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Common mistakes with online events and how to fix them

Many of our interactions have moved online. We have to schedule our meetings online and have online events. 

And I see a lot of things that we can do better! 

1. Online is not the same as offline but with a computer

Offline appointments require a higher commitment. You have to go to the meeting place, and you have to face the people at the event. How you dress, how you take care of your hygiene, and how well you have prepared to be here-now will be very obvious. 

The online environment allows people to hide. They may even forget about the event while they do something else at the computer. Unlike a real-life event, there is no pre-event time when people get together in the same place to get ready, decide where they will sit, striking up conversations. 

As an event organized and participant, you should be mindful of these differences. 

2. Send a clear announcement

I often see event invitations where the date and time are buried somewhere at the end of the email. And the timezone is not very clear either. 

If you want to increase the attendance numbers, ensure that the vital information is communicated first and in a crystal clear way!

Use a date format that is easy to understand for all the participants, even if they are from different countries. “05/04” could be the 4th of May or the 5th of April, depending on where you are from. Use long-format instead and say Tuesday, 5th of April, 2021. 

For the event time, use the AM/PM format and always add your time zone. 

Do not use relative dates. Don’t say: “See you tomorrow at 2!” – depending on when the user is reading that email, both “tomorrow” and “2” can mean wildly different things.

If your audience is across multiple time zones, don’t do the math by hand. Use a service like timeanddate.com event announcer to create a link that will show the event’s time in the user’s local time! No more math, no more confusion.

Be mindful of daylight savings. Not everyone makes the switch simultaneously, and you risk having your participants miss the meeting. Add a special warning to your email if you’re close to a time where daylight savings may be an issue. Also, use the service above to convert the time correctly for your users. 

3. Followup with reminders

Since online events do not require travel, it is very easy for people to miss them. 

Everyone would know how to manage their calendar and get reminders as needed in an ideal world, but we don’t live in that world. 

To make sure people don’t miss the event, send two reminders: twenty-four hours before the event and 1 hour before the event. The very last reminder should have clear instructions on where to click to access the event. 

4. Use a headset

As an event organizer, use a headset and instruct your participants to have one as well. It will make for a much more clear sound and better experience for everyone involved.

5. Mind your energy and your space

While it’s easy to jump into an online event, it will show if you take some time to prepare for it. Dress appropriately. Stretch for a bit to feel open and relaxed. Do your best to be rested. Have enough clean air in the room. 

Also, prepare your space. Since you don’t have to travel, it may be easy to forget this step. But it helps you to get into an “event energy” if you clean up your desk, have pen and paper ready, and use good lighting (do not have your back to a light source).

6. Record the event

Record the event and send the recording to your participants. It allows your participants to review the information. And it’s a nice thing to do for those who could not make it live.

If you follow these tips, the event’s energy will be more vibrant, and everyone will feel it. The fact that you are making special preparations will make it special. 

Make your next event awesome!

Schedule Meetings and Appointments More effectively.

If you are looking to spend less time booking sessions with your clients or choosing the best time to meet, then you might want to use these tools: Calendly and Doodle.

Use Doodle to select the best time.

With Doodle, you can create a poll with times when you are available, and you can share that with the other participants, so you quickly agree on what is the best time. 

The advantages of using a tool like this are avoiding emailing each other back and forth to figure out your availability and automatic time zone detection, so everyone knows the correct time every time!

Use Calendly for session scheduling. 

With Calendly, things are a bit different. You configure what kinds of sessions you are offering (30 minutes, 1 hour, etc.), the available time slots, and then send that to your customers, who will pick the right time for them. 

Using Calendly also takes care of dealing with timezones correctly, and if you connect it with your calendar, it will automatically avoid double booking. 

Both these tools have a free plan, and they are a great place to start when you need to schedule meetings or sessions with your clients.

 

Meetings – as a display of power

Why yet another writing about meetings? Because it is an old habit that needs to change. And because it is so old, we need to challenge it strongly and repeatedly to defeat the inertia.

Most people go to meetings because they feel they have to, not because they want to or need to. 

When there is no engagement, the meeting becomes a waste of time and a show of status (“who’s who”).

If you are the meeting organizer, you may care a lot about your project or your idea or about getting feedback. But not everyone in the meeting cares about the same things that you do. And if all you can see around you are bored people who would rather be someplace else, what can you do differently? (assuming that you care)

You could change the meeting duration from one hour to 10 minutes! No more room for fluff, for checking the phone, or for being late. And above all, you show respect to the other participants forced to spend their time with you.

You could also simply cancel the meeting. Do you need to send an update? There is email; there is slack; there is the phone. Do you need feedback? You can use online surveys or schedule one-on-one interviews in cases where you need to go deeper. 

Above all, seek and measure engagement. If people around you are not engaged, everything moves in slow motion, and you are also missing on a ton of creativity that has no room to be expressed. 

If you are meeting participant, what would happen if you didn’t go? Would the project miss a critical piece of insight, or would “people upstairs get upset”? If it’s just people getting upset for you being honest about not having anything of value to contribute, then maybe you need to bring this up. Challenge the reason you have been invited to the meeting and make sure you need to be there. If you know your input is valued and sought after, you will be more likely to be engaged. But if you feel like a replaceable cog in the system, then you won’t be missed. 

Another thing you can do is start a discussion about meetings around the office. Are they effective? And how do you measure that effectiveness? If there is little engagement, what can you change to have more of it? What would happen if you canceled the meeting? What is the difference between synchronous communication (phone and meetings) and asynchronous (Slack, email, voice messages)

With new technology, we can do better. Show respect and seek engagement, not a display of power.

How do you think meetings should change in the new environment? Who are meetings for, and what are they for?