Way back in 2014, we first tried our hand at launching on Product Hunt with an early version of Process Street. It got featured, but that was a different time; when Product Hunt’s staff manually selected each product feature (these days Product Hunt claims that an automated algorithm decides).

It was hunted (Product Hunt lingo for “promoted”) by Audrey Melnik of Funnel Ventures, didn’t even have a maker (another Product Hunt termin for the creators of a product), yet still found its way to the front page of Product Hunt.

Six years, a couple of relaunches, and a $12 million Series A on from that humble effort, Process Street has changed a fair bit. We’ve shipped over 30 products on Product Hunt; from podcasts, new Process Street feature launches, to whole product launches, to eBooks.

Some of them were great successes, with multiple top 4 spots and a whole bunch of front-page features. Others weren’t so great; some garnered next to no traction and were essentially dead-on-arrival.

The point of this article is to impart some of the lessons we’ve learned, from common myths and misconceptions, to what worked well for us (and what didn’t work so well).

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ll be covering:

• Why you should care about Product Hunt
• Common misconceptions about Product Hunt launches
• How to prepare for a Product Hunt launch (free checklist)
• Key takeaways: How to have a successful Product Hunt launch

Let’s start with the basics, which often get taken for granted when it comes to deciding whether or not to launch on Product Hunt.
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I have a riddle for you:

What has four sides, often goes missing, comes from trees, and can be expensive to reproduce?

I’ll give you a hint.

It wastes up to 40% of on-the-job time, and about $120 billion per year in the US alone.

Need another?

Around 7.5% of them will be lost or misplaced each year (about one lost every 12 seconds), and for each that gets lost you’re looking at a loss of between $350 to $700 in employee time.

Did you get it yet?

Condescending sarcasm aside, I am of course talking about paper forms. But this article isn’t about paper forms, per se; it’s about how you can get rid of paper forms in your business with form automation software.

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This is a guest post from Katie Stearns, PR and outreach manager at BeeBole Timesheet. She’s a digital marketer who loves monitoring management and leadership trends to create more valuable B2B content for managers. Katie is particularly interested in helping the world become a more productive place.

For many HR professionals and company executives, 2020 has turned out to be rather stressful (to say the least). Many of us started off the year with a twinkle of hope in our eyes, but the current pandemic has proven to be more challenging than we imagined.

For many companies, switching to remote work was required, but they never considered if remote work was right for their teams. As company executives decide whether they want to return to the office or continue to work from home and move their operations online, employers are likely asking many questions.

If you and your company are considering a shift to remote work, here are some tips to help you get started on your journey. In this Process Street post, we’ll be covering:

• What is remote work?
• 15 questions to ask yourself before the work from home transition
• Is the work from home transition right for your team?

Let’s jump right in!
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This is a guest post by Victor Eduoh, a SaaS content strategy consultant and copywriter. He helps early- and growth-stage SaaS companies drive growth, using the SaaS content topic clusters strategy and Product-Led Storytelling, two concepts he developed.

“And, after all, winning business is what writing proposals is all about.” Tom Sant, in his bestselling book, Persuasive Business Proposals, continued:

“Although a great proposal by itself seldom wins a deal, a bad proposal will definitely lose one.“

Tom is right.

Writing a consulting proposal isn’t a silver bullet to land your next client. But fail to craft an excellent, professional one and you won’t close any deal.

Since you found your way to this post, you don’t want that, right? We don’t want it either.

So, in this Process Street article, you’ll find ten practical steps to make your next consulting proposal excellent (i.e., worthy of closing deals).

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is a consulting proposal?
• How do I write a consulting proposal?
• What should you include in a consulting proposal?
• How do you format a consulting proposal?
• My proposal winning superpowers

Sound good? Read on for a free checklist to get started.
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The year is 2025. Over 465 exabytes of new data is generated each day. The global cybersecurity market is worth $241 billion. Your managed services provider is still using a process document dated March 2019, and you’re starting to regret not having gone with that ISO 27001 certified provider.

Hell, at this point you’re starting to think even an in-house ISMS (Information Security Management System) implementation would have been a better option.

But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s return to the present. Is ISO 27001 all it’s cracked up to be? Whatever your stance on ISO, it’s undeniable that many companies see ISO 27001 as a badge of prestige, and using ISO 27001 to implement (and potentially certify) your ISMS may well be a good business decision for you.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the foremost standard for information security management – ISO 27001:2013, and investigate some best practices for implementing and auditing your own ISMS.

Here is a summary of what we’ll cover in this Process Street article:

• ISO 27001: The basics & why standards are important
• Who needs ISO 27001?
• How to implement ISO 27001
• Free ISO 27001 checklist
• How to get ISO 27001 certified
• Integrating your ISMS with other ISO standards

If you just want the free checklist for implementing and auditing your ISMS, you can grab that here. Otherwise, read on!
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This is a guest post from Alissa Zucker, marketing manager and writer at Mcessay. You can find her reading classical philosophy and writing short fiction in her spare time.

It’s predicted that by the end of 2020, businesses will have spent ~$110 billion on digital advertising alone in the US. To put that into context, that’s more money spent on digital advertising than what would be spent on both television and print ads combined.

