posted18/02/10
For any business, especially a web startup, having a sensible and comprehensive Social Media strategy is key to online success. To help you work out a comprehensive strategy, we’ve put together a simple framework with Creately that captures the basic aspects of the Social Media landscape that you’ll need to consider.
Social Media today goes well beyond social networking and blogging. It consists of many categories, but here we have chosen to highlight 10 key aspects which should be your business’ focus as you start on your Social Media journey. I’ve included two tools for each category to help you put your social media strategy into action.
@Induja
posted13/02/10
Hi, it’s been awhile since we added new Templates to Creately - well at least not in this New Year. So we thought we’d hand out some treats just in time for the Lunar New Year (it is the year of the Tiger after all).
Project Management Templates
First off - a couple of new business Templates to help you with your Project Management diagrams. Every Project Manager needs a good Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Project Team Organizational chart - so @Induja put mouse to pad and created these templates to make your Project Management tasks a wee bit easier.
Work Breakdown Structure Template
Project Team Organizational Chart
Matrix Structure Template
We also know many of you today work in cross-functional teams with fairly complex reporting structures - so we’ve added a Matrix Structure Chart to help you and your managers visually capture the who’s who in your project teams.
Web Design Templates
Don’t worry we never forget our Developer and Designer fans either. This week - 3 new web design templates to help to deliver on your project milestone faster.
First off, a new webpage Wireframe Template that uses a wide range of UI elements to demonstrate the extensive shapes and UI elements we support in Creately (including a Video Player, Google Maps Widget and Breadcrumbs). Besides this, we’ve added 2 new templates to quickly create web Sitemaps and web page flows.
Webpage Wireframe Template
Website Page Flow Template
Web Sitemap Template
Check out how easy it is to work on website wireframes and mockups with Creately. As always, you’ll find these new templates right there in the “Create New Diagram” window in Creately - so login to check them out.
We hope you’ll benefit from these templates. If you’ve got suggestions for new Templates - just drop us a note or send us a tweet - We’re always listening.
@Charan
posted08/02/10
As Twitter becomes more popular and pervasive, it has become an essential tool for start-ups to engage with their customers. Here at Creately, we actively engage our users, supporters and even the occasional detractor on Twitter.
Recently, we wanted to understand what our customers say to us on Twitter so @Indu went through our Twitter archives and put together this simple connections map of our @Creately Twitter account to capture some of our more active users and what they’re been talking to us about.
Who’s Talking to Creately & What are they Saying.
As @Indu worked on the diagram, she decided to pull together some recent Tweets about Creately to share with the team and you - our customers.
- b3nw: saved by a javascript app creately - http://creately.com after MS Visio just refused to link things, whew. Best $5 i’ve spent in along time.
- UrbanHaiku: learning how to use creately.com to make a flowchart for my blog. I like it.
- JasonStoddard: Highly recommend @creately & checking out their mindmapping/diagram solution. Hosted. Elegant. Stupid-simple. #FF
- megormi: I made some interesting graphic organizers today using creately.com thanks to the suggestion by@socratech
- nocash: Been looking for something like this for a while: Create and Collaborate on Online Diagrams - Creately -http://creately.com/
- Rohlund: I highly recommend checking out creately.com if Microsoft Visio is not your friend. #ittools
Thank you for all your tweets. We try to respond to each and everyone of them - so if you’ve enjoyed using Creately - tell us - we’re always listening on Twitter.
If you’re not following Creately on Twitter - now’s the time.
posted20/01/10
Last week, the entire Creately Team (except Graham - we missed you mate) gathered in our new office in Colombo for a week long strategy and planning session. We reflected on the past year, our successes and learnings, evaluated the market and primed ourselves for an exciting year ahead in 2010. We talked a bit and drew quite a lot during the week. We’re firm believers of visual thinking and communication and ended up capturing most of our thoughts and findings in mind-maps, concept diagrams and the like. Over the coming weeks, we’ll share some of these diagrams that we feel can help other young startups like ourselves do better in 2010.
Today, I’d like to share a Concept Map that Chandika put together - Critical Success Factors for a Web Startup. It captures key elements of a Startup’s operations that need the Entrepreneur’s attention and how these elements impact your success as a web startup. With so little time and so much to do - anything that helps keep an entrepreneur focused is very useful. So if you’re like me, you’ll want to print it out and pin it someplace you’ll see it everyday. Click image to enlarge 
What else do you think should go into the diagram? Did we miss something crucial that you’d like to add? @charan
posted16/01/10
Setting up your own web product company? Start following the founders of Creately on Twitter to see a mix of interesting and insightful tweets!! And, yeah one such tweet is what made me contribute today! I found an really useful blog post on Mashable - ‘10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs‘. This was tweeted by Creately’s co-founder Charan. This post grabbed my attention cos I wasn’t aware of some of the tools listed here.
To help me remember, I thought it would be worth it all into a diagram that would capture the essence of each of these services visually. I created this diagram on Creately. With Creately’s slick Upload Image feature, I managed to pull through all the icons of the Social Media Tools in the list, added a short description and it was ready to be published.
So here’s a simple chart to help you remember 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs and Startups!
If you enjoyed this - remember to check out how easily you can create visual maps like this with Creately - Online Diagramming.
@induja
