work and come back tomorrow, and then reply to me.
Øystein: Yeah. I think when I receive emails that seem not urgent, I always think yeah, I can reply in a week is okay. But then a Slack message you get it right away and if it’s important you reply it. Otherwise, you can tell them “Send an email.”
Tore: Yeah. Slack is like talking to someone. That’s like approaching them, tapping them on the shoulder, and saying “Hey, do you have the TPS report?”
Øystein: Yeah, and isn’t that annoying?
Tore: Yeah, that’s annoying, exactly. So, you do want to differentiate between those two modes of communication.
Øystein: Yeah, exactly. I think the open channels as well in Slack contributes to that. When you’re not receiving a direct message, it doesn’t seem that urgent perhaps. And if you shoot a question out in the open channel, it might be other people who have more time on their hands who can reply to it if you don’t have time.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. It’s only if someone tags you-
Øystein: Yeah, you get a notification.
Tore: Yeah, in the … tech question channel we have if someone tag Tore, what’s going on here? I would reply.
Øystein: Yeah, right away.
Tore: Right away, yeah. But if they use an open question I wouldn’t.
Øystein: No, exactly. They’re not addressing it to you.
Tore: Yeah. So, for email, we use Google, the Gmail.
Øystein: Yeah, and Google Suites.
Tore: Yeah. That’s really good, Google Suites. So, we pay for it and we get mail, and we get Google Drive, and we get Google documents. What’s it called?
Øystein: Yeah, Google Docs.
Tore: Google Docs, yeah. So, it has spreadsheets, it has that Word version kind of. It’s called Docs.
Øystein: Google Docs, Google documents.
Tore: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Google documents.
Øystein: Google spreadsheets and all kinds of stuff. Though they have a lot of tools. I mean, they probably have 100 different ones.
Tore: Yeah. And it’s really good because it’s easy to add a new employee, and they get everything.
Øystein: Yeah, access to everything they need.
Tore: Yeah, and an email address … so that’s really good. Which brings us to Google Drive. Do you use it?
Øystein: I use it a lot … because of two reasons. It’s very easy to use, and the second reason is I’m on Chromebook, so I don’t have Microsoft Office. I can’t have Microsoft Office.
Tore: There’s no Chromebook version?
Øystein: No, there’s no Chromebook. Oh, they have like an online version, but there’s no native desktop version because it is not a desktop operating system. So, I use Google Drive a lot.
Tore: Why are you owning a Chromebook?
Øystein: Because it’s really fast. It doesn’t slow down over time like a PC or a Mac does … And I do everything online, so why do I need to have lots of internal storage like a heavy laptop, when everything I do is on the internet?
Tore: That’s true.
Øystein: That’s basically what a Chromebook is, it’s a browser.
Tore: Yeah, it’s a browser.
Øystein: Yeah, and everything I do is in a browser when Google Drive is here.
Tore: Yeah, that’s true. How much is a Chromebook?
Øystein: They are something from €200 to €1,000.
Tore: Okay, so they’re pretty cheap.
Øystein: Pretty cheap, yeah.
Tore: I think a MacBook Pro is from like 2,000 to 7,000.
Øystein: Why do you need that if you use spreadsheets and Slack?
Tore: The track pad.
Øystein: Because everybody uses a track pad.
Tore: Yeah, the track pad. But can you use Chromebook offline, like if you’re on a plane?
Øystein: Yeah. You can write in your documents. So, it has memory, right? So, you can write in your Google Docs, whatever, and it’s going to offline sync. As soon as you’re on wifi again it will sync to your drive. So, you can use it but you can’t store large amounts of data. You can still write your document or use your spreadsheet … but you can’t cooperate on. But you can’t do that on Mac either because you would be offline.
Tore: Yeah, I would be offline. Lufthansa has wifi now, and Norwegian.
Øystein: Yeah. Get a Chromebook.
Tore: Get a Chromebook, yeah. Constantly update … connector to the cloud. Get a Chromebook. Yeah, it’s an amazing different 1,000, that’s the high-end Chromebooks.
Øystein: Yeah. I bought one of the higher. This was 800. It’s an Acer Chromebook for work, so it’s meant for offices and factories basically. And it has a normal amount of ram like normal PCs has like eight gigs of RAM.
Tore: Is that the specs over there?
Øystein: No. It doesn’t say the specs on it, but it has the Intel Core i5 processor, so similar to-
Tore: How many gigahertz?
Øystein: The processor?
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: I have no idea.
Tore: Because I have i5, my MacBook Pro.
Øystein: It’s similar. It’s the same processor. Maybe it’s smaller build, but the same one.
Tore: Yeah, and I paid like 2,500 Euros for mine-
Øystein: Yeah, but you pay for a brand, you know?
Tore: And the track pad.
Øystein: And the track pad … I use that a lot.
Tore: Yeah, I use it a lot, the track pad every day.
Øystein: You don’t have the mouse?
Tore: No, I stopped. I mean, I have a mouse but it has to be a really good mouse for me to switch from this.
