You might be thinking that Notion is one of those tools that can be tough to wrap your head around. Is it a note-taking tool? A task manager? A knowledge base?
I say, it can be all of that — and more.
Notion is also a great tool for businesses because it helps them stay organized and focused on their goals. In addition to being a powerful collaboration tool, Notion has some other features that make it ideal for managing projects and organizing information that you can't find anywhere else.
Here’s a few more reasons why you might want to use Notion for your business
View things in context
You no longer need to keep documents in separate folders, Notion can have your SOPs alongside your task list and meeting notes. That's less shuffling around to search for what you need. Case in point:
You have the ability to embed a different piece of content from outside of Notion, from PDFs, Youtube videos, Spotify playlists, even entire websites
This means you only need to see one page to view everything you need to get a project done. While I'm a big fan of Google docs, Google sheets, etc. You don't have to worry about how information is siloed in Notion.
For example, content planning is important for digital businesses looking to increase their organic reach. If you were to use Notion, you could set it up in a way where tasks could live side-by-side by person, by project, or whichever other way you'd prefer. With other tools, you could only choose one way but with Notion, there's a lot more possibilities out there.
In my case, I’m using Notion to plan and write my future book, and I can collate everything related to that project in a single page — from tasks, resources, research, even email correspondence with my self-publishing mentor.
With Notion’s databases you're able to embed SO many websites and apps inside its pages, giving client updates, context, and deliverables has never been easier (e.g. attaching wireframes, logos, palettes, site content)
Blocks in Notion are easily movable — just drag and drop content blocks around. None of that cut and paste nonsense.
Save money: No need to pay for multiple apps
With Notion, replace the apps you're using for:
- project management
- CRM/sales pipelines
- knowledge base/wikis
- company documentation
- content calendar
- you can even create proposals and websites using Notion
…and other business processes that are taking away your time and money. Although I wouldn't recommend replacing anything without a thorough operations audit, my company uses Notion for 90% of our business functions, and we deliberately designed it that way.
Make it work how you want it with multiple views, sorts, filters that can be personalized
Unlike other project management apps like Asana or ClickUp, Notion does not prescribe you how to do things. That means you can build what you want it to do, depending on what the project asks of you.
Examples:
Lessens meetings - 67% of workers say meetings take up too much time (source). Ever felt that a meeting that could've been an email? Well, that email could've been a Notion page with links to relevant information that's always up to date. Case in point: my team only meets once every 6 weeks. Async-first culture for the win.
Create custom properties for however your company works. Do you use RAG (Red Amber Green), RACI, or Sprint statuses? Whatever framework you're using, you can create custom statuses in Notion — and that's only one use case for creating custom properties.
Filters can be set to optimize workflow (e.g. you can set it so that any task you do under your personal page automatically gets assigned to you)
Notion has a very active community
This is good. It means there's a lot of support you can get (aside from the official one Notion has). Not a lot of SaaS companies can boast having such an active user community like Notion, where you can see multiple templates, tools, etc. being churned out daily.
Here's other reasons why this is good:
There's a lot of free and paid Notion templates available for multiple needs, which allows you to play with different configurations that you like without spending a lot of dough.
There’s always a lot of active users willing to help, whether it's on Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, or even Facebook Groups. Certified Notion Consultants are also available and do this for a living (including yours truly)
Finally, the Notion team is very active when it comes to listening to users. As a Notion ambassador, I can confirm that the Slack community is always active and the team is ready to listen to feedback. Pretty rare for a software company, right?
Connect it to your other tools
The Notion API is finally here, which means you can finally use Notion's powerful database features with your other business tools. Automate business operations to save money and time on menial, repetitive tasks.
Some use cases I've used for my own business:
- If someone books a call with me on Calendly or TidyCal, automatically create a new entry on my Notion Calendar as a meeting.
- Collate all content I make into one master Content database. Tweets, podcast episodes, blogposts, Facebook group posts are all fair game and get automatically entered into the database with the appropriate tags, timestamps, and links.
- When a task gets assigned to me in a client's workspace, duplicate that same task in my own workspace.
