198. A Runthrough of the 2021 Everything Coworking Tech and Tools Guide
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
TRANSCRIPTION
198. A Runthrough of the 2021 Everything Coworking Tech and Tools Guide
00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo, Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is your host. Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. I'm going to walk through our 2021 version of our coworking tech and tools guide.
00:00:42 So I think this is the fourth year we've done this guide. So the purpose of the guide is really to give you a curated list of the common tech and tools and service providers that are used by coworking spaces. So we don't evaluate any of the software we share with you what co-working space operators are using so that you kind of have a quick guide to the field of play so that you can do your own research and make your own choices.
00:01:14 But you can sort of at a glance, go through each category of tech or tool or service provider and quickly see, okay, here are the general options. Do your research make a choice and for anybody who's already operating, it's great to kind of scan through and see, okay, here's what others are using. And I haven't even gotten into this category.
00:01:38 So I might want to consider what I can do here. I'll give you an example. One of our questions to our survey to ask folks what they're using is what sensors do you use to get utilization data? We had two responses with a tech or a tool that they use, and then everyone else said, I don't use one yet. So interesting.
00:01:59 You know, opportunity may not be relevant to you, but that was one that we saw that a lot of folks didn't have our response for. So we get our Results, our list from our audience. So from you, so hopefully many of you participated and if you didn't, then we would love for you to participate next year. So these are the results of the survey that we sent out.
00:02:23 And then we also integrate, if there are topics we want to cover that weren't in the survey information from my students, my flight group program, my coworking startup school group, our community manager university. So, you know, a couple of highlights I wanted to walk through before we start a few highlights that I think are important to note around the topic of tech and tools for coworking spaces for 2021.
00:02:49 So in general, the member experience and leveraging technology to make that experience simpler and safer, you know, is a big theme for 21 post. COVID a few things here based on trends that we're seeing one digital door access. You know, if we're still touching doors, then, well, you may have people touching doors, but you want people to be able to get in the door.
00:03:13 If you can use technology that allows them to not touch the door. Even better. Many of us may not be in control of our, you know, the access doors to the actual building, maybe just to our suite, but there is technology that allows you let the user open the door only with the phone, no touch, but at a minimum digital door access.
00:03:33 So we'll walk through who the major providers are for that and who folks are using and then meeting rooms, zoom, you know, the ability to zoom in particular. So we've seen it in huge increase in demand for private space, private offices and rooms for doing zoom calls. And that's probably not going to change, right? That's one of the trends we're seeing going forward is that folks don't need to be in the headquarters every day,
00:04:00 but they're still going to be on a lot of zoom calls and they want a private space to do that. We don't want lots of zoomers in our open space. It's really distracting. So making it super, super easy for your members to book meeting rooms or to book shared offices. That's another big trend we've seen is office sharing. So not a day office,
00:04:22 but the ability to buy buckets of hours for office use, you know, four hours a week, et cetera. So that when, you know, you have those important zoom calls or that podcast or record or whatever it is, you have a place you can do that apps that help you to do that might be part of your member management program platform,
00:04:40 or it might be separate technology, but make sure that you're making it super simple and technology enabled for your members to book meeting rooms and then getting found. So lots of folks out there who were not before coworking space users, who now will be right. So they work remotely or they've started their own thing, a lot of shift in how people are working and where they're working and their ability to choose where they're working.
00:05:10 So this may not be, you know, exactly the tech that you're thinking of, but I like to consider it sort of a tool in coworking. You need to be really easy to find. And if your competition is easier to find than they're going to do wear them first, right? And once they find you make it really easy for them to book a tour,
00:05:30 I still see so many websites that don't have an automated tour booking feature. And that's one of the first things I recommend because you will lose leads. I've talked about this on recent podcasts, around the user experience in your website, you will lose leads if you don't use a tour booking app. And most of them are super easy to implement. You can make it a pop-up,
00:05:52 it doesn't have to get embedded on your website. It can be embedded on your website. It can tie your space management platform through Zapier. So it's really simple to get added. So if you haven't added it, that's a technology that you need to add or an app that you need to add really soon. So Google my business, SEO lead gen partners using something like a Calendly or acuity for two or booking.