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: Yeah, I used it. It’s all in my muscle memory now, you know?
Øystein: The track pad is good on this one as well. You have four-fingered gestures.
Tore: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How often do you use it?
Øystein: Never, because I have a mouse.
Tore: Yeah, but it’s really good. You never use it-
Øystein: I use it when I’m-
Tore: But rumour has it it’s really good.
Øystein: No, if we’re not in the office I use it and it works really well. It’s very sensitive to your movements. You don’t have to … I would say like press down the whole pad like you have to do on some PCs … Simple tap like you do on your phone. It’s not-
Tore: Yeah. If anyone listening to this can recommend me a PC or a Chromebook that has a track pad that’s as good as the MacBook Pro, please let me know because I’m sick and tired of paying the premium.
Øystein: Yeah, I bet you spent … You bought a very expensive computer with MacBook Pro and I think MacBook Pros are, correct me if I’m wrong, are built for people that are using a lot of heavier video editing. Graphic designers need to use it because they need to use really heavy software. If you’re not using those really heavy software, why do you need all that computing power just to browse?
Tore: Well, it doesn’t have that much computer power.
Øystein: So, why? So, what’s the price tag for?
Tore: Well, of course, with Apple it always has a premium for being shiny and good looking. But it has a very, very solid build, a very solid build quality. Okay, I can see in your eyes now. You’re looking at my computer and you see how I taped the keyboards together.
Øystein: Yes. I see lots of tape on yours, it doesn’t look so sturdy-
Tore: Yeah, okay. So, this one wasn’t so sturdy. They did a recall on this model actually, so I can go in and change the keyboard on this one. So, I’m just waiting for a moment-
Øystein: Interesting-
Tore: Yeah. So, that’s one of the things I like with Apple. They have this worldwide guarantee, so whenever I need something fixed they won’t ask me for a receipt.
Øystein: Yeah, because they’re the only one that sells it.
Tore: They are the only one who sells it, exactly.
Øystein: Or they have resellers, but still.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. So, I really like that. You have a worldwide guarantee and if something goes terribly wrong with it, you always know where to go to fix it … But to be honest, MacBook Pro is going down. It’s becoming worse and worse for every model. It used to be really good when I switched from PC. I’d been using PCs for like 25 years, and then I switched to the MacBook and … my outputs doubled, tripled, because I got so much more done, faster. So, my output increased a lot.
Øystein: Alright, that’s something.
Tore: And it’s a tool that I use all the time. I mean, I use my computer like 10 or 15 hours a day. Okay, not 15, but at least 10 hours a day. So, it’s … paying that premium. I mean, if you counted per hour it’s not that much.
Øystein: Yeah. No, but you can have the same quality if you buy a proper Chromebook or proper PC in that price range. You can’t get a Chromebook that expensive, but in a higher price range Chromebook, I would say the same things that you are saying now. When I got it, from a PC to a Chromebook my productivity increased insanely much. And I think I had this for like three years now. It’s like new. There’s nothing slowing down. And I think I’m running… because that’s a thing people say buy Chromebooks, it doesn’t have enough memory. This has 8 gigs of RAM and I run I think 50 tabs open, 20 of them being spreadsheets, at the same time. Because it’s taken all the RAM, but it’s never slowing down. So … for me, it’s enough.
Tore: Yeah. 50 tabs, that’s nothing. That’s rookie numbers. You have to pump that numbers up.
Øystein: Yeah, more tabs.
Tore: Yeah, you need more tabs. No, but it’s crazy. If you have too many tabs, especially Chrome, that’s a real memory hog.
Øystein: Yeah, it takes all your memory.
Tore: Takes all your memory, yeah. Yeah, so if anyone listening to this has suggestions on laptops that can out-compete the MacBook, then just send us a message. We’d be happy to switch.
Øystein: Yeah. There’s a new one that is competing with the MacBook Pro now, the Huawei, the Chinese one.
Tore: Huawei, yeah.
Øystein: Yeah. It’s a higher end price as well. I think it goes up to 2,000 Euro … price range. But they should be … I hear a lot of people switching from MacBook Pros to those now.
Tore: But that’s a Chinese one.
Øystein: Yeah, but that’s a MacBook as well.
Tore: So, you get-
Øystein: MacBook is as well a Chinese one.
Tore: It’s an American company.
Øystein: Okay.
Tore: It’s designed in the US, it’s assembled in China. But Huawei is a Chinese company, so you get the spyware included.
Øystein: Yeah, I don’t know if I should comment on that.
Tore: Yeah, no you do have … Now I sound like Alex Jones here.
Øystein: It’s a lot of conspiracies.
Tore: Yeah, a lot of conspiracies. Okay.
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Tore: Moving on, yeah. So, the Google Docs, the Google Suite, works flawlessly, it’s excellent. We use that for emails, we use that for documents. Oh yeah, one of the things I really like with Google Suite and the documents is the spreadsheets when you collaborate.
Øystein: Yeah, definitely.
