This month, I thought it would be fun share a Tool Tip each week. Every Wednesday in October you will get the scoop on a handy dandy online tool for you to use in your business. This week we have a tool that can save you countless hours and headaches when organizing a project with a group of people.
You know how crazy it can get organizing group activities and trying to keep track of multiple e-mails to update sign up sheets. It takes way too much time on everyone’s part to get everyone sorted out and on the same page.
A million emails get sent back and forth trying to figure out if people are participating and if so, who is going to do what when. If that isn’t bad enough, once you thought that you have it worked out there is always the flurry of last-minute calls from people who couldn’t do what they originally said they could do or forgot what time they had signed up. This leaves you having to go through the process all over again to fill the gaps.
But wait. There is an easier way.
Sign Up Genius is a sweet little app that you can use to coordinate events and people in just minutes, letting the sign up process take care of itself. If you organize events with volunteers, it will make your job easy to get the positions filled. Simply input the types of volunteer positions that are available and send it out to your volunteer list. They will be able to sign up for the position they’d like and you will have all of your volunteer information organized in one place.
I originally discovered Sign up Genius when I gave away six “Talk it Out” Sessions to my online followers as a Valentine’s Day gift a few years ago. I needed an easy way to show them which time slots were available and give people the opportunity to sign up for one of them. When other people saw the sign-up form they would only see the available time slots.
After getting an account with Sign Up Genius, I branded the form with my logo and colors, created a project, added my available time slots to the form and sent out a link to the form in my newsletter.
By 9 am Valentine’s morning, the slots were full. As each person selected a time slot for an appointment, that slot was grayed out and when others went to sign up they saw only the remaining openings until they were all full. I had the six slots filled in no time without having to get back to anyone.
We also use Sign Up Genius to fill volunteer positions when organizing WordCamp Atlanta. We had multiple positions to be filled with multiple times and different numbers of people needed for each job and time slot. Sign Up Genius worked like a charm. Sign Up Genius also takes care of sending out reminders. You can choose a notification schedule and Sign Up Genius will send out email or text reminders to the people who signed up.
This app offers free and pro levels, but the free version should work just fine. But there are so many other things you can use it for, you just might find yourself becoming a Sign Up Genius power user!
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