This just goes to show the importance of digital advertising in the modern marketing communication mix.

It is essential that every business know how to effectively market their products and services in order to not only survive, but to grow and prosper in a competitive global market.

It’s not uncommon when questioned about marketing, that a business owner will simply produce a business card, a brochure stitched together using a Microsoft Office template, or a barely functional website with little to no traffic.

In this Process Street post, I want to provide you with an overview of everything you need to know about the marketing communication mix, including:

• The updated marketing mix: The 7 Ps of marketing
• What exactly is the marketing communication mix?
• Twelve factors of the marketing communication mix
• How to make the most of the marketing communication mix

Before diving into the specifics of the marketing communication mix, let’s first discuss the 7Ps of marketing.
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Quick! You have an exam in a week. What’s your study plan?

Will you spend hours reading the material? Take notes? Use flashcards? Cram it all in the night before?

Most people in this situation wouldn’t think very far ahead when deliberating on how to study. They’d just wing it, most likely pull an all-nighter the night before, and hope for the best when the time comes for them to take the exam.

The problem with this is that it’s lazy. And lazy studying only gets you mediocre results (at best).

But this doesn’t mean spending long, grueling hours studying every day is the way to go. In fact, research shows that students that are consistently successful actually spend less time studying than their peers; they just do it more effectively.

So, what should you do then?

In this Process Street article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to study effectively and efficiently.

We’ll be covering:

• What is the best way to study?
• Study techniques that actually work
• How to properly use a study guide and get the most out of it
• 3 crucial benefits of using a study guide
• Using a study guide template
• Using Process Street for improving study skills & getting organized
• Additional productivity and time-management resources

First off, if you’re just here to grab our Study Guide Template, here it is below:

Study Guide Template

Alright, let’s get started with the basics!

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It’s all too common to find yourself wading through your organization’s shared folders in search of the file you’ve been asked to review:

• PROJECT-PROPOSAL-NEW-v5.doc
• Project_proposal_2020_final+edits.doc
• THIS_is_the_final_proposal_(old-version).PDF

Why does this happen? Why can’t everyone just use proper file naming conventions? The reasons can be lack of proper internal policy or procedure for naming and organizing files, lack of any consideration for folder or information architecture, and just plain carelessness.

With a small amount of effort, you can establish proper file naming conventions and avoid this kind of document spaghetti. The more organized you can be with your internal information, the more efficient and effective you can be in your business goals.

Just imagine – seeing neat, intuitively named folders, knowing which folders contain the documents you’re looking for, and – take a seat – having confidence that the file you’re about to click on will be what you expect it to be.

In this Process Street article, we’ll cover:

 
Let’s go!
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This is a guest post from Julia Samoilenko, a marketing specialist who writes about digital marketing trends and strategies for the Chanty blog. This powerful and free Slack alternative is aimed to increase team productivity and improve communication at work. Feel free to connect with Julia on LinkedIn.

Many of us like the idea of working remotely (especially if we have never experienced it). Out of bed and —Voila!— you are ready for work. No commuting, no noisy colleagues. Top level of independence and flexibility.

But what is remote work really like in practice? One day here at Chanty we had to answer this question and discovered what new benefits and challenges teams face when transitioning to remote-only mode.

Spoiler: there were many productivity pitfalls on the road to beneficial collaboration. It turns out that being an efficient remote worker is quite challenging. And that it’s twice as tough to manage a high-performing virtual team.

If you want to adapt to remote working best practices and maximize the benefits, then you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to reveal the ugly truth and teach you everything we’ve learned about a successful transition to remote work. After reading our ‘confession’, you’ll understand the challenges and methods on how to overcome them.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering:

• How to successfully transition to remote work
• Our key takeaways for remote work transition
• Additional self-management and productivity resources

Let’s dive right in!
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There’s nothing more frustrating to a project manager than witnessing the slow, painful death of a healthy project to the beast known as scope creep. When last minute changes transform their straightforward, A-to-B project plan into a sprawling mess of up-ended sprint plans and gold-plated feature requests, branching out in all directions with no concern for time or resources.

In one extreme example, the head contractor for the extension of a city library ended up actually suing their client in a scope-creep induced rage, claiming that their almost 55-week delay was a direct result of the large number of last minute changes.

In order for a project to be successfully completed on time, the project manager and their team need to agree on a clearly defined project scope before getting started.

However, life isn’t so straight forward and changes to the project will inevitably need to happen.

But additional problems can arise if the changes aren’t dealt with properly.

Scope creep can quietly sneak its way into your project and set your team down an unproductive and self-destructive path, wasting your company’s resources, missing deadlines, weakening team communication and, ultimately, ruining any chance of your project’s success.

So what can you do to avoid this fate, and overcome scope creep once and for all?

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know scope creep–from what (and who) causes it, to how to manage it, even in an agile environment where change is embraced.

We’ll be covering:

• What is scope creep?
• How different stakeholders can contribute to scope creep
• What are some common causes of scope creep?
• Most effective ways to manage scope creep
• What we can learn from Agile to prevent scope creep?
• Using Process Street to avoid scope creep
• Additional project management resources

If, however, you’re struggling with planning your own projects and want a quick solution, grab our free Project Request Form Template below!

So, let’s get started with the basics!

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