00:06:16 So we'll go through those categories in detail. And then the fourth bucket that I think is important this year is building your virtual office business. So I put lead gen partners down as a tool, right? They're not really well. They use lots of technology. They made me not feel like technology to us, but on their end they're using a lot of technology,
00:06:36 but I called them maybe a tool. So you want to leverage lead gen partners to build your virtual office business. The demand for virtual office virtual mail has really accelerated. And so it's a way to add an additional revenue stream to your business. And it's going to be a lot harder to do on your own unless you're in a unique market, but for most of you list with the lead gen partners and we'll go through the list of them,
00:07:03 you know, I'll give you an example. I was looking for a business address recently in my area, and I want it to be at a co-working space. And I went on the anytime mailbox site, and they're an example of a lead gen partner. And there were no coworking spaces. I had to go into San Francisco to find one, and I don't want to go into the city because I'm not going to park and pick up my mail.
00:07:28 It needed to be closer to where I live, which is more suburban, unfortunately, but I couldn't find any coworking spaces. They were all male locations and I don't want a male location to be my address. I want a coworking space to be my address. So I know lots of you are still not leveraging your lead gen partners. So we're going to walk through those categories.
00:07:48 So we divide these into buckets and I'm not going to list all the buckets, but you should download the guide, go to everything co-working dot com forward slash tech and tools 2021, and get your own copy so that you can kind of flip through and see how this is organized. But the major buckets are marketing member management, other space, tech needs,
00:08:10 internet tech, general business tools and service providers. Why don't we dive in? We're going to talk about marketing first. Since marketing is critical, you're going to use several different types of tools for your space marketing website platform, website, hosting online tour, booking, CRM, email marketing, social media, Google my business listing. I'm not going to run through every one of these because I think that'll get a little bit laborious.
00:08:37 So download the guide so you can scan through what's relevant to you. I will just kind of mention some highlights as I go through and not dive into every, every single bucket website platform. Most of you are on WordPress who responded to the survey and then Wix was a really common platform. And then Squarespace, one thing I'll note about Wix is that I think it's a little bit under loved.
00:09:02 So if you're creating a new website or updating, I think we are about to get into a time where templates are more and more compelling to folks because how many custom things do we really need to do with our website? Right? If we have a member login, it's probably tied to our space management platform, right? We're not creating all of that functionality on our own website.
00:09:26 So our websites are pretty simple from a functionality standpoint. And I also think it's very common when you build your site, you're going to go through some significant iterations of that while you're, you know, during your, during your first year, second year. So creating something that you can edit and update on your own really easily is compelling. I love Wix for that.
00:09:51 They have a co-working template that is like probably what 80% of you need. And it's really inexpensive. It's very easy to get started with it. And then it's a low monthly fee to use their hosting system. So don't underestimate that. And if you are on WordPress and it's a real pain, and it's hard for you to update, I would consider maybe switching.
00:10:14 I'm a Squarespace user. And I'm about to flip my platform as well. Not to any of these. I will provide an update once I've flipped it and let you know how it goes, but it is a template based system that sits on a WordPress back end. So I'm pretty excited about that website hosting. I'm not going to go into make sure you have someone really reliable online tour book getting the booking.
00:10:39 So I won't belabor this because I have talked about this in recent podcasts. Go back to my user experience website episode a few episodes ago, if you haven't listened to it yet, and you're just jumping into this one, but it's super critical to make it really easy for somebody to use a contact us form. I've shared, like I really hate interacting with businesses that I can't schedule online.
00:11:02 My accountant, you know, I'm playing email tag of my accountant to get my taxes reviewed. Why, why, why, why do I have to do that? Why doesn't everybody use Calendly acuity or schedule once are the top three that are used by our survey respondents. And that's consistent with what I see operators doing. I need to make an appointment for my dog to get groomed.
