How to Use Asana and Slack to Streamline Your Business

I’m showing you today how we have mastered Asana and Slack for consistent communication across the board with our team. So, I’m just going to dive right in—no presentation—just show you a deep dive of how we do this and how we set up our process.

So, as you can see, on the left-hand side, I’ve got Asana live here. On the right-hand side, I have Slack here as well.

So in essence, what we try to do is organize a lot of our communication within these two stacks.

Asana on the left-hand side—this is more for task management, right? Putting the task in here, itemizing them, and then going ahead and assigning those to individuals within the business. On the right-hand side is our communication platform for talking in real-time.

Using Asana for Task Management

So I’m going to start with Asana and go through our jobs and kind of how we layout our tasks. So for example, let’s go on the left-hand side, you’ll see all of these tabs and menu items. And I know this can be confusing at first, especially if you’re new to Asana.

I do recommend signing up for Asana, checking it out, getting acclimated. Some people are more comfortable with Basecamp or Trello, but I’m an Asana guy, and so this is what we use internally for the team. 

Split Up Tasks and Jobs According to Category

So for example, I have all of my Favorites here, and I categorize all of our jobs based on what we do. So these are our main functions: we do a lot of SEO, a lot of web development, PPC, we have daily jobs that are just kind of random jobs that we work on, so I’ll actually start there. So if I hit Daily, and I hit Daily Tasks, these are some of the tasks that I work on a daily.

So, we have—right now we’re running four ad campaigns, and then I also review the prospect list. So this is more so high-level management stuff. I just go in, I review the accounts, I make sure all the team members are on point, and then I’ll mark these completed. 

Break Down Procedures Into Subtasks, Assign People, Due Dates

And so what I like to do is have the main job right here, and then I have subtasks in that job. That helps clean up and archive a lot of this information. Here is where you can see who it’s assigned to and then here is where you have the due date.

Now anytime it has this kind of circular arrow, that means it’s a repeating job, right? And so this job repeats Monday-Friday, and I’m marking complete each day to make sure that it’s done. Now the reason I set up daily tasks is because these are things that I need to do every day and make sure that I’m doing consistently on a regular basis, and this just helps me have a reminder. 

You Can Organize Tasks by Due Date

Now if I hit this button here, I can click this and I can click Due Date. And now everything is organized by the due date. So I can see what’s coming, what needs to be worked on, and who’s working on what. So Che, our project manager, needs to add this YouTube video—actually to our YouTube channel—and work on the thumbnail.

And then as you can see on the sub job with AB—Abraham, our designer—he’s going to go ahead and design that thumbnail. Once that design is completed, he’ll mark that complete. Rochelle, our project manager, will get a notification and then she’ll add that on YouTube.

I’m a big proponent of trying to automate things and keeping myself out of that day-to-day, so that way I can focus on just managing the team. 

Add a Buffer of 2-3 Weeks to Your Due Dates

Let’s go to another one. So, Design, right? Our designer full-time, AB, he does an amazing job, he has five jobs in the queue right now.

And as you can see, this job is overdue on January 30. Now that’s the completion date, so I’m going to actually push that back because we always give ourselves about two or three weeks of lead time extra. So I’m going to change that due date to this for Thursday, so that’s going to move that down here.

And then this job is actually overdue, we’re just waiting on response from the client to approve it. So once they approve that, then we go ahead and move into the next segue.

So instead of inundating you with all this info, I’m going to go ahead and create a job just to give you guys an example of how we get it done. 

Create a Job Description Document

What I usually do is create a job description document. This document is actually in my other course, The Marketing Automation Academy.

And so what we’ve done is we created templates for every single job within the agency. So that can include design, UI, UX, content marketing, email marketing, this has taken me years to really culminate and create. And now we’re at a point where Rochelle, our project manager, can go in here, she can copy a job and paste it in with ease of use. 

But I’m going to show you an example: so let’s say we have a new logo design. I’m going to go here, I’m going to go here, and then I’m going to hit Design.  Okay, so here’s the logo design, a nice, simple, easy job.

What I usually do is have the first column be the name of the job. The second is the assignee or the person that’s going to be working on it, the due date, and then any notes that are attributed to those sub-jobs. So I’ll just take this, copy it, I’ll go into Asana, I’ll hit Add Task.

And so I’m going to title this Logo Design, and then I’m going to go here, and I’m going to add a subtask, and then I’m going to paste. And as you can see everything is organized and ready to go, super-efficient. Assign—this is going to go to AB, since he is our designer—and then I’m going to set the due date: we usually set it for about 14 days, so for about two weeks, right?

So today’s the 25th, we’re going to do the 11th. Now usually Rochelle works on these, I just wanted to show you an example. What I also do is add a modifier or a project.

