Zoom meetings are becoming a staple for business communications. Conducting a professional meeting on-line speaks well for your business, your organization and your brand.
Your on-line meetings should be modeled from your in-person meetings – Be professional, be polite, take turns speaking, respect others when they are speaking, dress accordingly, reduce potential distractions, stay focused and be present. Just because the meeting is on-line and you may be conducting or participating in it from a home office or remote location, doesn’t mean you should approach it casually.
Tips to keep your meetings productive:
- Be organized and have a plan
- Start on Time
- Create an agenda – An outline of your meeting activity will keep you focused and on course
- Communicate your agenda– Let folks know what to expect and where you will be focusing during the meeting
- Have participation rules and communicate these rules to your audience – let people know how to interact, ask questions, take turns speaking etc.
- Decide if you will want to record the meeting
- Designate a Co-Host(s) to help you monitor the activity and some of the logistics while you are speaking
- Practice – If you have guest speakers participating in your meeting you may want to have a quick walk-through prior to your go live meeting
- Have a plan B – What happens if your internet goes wonky during the meeting, or a technical issue pops up? Building in redundancy for some of the uncontrollable issues that may arise during the meeting is important
- Monitor who is in attendance – have folks in the meeting identify and rename themselves if they log in with a cryptic or unidentifiable name / number. Don’t be afraid to kick unidentified participants off of the meeting if they don’t acknowledge who they are.
Sometimes you may want to stop your video while on a Zoom meeting. When you stop the video, your Zoom profile image will appear. Below is a quick How To change your Zoom profile image.