Because of the pandemic, virtual events and meetings are more common, and e-mailed calendar invites are often necessary. But sending an invitation without sufficient information or context can get really awkward, really fast for the participants.
That said, here are four important things to pay attention to when inviting someone to a meeting or an event so you don’t make a bad impression before your meeting even begins.
Use all fields in the invite.
When creating a calendar invite, whether it’s from your computer or your phone, pay attention to all the fields. Make sure the event has a title and a location and define the duration of the meeting.
You can also define when you’ll be notified about the event so you don’t forget about it and you can use the notes section to include any and all important information for you and the person you are meeting.
Make the event title useful and relevant.
The title of your meeting should not be the name of the person you are meeting. That might be convenient for you, but remember, you are inviting that person and now they’re going to have an event on their calendar that’s just called their name. How is that useful for them?
So if David and Michelle are meeting and David is creating the invite, the title can be something like “David and Michelle to discuss new marketing strategy.”
Make sure that the title of the event is useful, includes the names, and the subject of the meeting. Remember, the person you are meeting might not remember the topic or location when the time comes. Make their life easier when creating the invite title.
Include context in the notes.
Sometimes, I get frustrated trying to prepare for a meeting, opening my calendar, and seeing a meeting with zero context. If this happens, I often search my email and can’t find anything there either because it turns out that the person communicated with me on LinkedIn, Facebook or somewhere else. Now I’m stuck starting a meeting totally unprepared.
To solve this issue and make everyone’s life easier, add some background and maybe even an agenda for the call in the notes section of the invite. It takes one minute and can change the whole dynamic of the call.
Add a link or number to the relevant call.
There is no reason to wait until the time of the meeting to send out the link or number to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or whatever platform you are using. Simply include the pre-scheduled link or phone number in the calendar invite to avoid confusion and make the process that much more seamless.
The bottom line is, we all have busy lives and our dependency on the calendar has increased significantly in the remote work environment. If a calendar invite is not created properly, it will only add confusion and create the opposite point of having a calendar.
This article is from Inc.com
