So, you’re hosting an online conference. We all know how bad a virtual meeting can be. Without effective planning, they can drag on and drain productivity.
But done effectively, they can be used to manage a remote team, generate ideas, and execute projects together.
What’s the difference between a good and bad online meeting? It’s all in the organization. Let’s break it down.
Organizing a Meeting: A Before, During, and After Breakdown
Being a good virtual meeting host involves many different skills coming together. We’ve created a comprehensive guide to organizing a meeting. You can plan a great meeting and build on the experience.
Before Your Virtual Meeting
The key to organizing a meeting is adequate preparation. This might seem like a lot up front, but it becomes easier with practice.
- Choose Your Tools
Before you get started, you’ll need to get your virtual meeting toolbox ready. The first tool you’ll need is a meeting platform. You’re probably already familiar with Zoom. It tends to be favored by people who host video meetings because it integrates well with other virtual meeting tools. You can also go for an all-in-one platform like Clariti and get the advantage of efficient voice calls.
Is your conference all online or a hybrid? A hybrid meeting has some people in person and some people calling in. newslooper This affects the tools you’ll want to use. Your hybrid meeting needs to use remote tools so the people calling in do not feel left out. So, if you’re used to taking notes on a whiteboard in person, type them into a virtual whiteboard instead.
- Keep Your Presentation Simple
If you’re doing a slideshow, keep your slides minimal. Virtual meeting platforms can be very sophisticated and offer lots of bells and whistles. You still have no idea what devices people will be calling in on.
You want to avoid embedded videos or relying too heavily on animations. Still, images and bullet points are still the best bet for meetings. For businesses, a greater number of short meetings tend to be more effective than fewer long meetings.
- Consider Your Timezones
A virtual meeting means anyone can call in from anywhere… in theory. In practice, time zones can be challenging to work with. The best way to do this is to offer multiple time slots. You can run an email poll to see which works best for the team.
Bear in mind that some combinations are completely incompatible. If this is the case, plan to work with an asynchronous team. Take meeting notes and send a meeting recording to all team branches. End every meeting outlining the next steps in writing.
- Draw Up a Meeting Outline
People need to know what to expect when having a good meeting. When sending email invites, let your attendees know the following:
- When the meeting is and how long it will last
- Goals of the meeting
- Topics that will be covered
Timing tip: When estimating how long the meeting will last, add twice as much time for discussion as you think the presentation will take. So if you have a 10-minute presentation, schedule a 30-minute meeting.
It’s important that your attendees know what to expect so they can manage their own time. Meetings that drag on past the scheduled time tend to wear on morale.
- Get Questions in Advance
Questions can be a huge time suck. Please don’t wait for people to ask them. When you send the outline, you should also be requesting feedback. This way, you see which questions are most frequently asked and then address them at the start of the meeting.
- Arrive Five Minutes Early
You know how the saying goes: ” On time is five minutes early.” Sometimes, tech issues happen. When they do, the five-minute buffer can give you a chance to find a workable solution.
During Your Virtual Meeting
It takes a few different skills to host a good virtual meeting compared to an in-person meeting. Here are some of the best practices for keeping the flow going during an online conference.
- Record Your Meeting
Even if it’s a five-minute chat, record it. Recordings are useful for accountability, note-taking, and keeping everyone on the same page. You can use a PC or Mac screen recorder to save and edit your meeting. Typically, people watching a completed meeting like to watch at 1.5x or 2x speed.
- Make Sure Everyone’s Tech is Working
It usually takes 3-5 minutes for any given online conference to start. People need time to sign in and get the tech working. Ask for a thumbs up from everyone to show their speakers, cameras, and microphones are working.
- Do a Quick Intro
You don’t want to be too strict about turning on cameras. It comes across as micro-managing. Do ask your attendees to turn their cameras on for at least the intro. Here’s a quick breakdown of what an introduction should be:
- Welcome everyone
- Remind people to mute and unmute as necessary
- Restate meeting objectives
- Address any FAQs you gathered before
- Give attendees an icebreaker to get them talking to each other
The introduction should take 5-10 minutes. If your conference has more than 10 attendees, you might want to consider breakout rooms for this portion.
- Keep The Meeting People-Focused
If at any point you don’t need to share your screen, don’t. It’s the online equivalent of having everyone talk to a TV instead of sitting around a table and talking to each other. Set the meeting so everyone can see each other most of the time.
- Value Discussion Time Over Presentation Time
You want people to have more time to talk and generate ideas. When hosting a discussion online, it can be difficult for more than one person to speak at a time. Breakout rooms are a great tool if more than four people are attending.
- Ask People to Keep Side Convos to the Chatbox
In real-life meetings, people can have a productive conversation alongside the main presentation. Online, only one person can talk at a time without it becoming chaos.
However, the chat feature can compensate for this difference. The chat box is a non-disruptive means of letting attendees talk to each other. It also lets you go back after the presentation and see what people are talking about. Glance through it during breaks in the meeting.
- Engage, Engage, Engage
People may turn their cameras off after the introduction, making it all the more important to engage them during the meeting. Take note of who does most of the talking. Notice if anyone hasn’t spoken, ask them to speak.
Use live polling to read the room and make decisions. Running quizzes and splitting people into breakout rooms makes meetings more dynamic.
- End Meetings by Clarifying Next Steps
Everyone should know what they’re doing next by the end of the meeting. Make sure you state this again in your follow-up email.
After Your Virtual Meeting
Influential virtual meeting hosts aren’t finished when the meeting is over. There’s still follow-up to do after.
- Watch For Where You Can Improve
This is where you learn the most: by watching the meeting again. You don’t need to watch the whole thing, but go over what you felt were the best and worst moments of it. Those will help you learn your strengths and weaknesses as a presenter. Knowing will help you build more effective programs going forward.
- Send a Follow-Up Email
Every meeting needs a follow-up. This is a great time to review what was discussed and the next steps. It is also a great time to request feedback.
- Give Attendees a Copy of the Recorded Meeting
In your follow-up email, attach a copy of the recorded meeting. Make sure everyone gets a copy. Meetings can be tedious to listen to, so you might want to edit it before you send it.
The Art of the Online Conference
Don’t let the return-to-office think pieces fool you. Virtual meetings are an amazing tool for businesses, but you have to know how to use them correctly to get the most out of them.
