Hello everyone, welcome back to another video it is Francesco here
Welcome to Keep Productive YouTube channel if you're brand new, but if your regular
Welcome back. So guys, it feels like could be ages since I did my last video here on the channel
but
I'm back now
Which is great and there's something I want to talk to you about
Specifically in the topic of finding the best applications for you now
Of course here on the channel. What we do is try to distill the best of the productivity applications
What I want to talk about today is how do you go about picking a reliable productivity application?
it's hard to distill that because there are so many different factors in that and there are certainly new and
Older software's out there. What do you go for and how do you know which one is best for you?
And how do you know which ones are gonna stand the test of time so in today's video?
I want to give you seven checklist items you can go away with there will be a PDF below as well
That you can go away with and apply to your next resource pick. You can apply this to productivity software
but also outside of that even if you wanted to apply it to like web tools or things like that and it might be of
Use to you guys
So just before we dive in I wanted to let you know about the Skillshare course that we've got notion guidebook
Which is essentially an overview of how to get started with notion
You know, I've been talking about it a lot guys and also you can sort of create your own dashboard there
So I'm going to include that one in the comments below
In the comments below in the description below which you can get access to so guys
let's start with the first element of the recipe and that is
Checking the company's progress and this sounds a bit weird, but it totally makes sense when you look at it
now, of course
We all know some applications do have the benefit of being backed by large companies
the likes of Google have tasks Google keep Gmail all
Provided by Google as a service and a free experience and we have companies like Zoho who have notebook Zoho notebooks
Which is available and again a free service
But it's always good to understand the smaller applications
And understand where their company is sort of how their company's doing as well
So what highly recommend when you get started checking out their full website?
Understanding whether there's a company outside of that and whether they provide other success resort resources out there
Because once you understand what the company does you might understand whether they're going to be reliable
Whether it'll be staying around for a fair while so for example for example to do is to have obviously their company doest
Doest also run a twist application which is team communication tool and of course you're going to rely or be a bit more
Open to it because it's coming from a reliable source, because turist has been out there for a fair while now
So try to think of it like that trying to approach it in that similar fashion
So the second element of the checklist is social credibility and social credibility is very important
the best thing to do with this is basically to
Research your application using social media sites as well
So we're using the likes of Twitter reddit Facebook Instagram search for the name of your resource
learn who's using it learn whether they've got any feedback whether they have any huge support problems and
Understand the resource feedback in general because you'll be able to get a bit of credibility around that now
Of course you tend just to get sort of like really great ones or really poor ones
So distill the best of the breed understand whether the resources for you and whether it's been able to tackle other people's problems
Now the good way in bm2 check this out is use cases as well as other sites that help compare resource
I know alternative two is a good one
But there are other companies that help you to rank it and you can look in line to producthunt
Comments and see people's opinions of it, too
so number three in the checklist is
Website resources in support a very important element when you're going into picking that best resource for you now
What I recommend doing is when you start go on the website have a little exploration around the website
Understand whether there are good resources
Good, FA Hughes
good help centers that can provide you with the information you need to knows and you don't necessarily have to contact anyone and
Also a good support service
You know a good support service when it replies on reg basis to customers and also they do something like social media
They'll reply to any tweets DM snap you've send them
But it's always good to understand that you have that network in case you need it not to overuse it but be able to access
All of that now good companies that do this are fluent of Trello. Have an amazing blog have an amazing resource
but they also have a great support center and the likes of to do is there a good example as well like
Providing such a strong Resource Center for you to go and dive into so number four on the checklist is security statements
Although sometimes we never read those privacy policies
It's important to sometimes if you're very sensitive about where your data goes and you want a reliable service
You need to be able to
understand the best of what a security statement means and being able to understand where your data is being secured and
How it's being secured is very important now because of GDP on this has become a lot more
Accessible so you can find the information on privacy or security or even terms on a website and be able to fully understand
How they're using your data because obviously that is very very valuable and important to you a good example
This is not be who they do project management resource
They state their head bank grade security, which is important and a lot of the other project managers do as well
but it's good to be able to evaluate whether they state anything like this because security
Will help you to defend on other items so number five paying users if you are able to
Determine whether one of your services that you're looking at has paying users. That is good because you need to understand
whether the service offers a premium experience and I sometimes say it's good that they offer this because
Premium shows that they're making income to support their thing
It's okay for companies
Maybe like Google where they're gonna get loads of money from other services
Or even the ranks of Zoho make most of their income from other business tools
But when you're looking at the likes of todoist
You're looking at likes of Evernote you want to know that they're bringing in come in to be able to support the platform so number?
Six is venture backing of course with the world of startups
There are a lot of funders out there and investors that put a lot money behind these applications. It's always good to see
applications that aren't supported like this
I know that do start and that's something that really strengthened my relationship when I first went about picking them
But I know that the lights of motion which I also use has
Investors in the company, so it's important to understand whether the company is heavily invested in
Venture capitalists being involved if that makes sense
You need to understand if the company for example were
Not doing so well that they Vestas won't pull out and you've got to sort of gain that confidence
There's normally a page on the website called about us or company, which might give you some insights
You can also look at a site called
CrunchBase if you're getting really nerdy and be able to see a breakdown of whether they've done seed rounds or investment rounds
But the best resources to go for and normally organically producing money and that's buffer and to do is there are great examples of companies
have a strong ethos and
We'll I'm not fully sure on buffer, but I know to do this this fully
Supported organically, which is great the final and seventh recommendation for you guys is reliable storage
Sometimes it's good to understand and you can normally find this out in the security or data statement
Where your data is being stored a lot of these companies use other sites, but they sort of embed it in their code
so for example, they may use something like
AWS or Google cloud that's Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud are as sort of backup resources or even
resources where they host all of the data
so if you really in detail and you want to understand the reliability of them you can check there because sometimes
AWS or Google cloud might go down
I know that AWS had a couple of times last year where it went down and
Sort of freaked out a lot of people so it's being able to understand
Your reliability there if you're really interested in their data around them
Anybody knows were the recommendations I have for you when it comes to trusting the resource and picking them out
Of course, it takes a bit of time. So do take your time with that part of stuff and my own personal experiences
Are I used evident in DES? That's my first pretty much my first ever productivity application and
Ever actually had a breach that the year. I used it quite a big one where all of their data was
compromised and that was quite a sort of
Damaging a guess to my confidence with them but because the company was so big and how much they reinvested in security
I was sort of retention if that makes sense the likes of, you know notion venture capitalist bank
I use them on every single day
but I know that they're making a lot of money from their social proof as well as from some of the feedback I've gotten from
Our users so I'm sort of confident about that too. So
Of course, it naturally depends on you
Let me know in the comments below what applications you trust. What applications?
You go for and maybe some of the parameters that you set when you're looking for a reliable resource. Any one is a huge
Thank you for stopping guys today. Just before we go make sure to check out the new deals section
This will be a web link as well, but you can now get deals available in the description
There will be exclusive discounts and comments or prizes and stuff like that that you can access as well from the most popular
productivity brands out there now
I'm still accumulating
All of those brands there and the list will get bigger and bigger every time you come to a new video
Which is very exciting so you might be able to win new stuff
You might be able to also get an exclusive discount to one services and I'm talking about in this video
So do check it out below again include the link there - - the skill sure as well
Anyway guys a big thank you for stopping by today. Hopefully this gave you enough insight and
I'll see you in the next video anyone guys make sure have a great week keep productive and I'll see you guys very very soon