Tore: Definitely, yeah. So, before that, we used a mix of Dropbox and Excel. And then you always had to “Oh, close down the file. I need to open it.” And someone had to close it, and then it was like “I closed it.”
Tore: “No wait, Dropbox hasn’t updated yet. Ah, damn I opened it. Ah, it’s a conflicting copy, delete it.”
Tore: “Which one, your conflicting or my conflicting?”
Øystein: It was a hassle, sending screenshots by email to decide which one to delete.
Tore: Yeah … But with Google spreadsheets, no such problems.
Øystein: No.
Tore: It’s fun even, collaborating. You can see when the other person starts typing. You can see which cell they are actively looking at at the moment.
Øystein: Yeah. You can follow someone writing an article and say “Ah, you shouldn’t have written that,” and then they remove it.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. There was a spelling mistake and you noticed it and the other person noticed it … Yeah, that’s cool. Dropbox.
Øystein: Yeah. I think Dropbox is something starting to belong to the past, for us at least. We still use it for backup of our production team. So, everything that we produce we have a backup copy in Dropbox in case our clients, which happens quite often, loses their content. Their site goes down because they have a bad hosting provider or something like that, and we have to, we are the only ones who have the contents then, as we use that backup. I don’t think Dropbox is … How do you say it? I don’t think Dropbox is the only solution there. I think that there’s a lot of better ways we probably could have done that … backup.
Tore: Yeah. So, we have a backup in many places. Like our entire production system has a backup, like daily, hourly, and long term backup. And yeah, the files are all stored in Dropbox. And every time we send an email, that’s saved forever.
Øystein: Yeah. We have that as well there. We would have the backup, even in Google Suites.
Tore: Yeah. We’ve had clients that came to us as you said, they lost a site. They ask us for, like “Do you have the content?” like “Why do you need the content again?” like “Yeah, we lost the site.” So, they lose the site, they didn’t have a backup on the site, so they had to recreate everything.
Øystein: Unprepared.
Tore: Yeah … We have everything.
Øystein: Yeah, and we have years back as well. So, if someone comes to us today and says “I ordered some content from you guys in 2015. I lost it. Do you have it?” ”Yeah, we do.”
Tore: Yeah, we do.
Øystein: We definitely have it.
Tore: I think we would have all versions. “Would you like the proofread version or the raw version?” I mean, we have that too.
Øystein: We have both, yeah.
Tore: Yeah, we have all versions of it.
Øystein: It might need to be updated, the content, though. Not relevant anymore, it was created a long time ago.
Tore: Yeah. That’s a good upsell. We can update the content for you, so you get the 2019 version.
Øystein: We could start selling insurance on content. If you lose your content, you’re like add on insurance.
Tore: Yeah. That’s a good upsell-
Øystein: For 10 years-
Tore: “We want insurance for that content.” “What do you mean?”
Tore: “Yeah. If you break it we will replace it.”
Øystein: If someone re-writes it without your permission, we can give it to you again.
Tore: Yeah, we can give it to you again … Maybe we should have some kind of upsell like that.
Øystein: So many business ideas coming to mind now.
Tore: Yes. It’s like when you buy something in a store, like you buy a mobile phone, or you buy a printer, and they have to argue for insurance. “Do you want insurance?” I bought a printer once, like an Epson, the cheapest they had. It was like 40 Euros or something, and you know that 25 of those Euros is ink. So, it’s like a 15 Euro printer. And … the lady, the cashier, she asked me, like “Do you want insurance?”
Tore: I was like “How much is insurance?”
Tore: She was like “Yeah, it’s 39 Euros.”
Øystein: A year?
Tore: Yeah, a year. And I was like “What? Are you serious? I mean, the printer is 45 Euros. Do you think I need insurance for 39? Like, what does that cover?”
Øystein: Six Euros.
Tore: Yeah, six Euros. It was … And then she says “Yeah, but we have to ask. Our boss tells us we have to ask.” They have a script they have to say, ask everyone.
Øystein: I understand you want to insure your laptop or mobile phone because you break it because you drop it on the ground, but how would a printer get broken? It would be covered by the warranty, right-
Tore: Yeah-
Øystein: If it just breaks by itself. Yeah, I can’t see any case where you’d drop your printer to the ground, or someone spills something on your printer.
Tore: Yeah, exactly … You leave it in and they say “No, no. This printer is water damaged. You clearly dropped this in a puddle somewhere.”
Øystein: Yeah, that’s it.
Tore: “You were printing on the-
Øystein: I lost it on the train-
Tore: Yeah, I lost it on the train. “You were clearly printing outside in the rain … We can’t replace this. This is not covered by the warranty.” No, I can’t see that happening as well. How do you break a printer?
Øystein: Yeah. You can break a printer by saying “I need to print this stuff fast.” It won’t work anymore.
Tore: Yeah, it won’t work … It would say “I need more magenta.”
Tore: “I just gave you magenta.” “Okay, I need more Cyan.”
