How we use Notion to improve remote work

Although I've used Notion before, not like at Coletiv. We use it for everything! Even CRM.

Before getting into the actual post, I just want to briefly introduce myself so you feel connected to another fellow human being. 😄

Hi. I'm Priscila, I'm a Digital Marketer, and a proud cat mom of two cuties (Spike and Jiji). 😻

Gets off-topic and uploads cute cat pics

Today I'd like to share my experience working with Notion here at Coletiv, and let me tell you first hand: we use it for absolutely everything.

In fact, I wrote this blog post in Notion. And I loved it!

But, what is Notion? 🤔

If you're not familiar with Notion, let me give you a quick brief.

Notion is an all-in-one digital workspace where you can organize different content and collaborate with your team. It's a space you can use to centralize notes, documents, tasks, and customize it the way it fits your needs.

It comes in handy when working with remote teams.

How we use it 🚀

Before working here, I used it mainly to organize my tasks and content calendar. But other than that, every time I needed to create a document, I would use Google Docs or Office 365. And sometimes, Airtable!

But this had some downsides because I was using different tools for the same purpose. And you probably know how difficult it can be to find documents when you have them scattered around in many tools. 😭

Having well-defined processes is important

At Coletiv, we work to have a transparent and collaborative culture, and the way we communicate it's important to us. Especially because our team has been working remotely.

For everyone to stay aligned, everything needs to have its dedicated process. And, also, each member needs to be able to join and provide feedback so we can improve.

And that's where Notion comes in. 🙌

Inside our workspaces

We currently use the Team Plan and our account is called Coletiv. In this account, we have multiple workspaces that our team can access and work on.

The workspaces are organized by different areas (let's put it this way).

Inside each workspace, we usually have information about that specific area and links to other Notion pages that are related.

Human Resources

To give you a better idea, inside HR, for example, we have a list of important pages including job postings, referrals, and the interview process.

We also organize information related to the current team, for example, the onboarding process and a helpful template for 1-2-1 meetings.

It currently looks like this 👇

Development & Design

As a digital product studio, we work on different projects and provide different services. Naturally, our team wants to deliver the best quality at all times (even when the time is short 😅).

To do that, all our team members are involved in describing the perfect process either for software development or product design.

These workspaces are organized a bit differently. On each, we have a table of contents and a detailed description of the whole process. It also includes some relevant links for our team to read.

Here's a sneak peek 👇

Marketing

The marketing workspace was a bit poor comparing to the other ones. But hey, that's why I'm here for. 😂

Similar to HR, inside the Marketing workspace, we have a list of contents organized by categories, leading to specific Notion pages.

In this workspace, we centralize documents such as the Content Calendar, Website Copy, Task Plan, SEO guidelines, and others.

Take a look inside our calendar 👇

Each workspace follows a similar structure, but naturally, some will look different.

The Projects workspace, for example, has a gallery view of all the projects we're working on. While the Office workspace keeps links to our hardware inventory, shopping lists, and software accounts. We believe being different is good, as long as we can all find the information we need.

At the moment, we use Notion in many ways, even as a Content Management System where we create and organize our blog content. And, as icing on the cake, we are using it as a CRM, to organize our sales pipeline and each lead that comes in.

You can call us crazy, but it has been working so far. Of course, we might change to other tools later but, for now, we are used to having everything in Notion.

To wrap up ✍️

We enjoy the freedom Notion gives us to customize each workspace and page. And the fact that everything is connected and linked together, allows anyone from our team to quickly access what they need. Without having to switch between applications.

Notion makes us more productive and organized. Even though we are all working in the comfort of our own homes, we can work as if we were all in the same room!

We have everything there. CMS, CRM, company information, you name it. And we recommend you try it out for yourself and let us know how it went. We might even give you some tips. 😎