5 Ways to Make Your Virtual Meetings Smarter and More Effective
Video meetings are quickly replacing simple conference calls, and for good reason. Connecting by video gives your communication a more personal touch, improves attention, and makes all of your video meetings much more valuable and efficient.
Video conferencing tools are available for every business, no matter your size, industry, or budget. There are video systems that offer basic functionality for free and more robust solutions that provide all the key tools needed to support effective communications at the enterprise level.
Whether you use a free video conferencing app or have an elaborate video system in place for large scale corporate communications, there are some key things that you can do to make your make your virtual meetings smarter and more effective.
1. Personalize Meetings by Using a Video Conferencing Solution
Using a video conferencing system is a great way to add an element of personal connection to your virtual meetings. Video meetings are taking precedent over simple audio-only conference calls because video solutions are very easy to use provide a more personal experience that lends itself nicely to collaboration and idea-sharing.
Video conferencing allows people to see one another in a face-to-face setting, which can increase connection and understanding because participants can see one another and use visual cues like facial expression and gestures.
2. Minimize Disruptions
Interruptions during any meeting can cause distractions, cause frustrations or misunderstandings, and prolong meeting lengths as well. Modern video conferencing providers have upgraded their solutions with AI that that automatically filters out background noise and minimizes feedback and distortion on video calls, which can greatly improve the quality of a video call and increase meaning and understanding.
When all participants are mindful of what they can do to minimize distractions, it can help a video call smoothly as well. You should encourage team members to use a headset on the call to reduce the change of distortion and ask people to mute their mics when they’re not speaking during a call. These easy steps can help keep your video calls free of unnecessary distractions.
3. Up Understanding with Content and Media Sharing Tools
While meeting in a face-to-face environment via video is a great way to boost understanding and attention during meetings, you can also help deepen the impact of your video calls by using the content and media sharing features in your video conferencing app.
You can share a document you’re going to over during the call, give a presentation, or share media files to make sure that team members have a fully immersive and valuable experience, complete with all the documents and information they need for their follow up tasks or other work related to the meeting.
4. Stay Organized, Focused, and Hold Shorter Meetings
Long meetings are usually a result of being unprepared and unfocused. You should prepare before a video meeting and send out an agenda of points to be covered during your time to keep meetings as short and efficient as possible. Shorter, organized meetings promote focus and attention among your employees and will ultimately be more beneficial to your teams and your business.
5. Understand the Capabilities of Your Video Conferencing Solution
Your video conferencing system can be an incredible tool to encourage meaningful interactions within your business and it’s important that you and your teams all understand how to use the system and know about all the great features available to you for video meetings. The value of your video system is highly linked to how well people in your organization understand the capabilities and how often they leverage the tools available to improve communication and make collaborations more productive and meaningful.
You should provide ongoing training on your video tools to make sure that your teams always know what they have available and how to use video conferencing for quality interactions.
While tools offered in each video conferencing software will vary, some of the must-haves for every business include:
- Video calling
- Audio calling
- Screen sharing and presentation capabilities
- Content sharing (files, documents, media)
- Integrated messaging or chat functions
- User-friendly dashboard and tools
- Responsive support
About Wheelhouse
Like what you just read? At Wheelhouse, we are passionate about all things software, and our specialty is connecting software buyers to a solution that perfectly matches their needs.
Please visit our Video Conferencing software page for a complete list of all the solutions we have on offer.