Scheduling meetings can be a real time-sink

If you run a small business, are you your own admin support? I sure am! Even when I was in the corporate world, I did much of this work myself, especially coordinating and scheduling meetings and conference calls.

Once you have more than three people to gather for a call or meeting, email is no longer an efficient tool. Instead of saving time, you’re wasting time – your own and that of everybody else. If you send email to poll your group on possible dates and times, you end up sending and receiving an endless string of messages. Ugh!

Thank the admin gods for a nifty (and free!) online app from the folks at Doodle. Go to www.doodle.com and follow the simple instructions for polling your group for good days/times to meet. The set up is super fast and easy. Once you’ve done that, you receive two emails from Doodle.

One message includes the link for the poll. Simply insert that into an email to your group. It will lead them to the online poll where they check the days/times that work for them.

The second message includes a link for you, the administrator. This allows you to see, in real time, the responses. Once you know which days/times have the best response, you can easily schedule the meeting and send a note to your group.

That’s it! One email to poll the group. A second to inform them of the meeting date and time. So simple.

Running a successful small business requires you to make the most efficient use of your time. This free application does just that. Now go! Schedule your next big meeting. And prosper!