Tore: Ok, so Dropbox. Yeah, we still use Dropbox. We used it a lot before. Now, it’s just for backup.
Øystein: Yeah. So, we used Dropbox every single day because we need to update our backup. But not really, that’s all we do with it.
Tore: Oh, also we tell everyone. This is important. But backups shouldn’t be underestimated. We tell everyone who starts with us that they have to install Dropbox because we need everybody to have a backup of what they’re doing. You know, because whatever you’re doing during the day, if you’re not doing it in … our back end system, or in Google Drives and doing the spreadsheets… That’s Bo again.
Øystein: Snoring.
Tore: Yeah. He’s not a Dropbox user.
Øystein: No, not yet.
Tore: Not yet. Yeah, so if you’re doing something, like if you’re using Word, and you’re proofreading something and you’re saving it, you need to have a backup of it.
Øystein: Yeah. So, we do everything in the cloud in some way or another, so saving files locally, it’s never a solution for us.
Tore: Yeah. You do everything in the cloud because you have the Chrome.
Øystein: Yeah. What I mean is that we need that kind of cloud backup, like Dropbox.
Tore: Yeah, exactly-
Øystein: Or something-
Tore: We need to have a cloud-
Øystein: Yeah. If it’s not Dropbox, something else.
Tore: Yeah, exactly.
Øystein: Because storing files offline, it’s a horrible idea because your MacBook Pro is suddenly working, and then it’s not.
Tore: Yeah. So, for example, right now we are recording, so we’ve been talking now 37 minutes. As soon as I hit the stop button it will save to Dropbox.
Øystein: Yeah … But it’s still doing this offline, right?
Tore: Yeah, it’s doing this offline.
Øystein: So, if it fails to save now, we’ve lost it?
Tore: Yeah, we’ve lost it.
Øystein: So, if we used instead of. We’re using QuickTime now, right?
Tore: Yeah, we’re using QuickTime-
Øystein: Desktop version.
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: If we used a Chrome extension, for example, in Chromebook-
Tore: Oh, the Chrome extension-
Øystein: This would’ve been saved as we go.
Tore: Are you sure on that?
Øystein: I’m pretty sure.
Tore: You’re pretty sure?
Øystein: Pretty sure.
Tore: Maybe we should do that instead.
Øystein: Yeah. We can try and see what happens.
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: If we got no internet.
Tore: Yeah. Maybe we should both record it like we should have two microphones.
Øystein: Yeah, in case that we speak for almost an hour.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. Because my MacBook, be it MacBook, it’s … a bit old, and sometimes it just shuts down. My battery is completely wasted.
Øystein: Yeah, but you have the power right now, right?
Tore: Yeah, I have the power right now. You’ve noticed that whenever I go into the conference room I bring the power.
Øystein: It just shuts off?
Tore: Yeah, it can shut off now. I basically have no battery left.
Øystein: That’s crazy.
Tore: Well, the battery is-
Øystein: How long did you have it?
Tore: It’s two and a half years maybe, two years.
Øystein: Interesting, because on my Chromebook, I had it for three years.
Tore: Oh, my Chromebook. Yeah, okay.
Øystein: And the battery time, it used to be 10 hours without charging. Now, it’s gotten worse. It’s eight hours.
Tore: Yeah. Have you tried it?
Øystein: Yeah, I try it every time I’m not. If I work from home, which I do every Wednesday, I don’t connect my power until the end of the day.
Tore: Okay.
Øystein: If I do a lot of heavy, like if you use Google Meet for doing video chats, it spends a lot more power. Then I would probably have to plug it in after lunch or something like that. But it lasts many hours.
Tore: I’m impressed.
Øystein: Yeah, it’s pretty good. You should get one.
Tore: I should get one, yeah. I should totally get one just to try it out.
Øystein: Yeah. It’s cheap, so there’s nothing to lose, except for 400 Euros.
Tore: Yeah, 400 Euros.
Øystein: Nothing to lose.
Tore: Nothing to lose, 400 Euros. Maybe I can sell it afterwards or give it away to someone.
Øystein: Yeah … gift.
Tore: Gifts for Christmas.
Øystein: It’s far away.
Tore: 400 Euro gift, that’s a hefty gift.
Øystein: Yeah, someone special.
Tore: Someone special, yeah. Okay, so Dropbox we’ve covered, Gmail we’ve covered, Pipedrive we’ve covered?
Øystein: Yeah, we did it last episode.
Tore: Yeah, so we talked about that. Also, Officevibe. That’s a tool we use.
Øystein: Yeah, our employee satisfaction system.
Tore: The noise you just heard was someone Slack-ing.
Øystein: Yeah. You should have muted that.
Tore: I should have muted that, yeah.
Øystein: So, Officevibe is our employee satisfaction system, which sends out surveys every week I think to all employees asking them questions and giving them polls about how it is like to work at Topcontent. And these questions, they change every time I think. Different variations of questions, they are delivered in a different way, to constantly receive feedback from employees. That gives us a satisfaction score we can look at, so we have a metric to look at when we are going to improve how good an employer are we.