00:11:26 Why can I not do that online? I can do it with my hair stylist, and I should be able to do that. If I want to tour a coworking space, your members are busy. Professionals do not make them play email tag with you. I find it somewhat offensive. I actually responded to my accountant. He it's really difficult to get on his schedule.
00:11:45 And so I responded back and I said, Hey, you know, a lot of folks use this app called Calendly. It would make your life easier. And our lives a lot easier. You should look at it. And he did not actually respond. And thank me for suggestions, but I think everybody should make everybody's lives easier. Let us do automated booking CRM.
00:12:05 The thing that I would highlight here, a couple of things. So lots of coworking spaces that don't use a CRM. And I would argue that that is really a step towards professionalizing, your business that you should commit to, because if you're not, then you're probably losing leads. Unless you have a really good community manager, who's rocking some Excel sheets and keeping track of everything,
00:12:30 but your space management platform really handles existing members, right? So officer and D proximity, a census, all those census actually has an integrated CRM. So probably a bad example, but they may nexus. They may have basic CRMs, but they're probably not great. And so mostly they're managing existing members, right? You're billing, you're managing your capacity,
00:12:55 your meeting rooms, all that stuff through your space management platform, you need a separate CRM. Interestingly, the top used CRM from our respondents. It's HubSpot, not a lot of my students use HubSpot. So I'm assuming this is the free version because the paid version gets expensive really quickly and HubSpot can get kind of complicated. That's the most common feedback I hear from folks is that it has a lot of bells and whistles,
00:13:22 and it can be hard to do kind of basic things with HubSpot, but it was by far the most used platform and then active campaign was next. A lot of my students use that and pipe drive, which also a lot of my students use. So the thing I would note about CRMs is that a lot of different suggestions. So nutshell Salesforce, Zoho copper,
00:13:48 next to this. And again, I would argue next. It is probably doesn't really have a robust CRM. A lot of folks were listing their website, which does not count MailChimp, not really a CRM. You want a system that helps you track leads and integrates with your email system and is really easy basically for your team to process leads and make sure they're doing all the,
00:14:10 to do's. They need to do leads. Aren't getting lost leads. Aren't sitting for weeks without a response or a follow-up. So a 2021 goal would be to get up and moving on a CRM for your business. If you don't have one already email marketing tools, HubSpot and active campaign we're in the top three, MailChimp was number one. The nice thing about HubSpot and active campaign is that they are both an email service provider,
00:14:35 a high quality one, as well as a CRM. So those are combo tools that you can use. Social media, nothing super exciting. There, I will say a couple of things about social media. So I am, I'm an advocate of being careful about spending too much time on organic social media, 10% of your followers to your organic posts. So we need to be really efficient with that content it's important and it can generate leads,
00:15:02 but your active searchers are on Google. The active searchers are not on Facebook or AF or Instagram. You are sort of interrupting them and trying to build awareness and build your brand and be social on your social platforms, but be careful how much time you spend. So I think one of the most important tools you can get is a scheduler so that your team,
00:15:23 you or your team can block out, you know, an hour or two a week and schedule everything out and then set it and forget it and move on to, you know, your Google, my business listing, which is what's going to actually drive your leads. HootSweet later and buffer were the top three schedulers that came up from our survey based management tools.
00:15:42 I think that I have the list pretty updated and comprehensive lots of new players, you know, coming to the table. And then lots of folks who have been in the space for a long time, continuing to evolve our top responses from this audience where officer and D nexus and proximity, a couple of things. I would note here, there are some new players.
