Business Tools Tip: Why I Love Airtable

Businesses process a lot of information, and keeping all that stuff organized is a giant pain in the you-know-what.

Most business owners are forever on the quest for an easy way to organize. In the meantime, they’re often swimming through tons of pieces of content and information with no real way to keep track of it all.

That’s when things fall through the cracks!

I’m always on the lookout for amazing tools to help make my life (and the life of my clients!) easier. I’m also a techie girl, so I love playing with new programs!

One of my favorite recent finds is Airtable.

Airtable is a unique hybrid of a spreadsheet and database, and it’s really amazing.

What does this mean for you?

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

You have a million documents and files in an online storage system as well as a spreadsheet to keep track of them all, and a spreadsheet to keep track of those spreadsheets. It’s a pain to find anything you need. You also have to update a bunch of different sheets every time you make a change.

But sometimes those updates don’t happen. You or your team members forget (it happens) and before long, you have a giant mess on your hands and can’t find anything you need for your business. You spend way too much time tracking things down, and you still can’t find half of the stuff you need.

I think every business owner’s been in this jam before.

That’s why I think Airtable is so cool. You can put EVERYTHING in there and set it up exactly how you need it. You can set up your forms and databases so that they talk to each other, which streamlines your organization processes.

Here are a few cool ways I’ve seen businesses use Airtable:

For example, I’ve seen people use it to organize article and photo submissions from their audience. Instead of storing all the content and submitter’s info in a drive, they just put everything into a searchable spreadsheet (including the actual image or doc files).

I’ve also seen it used as an entire system for creating and repurposing content. The business owner recorded audio files and put them in the database. Then her transcriptionist transcribed them and put those files in the database for the content manager, who then formatted and edited the content into articles and social media updates.

All the necessary files went right in the spreadsheet with a tag to show its stage of development. Any team member could look at the spreadsheet and see what needed to be done.

How cool is that?

That being said, this is a big program with a lot of bells and whistles. It does take some time to set everything up and get used to it.

But once you do, you’ll fall in love. Everything in your business will run so much smoother.

Even more reasons why I love Airtable:

• You can create flows, pipelines, and colorful spreadsheets that keep info and processes organized. Also, you can put files right in the spreadsheet instead of just linking them.
• It’s awesome for organizing processes, content and content calendars, launches, customer info, inventory, team info, deadlines, calendars, and just about anything you can think of.
• You can share everything with your team. Everything updates in real time.
• You can add all kinds of neat features to your spreadsheets like check boxes, links, drag and drop files, images, drop down menus, and more. You can put EVERYTHING in your spreadsheet instead of dealing with a spreadsheet and a database together. (Those two things are hard to maintain on their own, and coordinating them? Forget it.)
• Hate grids and spreadsheets? No problem! You can change the viewing mode to a gallery system, similar to Trello or Pinterest. You can even arrange everything in a calendar.
• Handles a lot of the organization and systemization for you. You can create relationships between tables or spreadsheets so you don’t have to update a million separate things.
• Has features to minimize manual entry (which can save you money because you don’t have to pay someone to do it or do it yourself!). You can create and share forms, and the responses go right to Airtable so you don’t have to manually enter all the data.
• Connects with lots of apps and systems that you probably already use like Dropbox, Google Drive, LinkedIn, Instagram, Evernote, Twitter, Slack, and more.
• Comes with templates for a content calendar, social media calendar, product catalog, launch, bug tracker, and more.
• Searchability makes it easy to find what you need. No more wading through a messy cloud drive!

You can organize anything with this all in one system. The best part is, it’s free to get started. I’ve been really happy with the free plan, but you can get even more features and storage with the paid plan.

Organization is one of the biggest headaches for any business. I’m really excited to continue experimenting with Airtable!

Need help getting your sh*t together so you can accomplish your business goals? Let’s talk.