Tore: How good employers we are, yeah. How happy the employees are.
Øystein: Yeah, exactly.
Tore: So, it’s an automatic system to track happiness.
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: Satisfaction.
Øystein: Yeah. So, a lot of people are very, always want to know how their customers are feeling, so they do customer satisfaction surveys all the time. We do that as well, but not a lot of people use or measure employee satisfaction in that way. Because let’s face it, they are the most important asset that we do have, is our employees. It’s really important for us that they are happy and we want to know right away, know if there’s something with our organization that people have done like. And we will know it right away with Officevibe.
Tore: Yeah. We’ve had situations where the score has suddenly dipped. We see it and then we know oh shit, something’s going on.
Øystein: Yeah. And you can break down that score into different areas. If that’s stress at the workplace, their personal wellness, or something, a relationship with their manager. You can go and see which area it is and that way we can find out what happened there, and why did this drop, and then we can go fix the problem before it escalates to become a much bigger problem with people leaving and so on.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. I think … the Officevibe score that you get should be combined with the turnover rates. Because if you only look at the Officevibe score, it’s difficult to know if people actually are happy or not, or if it’s just something that they click through. But if you combine it with the … staff turnover, like how often people leave and join, you get a good understanding of the health of your organization. Is he sleepy, Bo?
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: Yeah, he’s snoring. At the end of the day, we’re recording this at 5:00.
Øystein: Yeah. Bo has been a full day at the office now. He’s ready for supper.
Tore: He’s ready for supper, yeah.
Øystein: He’s having a pre-dinner nap.
Tore: Pre-dinner nap, yeah. Yeah, so can we recommend Officevibe?
Øystein: Yeah … Because I don’t have a lot of knowledge about similar products. I don’t know which other alternatives there are because we have never really looked into alternatives because we are so happy with that software.
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: I think it gives us a good metric and gets everybody in the management, for example, and insight into how are our employees doing. It’s easy to find that information as well. It’s easy to see, to go in and check any time if people are happy.
Tore: Yeah. It’s also good for the HR department because a constant problem or challenge for the HR is to get the number, get the KPI, on their work.
Øystein: Yeah, and see is what I’m doing good or-
Tore: Yeah-
Øystein: They never know-
Tore: Yeah. Like you work in sales, so it’s kind of easy.
Øystein: Yeah, we have numbers.
Tore: We have numbers, yeah. Like how much money did we make?
Øystein: Yeah, exactly.
Tore: That’s a very good number. It’s either there, or it’s not. But when you talk about people, how are people feeling, are they happy, are they not happy, will they leave, will they not leave, it’s much more difficult. It’s much more complex.
Øystein: Yeah. And just going around asking your employees if they’re happy, that won’t give you any real data. You need to send them … proper questions that go into details so they can answer those in confidence and honestly, or if they want to share their name they can choose. And you get that much more honest … feedback because let’s face it, if you’re able to do something on your phone or your computer when nobody’s watching, you can reply this when nobody’s watching, you will be a lot more honest, especially if you’re anonymous, I think. So, we get a lot more honest feedback so we can trust that score a bit more as well.
Tore: Yeah, true. I think we might even get a higher satisfaction use for having … just for asking people how they are feeling. Because we read everything that goes into this, and we reply as well. I think that helps as well. It kind of forces us to become a better … company, a better organization.
Øystein: Yeah. And everybody gets heard because everybody gets this service, not that some people are getting it and some are not.
Tore: Yeah, exactly … Yeah, we can recommend it, Officevibe. Where do we find it, officevibe.com?
Øystein: I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Topcontent podcast, and I’m a professional voiceover guy.
Tore: Okay, cool. So, we talked about Slack, that’s the number one, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Suite, Dropbox, which is good for backup but it’s kind of outdated. If you do everything in Google Suite you don’t need Dropbox.
Øystein: Yeah, if you have Google Drive and use everything there. And if you don’t have people in your organization that use a lot of … Word documents and Excel sheets, if they use Google Docs and Google spreadsheets, then you don’t need that kind of desktop backup kind of thing with files.
Tore: Yeah. It’s like okay, what we produce here, we produce in our system. So, we automatically have everything backed up there, all the work, all the messages, all the back and forth, all the feedback, all the versions, Yeah, but if you’re, let’s say we would be a marketing agency and we work with a lot of Photoshop or Illustrator. I guess that Dropbox would probably be more useful for us.
Øystein: Yeah, might be.
Tore: Yeah, because we would be more like a file-oriented service.
Øystein: Yeah. If you were a graphic designer sharing a lot of images and stuff like that. There are probably special services for that, but I don’t know.
Tore: Yeah, maybe they have special services as well.
Øystein: These would be really good for them because that’s not great support in Google Drive. I think the image support is not amazing.
Tore: That’s true. Like, our development team, they have special services where their code is always uploaded. So, maybe the same exists for Photoshop and Illustrator and those kinds of things.