00:16:05 Archie comes to mind. I've heard a lot about Archie recently. They're in Montreal. One of the decisions you want to, if one of the aspects of making this decision is where is the company located? And where's their customer service located. So if you are in the U S and you're choosing a UK based provider, for example, you want to get a sense as to how customer service is going to work with time zone differences,
00:16:31 lots of options to consider here. The other thing I would say, if you are new, or if you feel like you are unhappy with your existing provider, know that none of them are perfect. And so I would only switch if there is a specific functionality that he can't get out of your own, that you need to get out of another one,
00:16:53 because switching is a real challenge, right? You know, move all the credit card payment information, and it is not a minor project to set up a new system. So make sure you have a really clear functionality, reason for making a move. And if you're just starting out, I always recommend pick three. That makes sense for your time zone,
00:17:14 do demos and pick one and move on. And don't second. Guess it all the time, because none of them are perfect and they're all evolving. You know, coworking is still new. And so all the software is fairly new. I always say, I sound like a broken record on this one, probably. But when I started, there were very,
00:17:32 very few options that were sort of relevant to co-working spaces. This was in 2012. So I started with spreadsheets and then Sam Rosen at the time had, I think it was desk time, which I think that's what he called the app. He had one that I flipped to all of the software is reasonably new and it's evolving. So just know that all of the teams are,
00:17:57 you know, investing in updates and constant updates. Really that's one of the other questions I guess I would ask is, you know, what does their product roadmap look like? All right. Conference room tech. I talked about that in the intro, make sure that you're using a tool. You know, your space management platform probably has an app that allows your members to book a meeting room office R and D.
00:18:23 Does it proximity, optics, make jelly switch, which is now open source. Make sure that is really easy for your members to book meeting rooms. And I won't go through the details, but there is a list in here. Again, you can download this whole guide@everythingcoworking.com forward slash tech and tools. 2021 of meeting room tech, kind of the basics.
00:18:48 One N one thing I want to talk about is, is sort of video conference support. I worry that people tend to go overboard on this and assume that all the work from home folks are going to come in and expect very high tech setups. I would say, make sure you're validating that need before you invest. There are some good basic cameras you can use.
00:19:12 There are folks who have invested and have some pretty cool setups, make sure that you're going to get an ROI for that from your members that they need it. That they'll use it. If you have folks who are just booking meeting rooms to go sit on a solo zoom call, you don't need fancy technology for that, right? But if you can offer them a nice camera,
00:19:33 so they don't have to bring their own. There's another new tool that one of my flight group members recommended called owl. So it helps to transmit sort of group video from a room without it doesn't do sort of the zoom room thing, but it helps you feel like you're in the room. So check that out. It's like the bird owl and zoom rooms are actually pretty expensive to outfit an actual zoom room.
00:19:59 We'll put an individual panel for each person up on the screen so that everybody can participate, but you have to re sound all the things you have to have a good sound system to manage that. Be careful before over-investing in conference room tech, but take a look at some of the options in the guide entry access control. Top three Results were Casey, Bravo,
00:20:21 Salto, clay, and proximity. I lied. There were four. We had some ties in there. So you already cube also provides its own door access. And open path is another provider that is fairly new to the coworking industry. But I hear that name come up quite a bit as a good option. Good and affordable option. Let's see, we have a section on member communication tools.
00:20:47 I'm going to let you go through that on your own access access points really quickly. I will just note from our survey. Ubiquity was by far, the most used from our respondents Muraki was next and then ruckus had a few. So ubiquity and Muraki were the clear winners. Again, space utilization tools are two respondents that are using them use Chargify and digital spaces.
00:21:17 And we didn't have, and then everybody else isn't using one yet. So I think that's an interesting one that some of our enterprise clients may be looking for data on. And it might be interesting in terms of density and that kind of thing to be, to be tracking. We have an accounting section, team communication and project management. Okay. Lead gen partners.
00:21:40 Let's talk about this section because I feel like I talk about it a lot, and yet it's still sort of hard for people to get their wrap their head around using lead gen partners. If you're doing all of your marketing on your own then, but it's probably not the most efficient spend. It depends on the market that you're in, but folks like,
00:22:02 you know, so lead gen partners are doing marketing on your behalf because they want to sell meeting rooms, virtual mail or offices, and co-working memberships. So examples for virtual office conference room and memberships would be liquid space. Co-worker dot com desk pass cloud VO, DaVinci virtual office solutions, instant office preferred office network upsweep office freedom, peer space. There are a bunch of them.
