Social Media ‘On The Go’ – A Mobile Office Made Easy (And Cheap!)

As you know I am currently on holiday (and having a lovely time thank you!) but this does not mean that I have to take a whole week off work, nor does it mean that all our clients have to go on hold whilst I am away.  By the wonders of technology I am able to work wherever I am, whether that be in the car, on a beach, walking around a museum or like yesterday, up the top of Blackpool Tower.

I am passionate about what I do and I like to be able to keep the lines of communition between myself and my clients open at all times.  It is important not only from an enquiries point of view for new and potential clients but also for good customer service for my existing clients.  Luckily I am able to do this wherever, whenever because I work away from home using my ‘portable office’.

There are many ‘mobile office’ solutions that allow you to ‘remotely access’ your home PC or allow you to ‘create a mobile desktop’ on the web, but these normally cost a monthly or annual fee.

I do not use any of these but I am still able to work efficiently and easily from my hotel room or from the car.

Luckily I have a wonderful mobile, it does pretty much everything apart from make the breakfast in the morning, and guess what it’s NOT an iPhone  I have the Nokia 5800 which does pretty much everything the iPhone (but at half the price) can do which means that I can use it like a PDA.  Yesterday whilst 412ft up the top of Blackpool Tower, I emailed various people, tweeted and edited a web page.  Yes I got some very odd looks, but I was able to keep up with events within my work life as they happened.  I have various applications installed that allow me to run my very own portable office ‘on the go’ including probably my most used application Gravity.

Gravity is an amazing little application that makes the view of Twitter better than Twitter itself.  The layout is great and very easy to read, the colours are calm and all the information you need is separated into windows which you can scroll across.  If you use TweetDeck or HootSuite it is very similar to this but on your phone.  The application running is very smooth and also helps to keep your bandwidth down if you are using mobile internet access.

I also use mobile versions of Facebook, LinkedIn, Email and more, not to mention podcasting applications and the ability to post a new blog post here through my phone.

My poor laptop (affectionately known as ‘Lappy’) is old.  It’s quite a basic model and has been bashed about, not to mention well used! But it does everything I need it too.  I am able to use all the software I need such as email, design and graphics software, laptops these days do not have to be expensive, if you can get on to the internet then most of the applications or software you need can be found by using ‘web versions.  I use my laptop in my hotel room in the evenings.  We always try to stay in a hotel that has WiFi access, this makes working in the evenings quicker than running the laptop web access through my mobile, which I admit I have done a few times in a tent!

That’s it, 2 things.  That’s all I need.  People are always amazed that I work on my holidays and when I say I’m taking everything I need, I normally joke that I am taking more office equipment than clothes, but in reality I can run my entire company with 2 pieces of hardware, both of which are portable.    I purposely streamlined the way I worked a few years ago, so that everything could  be run if needed on just a laptop and a mobile.  Just in case we had a power cut or couldn’t get home for whatever reason I knew that I could still keep my business running with these two options.  So I started using ‘web versions’ of applications on a regular basis and used my mobile’s applications on a day to day basis. Now, when I go on holiday, everything I need is already set up, ready and waiting for me.  My very own personal portable office, very cheaply put together, all the social media I need, anytime, anywhere, anyplace.