Øystein: Maybe, should look into that.
Tore: Adobe cloud maybe.
Øystein: Yeah, and they have it … maybe someone can tell us if they are a graphic designer or a photoshopper. They can tell us how they back up.
Tore: Maybe we come off now as total noobs.
Øystein: These guys know nothing.
Tore: Oh my God, they’ve never heard about that, in the cloud, or whatever it’s called.
Øystein: It’s the only thing we use.
Tore: Yeah … Okay, so one more thing that’s a bit … That I use a lot, is QuickTime.
Øystein: QuickTime?
Tore: Yeah. So, for … When you want to explain something to somebody, you can either create pictures, write something for 30 minutes, explain very in detail what you mean. And the receiver, the person on the other end, can still misunderstand what you mean.
Øystein: I can relate to that, yeah.
Tore: Yeah. Because it’s very difficult to explain things using words. And I mean, we are content companies, we are experts as crafting words to explain things, but we know how difficult it can be.
Øystein: To communicate in text.
Tore: Yeah, to communicate in text. So, sometimes you just need to show it … And I use QuickTime. It comes with MacBook Pro, this amazing machine … And I just click record screen, and then I use my mouse or my track pad to click on whatever I need to click, and I talk at the same time, like a screen cast.
Øystein: Yeah, exactly.
Tore: I save it and send it to someone.
Øystein: So, it records your screen at the same time recording your microphone?
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: Yeah, that’s good.
Tore: Do you have that for your Chromebook-
Øystein: I don’t, but Chrome does have a lot of add-ons and integrations, or extensions they call it. I use something they call Screencastify.
Tore: Screencastify?
Øystein: Yeah. And that basically can record. So, it’s a Chrome extension. You download it from the Chrome marketplace or what it’s called-
Tore: Wait, so it’s a Chrome extension?
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: So, I can use it with my MacBook?
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: Okay.
Øystein: But you can only use it within Chrome, right? While with QuickTime, you can probably use, I don’t know if that would ever happen, you need to show something on your desktop-
Tore: Yeah, 99% of the time it’s in Chrome, on a website kind of.
Øystein: But basically, with Screencastify you can then choose how you want to. You just click a button up in your browser window and you can choose what you want to cast or what you want to record, if it’s your browser tab, if it’s your entire screen. And you can also use your web camera at the same time. So, I can share my screen, record my microphone, and have my face down in the corner. You can see my face when I’m talking and showing around. This is a good way if you want to create tutorials for people.
Tore: Yeah, because showing the face improve the tutorial-
Øystein: It makes it more personal, right? So they can see who they’re talking to … We say when on the podcast … it’s weird.
Tore: Having the face is so important, oh yes.
Øystein: So important.
Tore: Can’t only have audio … Please listen to our next podcast.
Øystein: So, with Screencastify then it’s a bit about being in the cloud, as we talked about before. When you record this, it doesn’t save locally first and then you have to upload to the Dropbox, like I think you have to do here.
Tore: Yeah, with QuickTime it saves in Dropbox, I right click share with Dropbox, and I send the link.
Øystein: Yeah, similar-
Tore: But I have to wait for it-
Øystein: This one goes into, you can choose. It has integrations you can choose where you want that video to be sent or stored. I use always to put it in Drive, so then it will automatically upload to Drive and it will give you the Drive link when you’re done. So, in the background, it will just continue to do that.
Tore: So what was it called, Screen?
Øystein: Screencastify.
Tore: Okay, and it’s free?
Øystein: It’s free, yeah. I think they have paid options. Bet the free one is branded. I don’t use it that much, so I don’t remember. But I think it’s a little brand at the bottom, but it doesn’t hurt.
Tore: Yeah. So, I think this is like the best tip, like the best advice we can give to people who are starting up working in a remote organization, or who are already working in a remote organization. Because whenever I mention this, like you use QuickTime, or you just do a screen cast, people go like, “Oh, yeah. I never thought about that.”
Øystein: Yeah. Instead of spending one hour explaining something, record a five-minute video. They can replay it how many times they want.
Tore: Yeah, exactly. Go back and forth and everything. And especially if you are developing software, or you have a development team developing software for you, and you need to show a bug. There is nothing like showing when the bug actually happens.
Øystein: Yeah. And if you’re a non-developer who needs to explain something to a developer … I’m talking about me. I constantly have to explain to developers I want something, but I don’t have the knowledge or skills to say that in a programmer kind of way, so I just show. “I see this button here, I want it over there, and this looks strange. Can you make it different?” Kind of thing, and that’s a lot easier than writing that down because you’d have to put in so many screenshots, create arrows and circles everywhere.
Tore: Yeah. They like that, our development team liked that. They asked us for more videos of just us working so they can see what we are doing.
Øystein: Yeah, and that’s really clever.
Tore: Yeah, it’s really clever. So, Slack, Gmail, Google Suites, Dropbox, Officevibe, and QuickTime or Screencastify.
