Having a remote team allows MeetEdgar to save money on overheads which goes into giving staff some really great perks. Morale is high and everyone values working from home.
MeetEdgar is a social media scheduling tool that automates online marketing and brings new life to old content. Since its launch in 2014, MeetEdgar has helped more than 5000 customers grow their social media reach, and their businesses, by recycling each user’s catalogue of content for repeat exposure.
The SaaS program is the brainchild of social media marketing strategist Laura Roeder, inspired by a manual scheduling system she once used to promote her business LKR Social Media. And although Laura has been coding websites since junior high and running her own marketing company for almost a decade, she admits she has been able to grow MeetEdgar by handing over more responsibility to her team, even taking three months off for maternity leave.
Good communication and trustworthiness are at the foundations
MeetEdgar has been a 100% remote company from day 1 and has no intention of moving into an office. The team is made up of 18 employees throughout the United States and Canada, working remotely in development, marketing, customer support and operations roles.
With the support of the remote distributed team, MeetEdgar reached monthly revenue of over $100,000 within the first 12 months, and recently crossed the $200,000 mark.
As MeetEdgar’s marketing writer Matt Thomas explains, working remotely provides benefits to both the company and the team.
“It definitely cuts down on overheads, which we use to give some really great perks to our team. It’s also great for morale – while you lose out on some elements of office life, I think it’s pretty safe to say that everyone working for MeetEdgar can tell you the value of working from home. An added benefit of being 100% remote is that our talent searches cast the widest net possible. It’s helped us to build a really great and diverse team, even though we’re all scattered across the continent.”
Becoming a part of the MeetEdgar team takes intrinsic motivation and trustworthiness.
“Which are good qualities to look for in any worker,” Matt adds. “We want people who find value in doing good work, and who we can trust to stay on task without supervision.”
Helping the team stay on track is a suite of software including Asana and Trello for project management, Zoom for video chats, Slack for communication, and Google Docs for ‘basically everything else’.
Video chats and face time bring added value
“We have a really active general chat in Slack, and we promote conversations with things like the Question of the Day, Thank-You Thursdays, that kind of thing. We also encourage video chatting, each team has a daily video check-in, and the company meets as a whole once a week, which helps make everyone a little less virtual,” explains Matt.
The company holds retreats twice a year. They admit getting everyone together in one place makes for a lot of fun and allows the team to get a lot done.
As Matt explained, “We’re also experimenting with getting the individual teams together in person – for example, our Customer Service team just spent a few days together in New York and loved it.”
Still, keeping communication natural and flowing online can be a challenge. The Edgar team is spread across several time zones, and Matt admits it can be tricky to find times where everyone’s schedules overlap. “Sometimes a message will get lost in the chatter and ignored for a bit. But in the grand scheme of things, these are very minor problems to have, and well worth it for the benefits of our setup.”
Creating a unique culture by throwing out the old rules
The success of MeetEdgar is largely attributed to the innovative approach Laura Roeder has taken to growing the business; essentially “throwing out the old rules and building a workplace we want to show up at.” This philosophy has allowed MeetEdgar to thrive with a close-knit and highly productive remote team, and remain small, bootstrapped, and profitable.
Watch the following video to hear more about the culture Laura has nourished at MeetEdgar.
To see current and previous job listings for MeetEdgar on our database, visit the MeetEdgar company profile page on Remote Work Hub.
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