today I thought I would talk you through how I use Google Suite's free and some
paid for services to help enhance my business help increase my productivity
and make sure I don't lose any important files so I get asked quite a lot what
systems I use and how I seem to keep on top of things and I owe a lot of that to
Google and the systems that I've used so I don't use all of them I've sort of
kind of narrowed it down to the few that I like and that I'd recommend to you
guys firstly the first thing I ever used of
Google was Gmail I went to Google because I knew that I could personalize
my email address so you know when you're emailing someone and it says like I
don't know Alicethorpe@gmail.com or Alicethorpe@hotmail.com I wanted to
change that little end of it I didn't want it to say Gmail I didn't want it to
say hotmail I wanted it to be mine and because I own a website I have that
little Alicethorpe.co.uk part so what I really like is that I can
personalize Gmail I know a lot of other email systems do this but I found this
the easiest one by some miracle I managed to set it up myself so the
biggest thing for me for Gmail was the personalization and the business side of
things so since then I've had like info@alicethorpe.co.uk I've got
ohhitsonlyalice.co.uk my old username and I also have my shops one
soul & fire .co.uk so all of those are integrated into Google I think
when I only had one it was like £3.30 a month which I think's so
affordable I think that's so good and with that you get a bit of extra storage
and it allows you to have that personal email address which if you want to look
reputable and look like a professional I think is so important it's such a small
amount of money to invest for such a positive impact when you are when you
are emailing clients and stuff so I highly recommend getting a personalized
email I also love that on Gmail I can add labels to things so I get emails for
a variety of different things to my gmail accounts I get design work offers
I get event invites I get things from my manager I get a lot of different things
so it kind of became a bit tricky keeping track of things but I discovered
something called labels and it means I can sort of color code everything
and everything has its place again I feel like all the email systems have
this too but I think combined with the other software that they have it just
tops it for me I feel like I should be a Google promo girl the next thing that I
use is a Google Drive so this links in with Gmail I feel like everyone has a
Google Drive document or folder or something in there at some point and I
know initially I never really used it for business but what I've begun or
began to do now is sort of share documents via my Google Drive so on
there I have a shared folder which I can invite people to be able to see so me
and my manager send files to each other a lot and rather than kind of having
them all over the place in various emails or on whatsapp I can just add
files into that folder and then whatever I add he can see and vice versa so I
really like that you can kind of work collaboratively and invite people I can
also send big files via email to clients and stuff without having to get them to
log into something else or having to involve another system so basically if I
do have a big video file to send to a brand to get reviewed and approved I can
just attach that video file to an email and it automatically converts it to a
Google Drive document and sends it via my Drive account through that as well I
can control who sees it so I'm not just sending my video file out there for
anyone to download by putting it on Google Drive I can ensure that people
can either only view it they're not allowed to download it they're only
allowed to look at it I can control who looks at it so I can put their email
addresses in and it just gives me a lot more control and I like that because I
don't know where this video is gonna end up if I don't have that little bit of
extra kind of security another system which uses my beloved color coding is a
Google Calendar and again this was quite recent I used to use just like an app
that I found on my phone I never really got along with the Apple calendar that
comes with iPhones because you can't really see the summary of it when you
look it on your phone whereas Google has the little preview of what's going on
per day so I can just go on it on my phone
and I can see what's on my google calendar and it all syncs together
obviously the color-coding exists in this so it's all via one email account I
have different colors for different tasks it kind of allows me to keep track
of everything and then I also relay those colors into my physical
planning so if I have anything written down on my like paper to-do list I can
copy those colors over alongside it being able to sync to my phone you can
also invite other people to events via Google calendars so for example I have a
meeting with my manager in London he can create an event and invite me to it so
you can just add a little thing in your calendar put the time date and place and
then invite someone put their email address in and then it's sent to them
and they can accept it on their calendar and it's all synced together and I know
there's a lot of businesses that I've heard of that use this as like a task
management system so you can kind of see where people are and when and if you
don't particularly need like a specific rota system or you don't have the
finances to do that Google Calendar can sort of double as
that too so you can see where people are and you can have people invited to
various things when you need them so that's sort of like the main three
they're the ones that I use every single day without fail maybe not on a Sunday
if I give myself a day off but they are the ones I use the most I also use
something called Google Forms Google Forms allows me to ask my clients or ask
my viewers questions in bulk and save their answers so again I could use a
different system I could use Survey Monkey or any other site like that but I
quite like that it's all synced together and everything is stored on my Google
account so for example I use a logo questionnaire so when someone emails me
asking if they could get a logo or a quote for a logo I'll send them a link
to my Google Form which I have set up with various questions and they can fill
in their name email address what they're after they can even attach images for
inspiration and stuff to that form and then when they press submit both I get
an email and they do which means I can sort of look at their answers I can
download any images that they attached and I can save that for later that all
gets stored in my Google Drive so you can kind of see how they're all
linking together so yeah Google Forms has helped me out a lot because previously I
used to email clients and say what kind of inspiration have you got and then
they sent me an email with loads of photos in and then I sort of lose them
photos further up in the email conversation so by sending this link and
doing a Google Form straightaway it means that anytime I sort of need a
refresh of what my client wanted I can go into the Google form find their name
in the drop down menu and see what exactly it was that they wanted I've
also done like a couple of little surveys over there so sort of like
client feedback customer feedback seeing whether people liked my videos whether
they didn't and it tallys it all up like it would in a regular survey you can see
who answered what and you can sort of gather information that way and it also
allows you to export it to so if you need to use that data elsewhere you can
either export each individual person's answer or you can export the entire page
of answers and the final one that I use it's a love-hate relationships quite
like Marmite this one it's sheets so and this is Google's version of spreadsheet
is it Microsoft Microsoft Office Microsoft Excel so it's
Google's version of Microsoft Excel I think there are some features it's
missing but for everything I've needed it for it's been fine I have Microsoft
Excel but I prefer to use Google's version so it's called sheets because I
can access that from wherever so I can access it on my iPad I can access it on
my phone without having to like send files over to each other and again you
can add other people to be able to view it at the same time as you so you can
add collaborators and it just has the same basic principles of Microsoft Excel
without having to pay for it so on there I do sort of like my stocktake stuff I
keep inventory of what stock I've got I compare prices for buying products to
resell I keep track of my youtube views per month all that kind of stuff it's
all in there another couple of apps from Google that I feel like I should mention
I don't use them as often but I have in the past and they're really really
helpful so the first one is Docs so again it's Microsoft Word
but Google's version it's free you can use it online you can invite people to
view it same sort of principle as before I use Docs usually to sort of write out
my newsletters before I import them into my email system and I also previously
have used slides which is Google's version of PowerPoint so at uni we made
quite a few presentations using slides again it's got a little bit less
functionality compared to Microsoft but it does the job for what I needed it for
at the time and again if you needed to make a PowerPoint and you don't want to
fork out on some professional software you can use Google without having to pay
for it so I think that could be it for my little selection of Google apps that
I use hopefully this all makes sense if there's anything that I've mentioned
that I've confused you about or anything you'd like to ask me about further feel
free to DM me on Instagram or comment down below and I'll get back to you best
I can as always I'm not a professional I'm just doing what I'm doing and kind
of sharing the journey with you guys so thank you for joining me on that journey
I hope you've enjoyed this video I hope you've learnt something and I'll see you
soon for the next one I