00:22:32 Our top responses were liquid space co-worker and desk pass. Particularly for things like meeting rooms. You know, it's very market dependent on how many leads you're going to get from a lead gen provider. If you're in a major market, then you're going to do better with the lead gen providers. But if you open an incognito screen and you Google, you know,
00:22:55 virtual office, Chicago, DaVinci, who else is going to come up first, lots of folks are going to come up before you come up because they are paying Google for ads. And so they're going to be in the top section of the search engine results, and you will be somewhere down the screen. And so they're going to get the leads before you do it's their business,
00:23:22 right? They don't have physical space. They're buying leads to give to you. You pay them, you know, a marketing fee for that, but it's really efficient to use them. You can absolutely run your own ads depending on what market you're in. You can use SEO, you can write blog posts and do things like that to help build your own business organically so that you're not paying those fees.
00:23:48 But I would argue if they're filling your meeting rooms more quickly than you are, and then certainly your virtual office and digital mail, then it's worth it. It's worth using them digital mail and virtual offices. I think, I mean, almost everybody should be using OB-GYN partner because the Legion partners really cover most markets. I have members who are in quite small markets and they get leads from the lead gen partners.
00:24:15 So our top results from our survey were anytime mailbox, DaVinci, virtual office solutions and sphere mail, and cloud VO. And I postal are also male providers. There are a few others as well that we'll add to the list like Opus. And again, if you do a Google search in most markets, they're going to come up first and they're going to get the customer before you are.
00:24:39 You may get some of those clicks, but they're going to get more of them. And so they'll send you the lead from somebody who is, or actually the customer who wants an, a virtual office or digital mail account with your space. And it's pretty plug and play. There's not much for you to do except service that mail account, take their mail,
00:25:00 scan the mail, notify them of the mail, et cetera. Yes, you are going to pay them a marketing fee. But if you do the math, if you are going to do your own marketing, you can only get one lead a month from your own marketing. And yet you listed the lead gen partners and you get, you know, five to 10 leads a month.
00:25:21 Then the marketing fee pays for itself very quickly. And you're going to build your mail business and your virtual office business over time and your meeting room business over time with the help of these marketing partners, you can list with all of them, if you would like, sorry, certainly for the conference room and memberships listings, you should just list them on all of them.
00:25:44 It cannot hurt. That's an important section to review automated receptionists. And then a couple of new sections. We added coworking space, service providers. So marketing services, content marketing services, marketing advisory, I should say for the first one search engine optimization, search engine marketing, real estate design. I put all of those in there with our recommendations. Many of whom have been on the podcast,
00:26:12 Kevin Whelan. I'm a new one who I hope is going to be on the podcast. Soon. Taylor Mason, Ruben Lau was on recently for SEO and SEM, Casey Godwin with flux based advisors, Mar Houser, workplace studio, Jerome chain code of spaces, and then a list of coworking education resources, which are everything. Co-working resources, creative coworking partnerships,
00:26:34 which is a new course that we just ran a beta group through, which was really, really successful. How to set up your virtual mail program if somebody doesn't have a program yet, and you want step-by-step support on that, the coworking startup school, if you're starting a space coworking mentorship program, if you have a space and want to Uplevel your marketing and your processes,
00:26:56 and then community manager university, if you want to train and develop over time, your community manager. So again, lots of details that I didn't run through over audio here, but you can download the guide@everythingcoworking.com forward slash tech and tools 2021. Thanks for joining me. And hopefully you'll participate in our survey next year. If we've missed something, if you get the guide and you think we've missed something,
00:27:23 send us an email because we're always taking notes and, you know, updating the guide for the next year. So we certainly want to hear your input. Something that you're using, that's working for you, that we have missed. Please send us a note and let us know. And our contact info is in the guide as well. So until next week.
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