Øystein: I’ve also used Google Meets a lot, which is what used to be Google Hangouts, just video meeting service from Google. And that, you also good. Obviously, you have the presentation option, so you can cast your screen.
Tore: Yeah, make or do a webinar.
Øystein: Or do a webinar, yeah. You can have video meetings with lots of people in there. The only, if you’re talking about sending a video explaining how you want something changed, maybe a video from Screencastify, QuickTime is better because they can go back and replay it. On the other hand, if you have the video meeting and you’re presenting and showing on your screen, while you’re doing it you might get questions along the way, so you can use the screen differently.
Tore: Like “What’s that to the left? What’s that? Is that a button?”
Tore: “You mean this? Yeah, that’s a button.”
Tore: “Ah, okay.”
Øystein: Like “Why did you click there? It’s supposed to click here.”
Tore: Yeah, stuff like that.
Øystein: You have the constant feedback, instead of the developer replying to you with a video how he does it so you have to record new video how you do it.
Tore: Yeah, that is true.
Øystein: I don’t know if that’s a real scenario, but I can imagine.
Tore: I know the tech team, they do all their scrum meetings in Hangouts.
Øystein: In Hangouts, yeah.
Tore: So, they use it a lot.
Øystein: Yeah. I use Google Meet or Hangout for all my team meeting, stuff like that.
Tore: What’s the difference between Meet and Hangouts?
Øystein: Good question. I think they are, I’m not 100% sure, it’s not a fact, but I think they are shutting down Hangouts and focusing on Google Meets.
Tore: Okay. So, that’s the difference.
Øystein: Or the other way around.
Tore: One will be discontinued and the other one is a success.
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: We don’t know which.
Øystein: But I think it’s Google Meet and I base that solely on it looks newer, it looks like they spent more time developing this.
Tore: Okay, the Meets?
Øystein: Google Meet, yeah. It’s meet.google.com.
Tore: Maybe it’s just the name, they like the name. We’re going to go with this.
Øystein: No wait, now I know the difference.
Tore: “This code is terrible.”
Tore: “Yeah, but the name.”
Øystein: I know the difference now. So, Hangouts you have that chat function, you’re chatting back and forth. It’s kind of like Slack, but they are a competitor to Slack. While as Google Meet is basically just video rooms, like conference rooms, that in your calendar you can click on a calendar event. Everybody can see the same link, and you click the link and you get up in the same virtual meeting room. That’s the difference.
Tore: Okay. So, Hangouts was this first version, like when you could suddenly a chat with your … gmail contacts?
Øystein: Yeah, exactly.
Tore: Yeah. And you got this pop up this person wants to chat with you. Do you allow it or not? And everybody clicked no.
Øystein: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was the beginning.
Tore: That was the Hangouts. They shouldn’t have asked that question. That totally ruined the service.
Øystein: Yeah, they had it in Gmail I remember as well, down in the bottom, the Hangouts. Like, do you want to speak with this person? Like, what is this? But the Google Meet I think is really good. It’s so easy to start a meeting and to invite people to it. And you can even join, I saw it the other day. When you press that you want to share the link, you can even join by phone. So, if you have a … you don’t have an app or anything. You call a phone number.
Tore: Oh, really?
Øystein: It’s listed when you share it. And you have a pin code, so if you’re on a go, you don’t have internet even, and someone’s going to do a meeting that you’re supposed to be in, you can call up that number and join in via phone so you can listen in on that meeting.
Tore: Cool. How often does that happen though?
Øystein: Never to me. If I’m somewhere without internet, I’ll be like “Yeah, I can probably skip that meeting.”
Tore: Yeah … You never put yourself in a situation where you might have a meeting and you don’t have internet.
Øystein: Not exactly. It’s 2019. It doesn’t happen that you don’t have internet-
Tore: Don’t go to Africa … No, they have internet-
Øystein: They have internet in Africa.
Tore: They totally have internet in Africa, yeah. Judging from my spam inbox, they have it … Yeah, but don’t go up on Kilimanjaro maybe if you have an important board meeting coming up.
Øystein: If I got to Kilimanjaro I’d probably leave my phone at the bottom … or would I?
Tore: I don’t know, you want the phone. I mean, your Chromebook has amazing eight hours of battery time. How much time do you need to trek Kilimanjaro?
Øystein: Probably longer.
Tore: Probably longer, yeah.
Øystein: Unless you have a helicopter.
Tore: Unless you have a helicopter, yeah … That would take away the glamour though … So, Slack, Gmail, Skype. Do we use Skype? Yeah, we use Skype.
Øystein: Yeah, I use Skype when I speak to customers. A lot of people are still very much into Skype. We use that a lot.
Tore: That’s more for … communication like outside our-
Øystein: Cross-organizational, yeah.
Tore: I’ve seen though that a lot of, we have started to get invited to Slack-
Øystein: To different, yeah-
Tore: For clients, their Slack.
Øystein: Yeah. I get that sometimes as well. They have different, so they invite you to their workspace.