Create an Acronym for Your Clients

So this is a design project. Now what I also do—and this has helped us tremendously knowing which client we’re dealing with—is we create an acronym for each one of our clients. This is something that I learned working full-time at an agency with my mentor, where every client has an acronym.

So for example, let’s say we’re doing this internally for 5four Digital, maybe we’re doing a rebranding. So I’m going to do 54D.

And as you can see, now that’s added. So I always do two project types: do the type of project which can be design, web development, whatever it is. And then the second one is the client acronym, so that way every team member knows what they’re dealing with.

You Can Assign Subtasks to Different People

Now, the great thing about these subtasks is you can assign these to individual people. So, if I go here, "Send the logo design document to designer"—that’s for Che—10 days before the due date, right? I can go here, I can hit this, I can do Che, and then I can say 10 days before—so let’s just say that is the 5th.

Now that’s done, right? So now, she is specifically assigned that task, she’s going to get a notification via email that that’s come in, and then everyone gets notified via Slack. And I’ll jump into that in a little bit. 

So, to recap, I always keep favorites here on the left-hand side for jobs I work on the most, I also keep our most prominent team members here that work on the most jobs. And then I can go into our job description template, which we have dozens and dozens of different jobs, and copy and paste that in.

I recommend what you start doing within your business is start to itemize and list out your process. That way, you can create a job template like this. 

And when you create that, you can offer that to—whenever you’re opening a job, it’s just super easy, you don’t even have to think about it, and you can always perfect this and work on this.

Side note, this is all available in my Marketing Automation Course, which I also include a link to as well. So, if I go back to Asana, I created my job, it has the assignments. 

Use Slack to Communicate and Keep Tabs on Your Team

Now let’s jump into Slack—and again, you guys can sound off below in the comments, ask any questions that you have.

Slack is our team communication platform. So think of it as WhatsApp for business. And so the way this works is you’re able to communicate with your team, and you have specific channels where you can have certain team members in those channels, and you discuss certain subjects.

Break Everything Down According to Projects and Services

Now we have everything broken out based on our services. So we have content marketing, copywriting, design, PPC, project management, all that good stuff. 

So if I go to design, for example, I can see that Che just opened a job for AB, who has a new job today that he needs to work on. Now, when that job is added, all this information is included. So it pulls all this data from Asana, so he can see at a bird’s eye view what jobs he has to work on.

He’s on holiday, and that’s probably why he didn’t respond. So he’ll get on that first thing tomorrow, and he’ll know exactly what he needs to do. Oh, by the way, Asana and Slack are both free, they both have paid versions, but you can get most of your work done absolutely free using these platforms. 

So, back to Slack, what I recommend you do in setting Slack up is create your channel. So, if you’re a social media agency, I will probably create a channel for content marketing, I will create a channel for connectivity issues, I would create a channel for FAQs. Just think about and process in your mind as to what your team will need.

And then organize your team in here. If you have two people doesn’t matter, you can grow and scale all within Slack by connecting Asana and Slack.

Setup Asana-Slack Integration

And so I want to do a quick search, it’s called Asana-Slack Integration. And what that’ll do is it’ll notify you when new jobs are coming in, when changes are made, when everything changes, all within Slack. So that way you can keep in one platform for most of the day and be able to see all the updates that are happening.

So, you can check that out by going to asana.com/apps/slack. 

How We Get Things Done

Lastly, I’m going to walk you through this process of how we get things done. For example, in step one, a client comes in, “Hey, we’re doing a website design, we need to do a website design project.” We say okay, we get approved, we get paid and then we get to work.

So the first thing I’ll do is I’ll send Che a message in #5four-projectmgmt and I’ll say, “Hey, Che, please open a job for XYZ.” She’ll say, “Okay.” She’ll hop into the job description, she will go to #5four-webdev, she’ll copy this, paste it into Asana, she will add the task, she will assign it, she will assign all the subtasks, and then she’ll send an email to the client saying, "Hey, these are the items that we need, and here’s what we’re requesting". 

Once they give us that information, we store that, and we thus expedite the entire onboarding process. So once a client comes on, all I do is notify Che and she does the rest. And then once we’re ready to do our brand kickoff call, and get started and work on the UI, UX, I already have an itemized process of due dates and items already laid out, ready to go.

So to recap—I know this is a long-winded video, I just wanted you guys to get a ton of value. Basically, the way this work is: once we get the job, we get that into Asana, that pushes to Slack so we get notifications, and then we communicate about that job via Slack for the better part of the job. Once it’s completed, we get approval from the client, I meet with the client, and then we close it up and we’re ready to go to the next month or the next project. 

So, guys, I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, sound off below and we’ll talk soon.