- When my podcast editor assigns me something for checking in their Trello account, create a task for me inside of Notion with the Trello task link.
- If I write something inside of Notion and set it to Publish, publish the content in the appropriate social media channel (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) immediately.
... and many more. You can do the same using some no-code automation tools like Zapier, Make, Automate.io, and more. But if you need help setting up automations with Notion, send me a message.
Here’s a tweet of mine, after finishing a working automation that funnels all my tweets (excluding replies) into a master Content database
Have your business stuff live with your personal stuff
Let’s face it, you can’t box your business life out of your personal life completely and vice-versa. I believe we're shuttling in a new era where founders seek a rich, purposeful life that's both materially and emotionally stimulating. In other words, founders would like to be great business leaders and well-rounded people off the clock. The key to this is work-life integration, and Notion's pretty great at that.
With Notion's new one-way relational database sync, you can connect your business stuff with your personal stuff and no one else can see it. For example, if you had a master Tasks database for your business, you can also connect it to your personal journal without your team being privy to what you wrote on your gratitude log for the day.
Create personal dashboards that has personal and business tasks in one glance. No need to switch between different accounts or tools. Personal wiki, habit trackers, gratitude journals, all inside and because of granular permissions, you can set it so only you can see what's inside.
Uncovers operational holes
This is something I don't see being talked about enough. Some people dislike Notion because it requires you to set things up, unlike other the plug and play tools present in the market. They have a point. However, to the right company, Notion is a game-changer when it comes to streamlining operations.
What other tool forces you to think about your business systems so thoroughly and deeply? With Notion, if you don't actively think about how your business works, your resulting workspace could be disorganized at best, and a hot mess of confusion at worst.
I like how Marie Poulin put it in her Notion Mastery course: Notion (or any tool, really) can't replace broken systems.
But don't fret, because using a sandbox-like tool like Notion helps you create an airtight business ecosystem that conforms to your team's culture and needs.
I personally love using Notion to store workflows, documents, and SOPs that helps my business run smooth.
Dashboards
What are dashboards? Dashboards are a collection of Notion content blocks (databases, text, etc.) that help contextualize something. Remember what I said before on how this tool can help you view things in context? Dashboards are great help with that.
Example: HR Department - tracking employee attendance and leaves. While this is entirely possible with a tool like Google Sheets, I personally like using Notion. Not only can I track attendance, but I can connect it to different database, add employee profiles, pictures, existing projects for said team member, tasks that need to be re-assigned if they're not reporting for work that day, etc.
All without leaving the page.
If this were my old tool (Google Sheets), there would be way too many clicks involved, and the overall experience would be frustrating. On the other hand, using Notion has been an absolute delight.
Or what about for your marketing and sales teams? while there are tons of content calendar templates for Google Sheets and the like, you'd need to type it in separate Google Docs and link it to the spreadsheet. With Notion, all it needs is one click and you're good to go. Can you imagine how fast creating blog posts would be?
For my team, we have a Content Hub which houses all the content we want to produce, have produced, and will repurpose.
Another example: a Project Management Dashboard helps you know what projects are active, how to project is progressing, which team members are working on what, and if there’s anything that’s blocked.
Creating dashboards doesn't have to be complicated. Using only a few core databases, you can create a lot of robust dashboards depending on your needs
For example, just by having these 5 core databases: Tasks, Calendar, Projects, People, Resources…
…you can create the following dashboards:
- HR Dashboard
- Project Management Dashboard
- Sales Pipeline
- Personal Team Dashboard
- Company Knowledge Base
I'd argue that the less dashboards there are, the better. Keep it simple and down to the essentials, then use Notion's filter and sort functions in different dashboards so you can see only what you need to see.
We've went through a lot of reasons why you should use Notion for your business, but would you believe that that covers just the tip of what Notion can offer your business. Whether it be content marketing, KPI tracking, team bonding, or work-life integration, there’s a way to make Notion work for your team.
If you need help with that, and are tired of duct-taping different templates you've found, send me a message and I'll gladly be your digital Notion architect-consultant.