Tore: Yeah. That’s pretty neat. That’s cool.
Øystein: But do you want that? Oh, so you limit that person to only one channel or something-
Tore: Yeah, they do that. I wonder that must mean that they pay for us. Like, if they-
Øystein: I don’t think-
Tore: Because we pay, in Slack you pay per user-
Øystein: But maybe that falls under the free version.
Tore: Yeah, maybe they do. I mean, if they have the free version, of course, it’s free. But if they’re using the premium version and paying for it, it means that they’re actually paying … a fee for every supplier they add.
Øystein: Maybe. That fee is probably like one Euro though.
Tore: No, I think it’s like two Euros a month. Yeah, I’m serious. We’re paying … I think like 2,000 Euros in Slack fees.
Øystein: We need to look into that though, if that’s true or if you’re just saying stuff, no?
Tore: No. Why?
Øystein: But I mean when you’re adding other people to your Slack. Because they already have Slack accounts.
Tore: No.
Øystein: They’re already in the workplace.
Tore: No, so you’re getting new Slack accounts.
Øystein: But you just swap the workplace onto-
Tore: No. Yeah, no you get an invite and you create a new user.
Øystein: Oh, okay.
Tore: So, if they have premium they totally have to pay for it. That says a lot about us though, that they are willing to pay a monthly fee just to communicate with us. That’s pretty awesome.
Øystein: Yeah. This happens a lot though.
Tore: Yeah, it happens every day … No, most clients either use Skype or Email.
Øystein: Skype or email, yeah definitely.
Tore: Nobody uses a phone.
Øystein: No, very rarely. If you call someone you call them on Skype.
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: Or Google Meet.
Tore: Yeah. Like a phone number, what are you weird? What’s this?
Øystein: Every time someone calls me on the telephone I get scared. It’s the millennial … oh shit.
Tore: Yeah. So, maybe this is … But I mean, we’re in the online marketing business, so everybody, all our clients are actively working with the internet, the interwebs, the tubes.
Øystein: All of our clients are businesses online.
Tore: Yeah. So, it makes sense that they don’t call. They’re used to services online.
Øystein: I have some clients that prefer to do a phone call, and that’s completely fine. But I get … It’s strange to receive a phone call. It’s more and more rare that you receive an actual phone call.
Tore: Yeah … Maybe we should call our clients more often.
Øystein: Do you think they would appreciate?
Tore: I mean, you just said that you got scared-
Øystein: Yeah, I get scared-
Tore: Maybe they’re like you … Maybe they’re not like it.
Øystein: Yeah.
Tore: But we have some old school communication coming up. We’re going to do some snail mail advertising … So, we will do send outs, snail mail.
Øystein: Direct mail, actual mail in your mailbox.
Tore: Yeah, actual mail.
Øystein: Paper.
Tore: Paper in your hand. You can touch it. It’s physical, it’s atoms.
Øystein: It’s weird. It used to be a tree and now it’s our marketing material.
Tore: Exactly, it used to be a tree. It’s not instant delivery. You could put it up at home and show it to people without having them swipe on your phone.
Øystein: Yeah, it’s pretty cool.
Tore: Pretty cool, yeah.
Øystein: Old school, discovering mail.
Tore: Yeah. So, we’re going to try that. That’s going out next week or something like that, and we’re going to see if we get any replies on it. And we’re going to write on our blog how many people replies.
Øystein: But getting physical mail, that’s kind of nice.
Tore: Yeah.
Øystein: Because that’s an even older technology I was about to say, but that’s kind of a gesture. If I get a letter that has been addressed to me, maybe a handwritten address, I get really excited … But then it’s a bill. But it feels nice.
Tore: Handwritten bills?
Øystein: We are in Malta.
Tore: Yeah, sometimes you do. That’s true.
Øystein: Somebody forgot to insure their printer, so … We’re a printer repair company.
Tore: Yeah. So, that will go out next week and we will share all the statistics with everybody who will join us on our blog.
Øystein: Yeah, completely open as usual.
Tore: So, should we wrap it up there?
Øystein: Yeah. I think we wrap that up. We’re at an hour mark now, I think that’s good for a podcast.
Tore: Yeah, that’s good for a podcast.
Øystein: If you listened to the end of this it’s impressive.
Tore: Yeah, congratulations … We really like you. So, this was the second podcast with Tore and Øystein from Top Content. So, what do we do Øystein?
Øystein: We sell high-quality content and translations, and our slogan is that we write text and do translations that search engines love. So, our core focus is to make our customers shine in the eyes of Google.
Tore: Exactly. I couldn’t have said it better myself. If you want to be on top, you need Top Content.
Øystein: Definitely.
Tore: Yeah. So, thank you for listening and bye bye.
Øystein: Bye-bye.
Speaker 1: You’ve been listening to the Topcontent podcast. For more interesting marketing tips, visit our website topcontent.com, or subscribe to this podcast. And if you want top content for your own website, visit topcontent.com for a free quote. Until next time remember to stay awesome.
