How to Nail Your Next Zoom Meeting
By Julie Kennon | April 15, 2020
It’s the dream of nearly every company – go to bed with business humming along as usual, and then wake up to exponential growth. Right?
Well, not so fast. Zoom, an increasingly popular (and increasingly maligned) video conferencing platform, is struggling with reports of hackers interrupting meetings in highly inappropriate ways, of allowing Facebook to collect unnecessary data, and of the company itself misrepresenting its built-in security. They are mitigating these issues, but the increased popularity has certainly come with some downfalls.
Online meeting platforms, including Cisco WebEx, RingCentral, Skype, and GoToMeeting, weren’t intended for virtual happy hours, high school geometry classes, or an impromptu choir performance. That said, it’s how we are all using them these days. So how can we avoid downfalls from a user’s perspective?
Like many companies, Astriata has had virtual meetings from the start. Being experienced users, and having our toes dipped into both technology and usability, we’ve got a few tips to make sure you’re putting your best face forward when you click “host a meeting.” We focus on Zoom a lot in this post, but most platforms share the same functionality.
Ten Tips to Becoming a Virtual Superstar
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Change your password often.
Make it so complicated that you have to write it down, or use an online password manager. Best practices include using a phrase, then mixing uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters. For example, you could use the sentence “My dog’s name is Sam,” but code it to “MyDogsNam31sAm!”
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Think about your background.
If your home office could be featured in a magazine, use it. If you’ve got a bright window behind you, or your office/dining room/spare bedroom just doesn’t project a professional vibe, look into a virtual background. Some of our favorites are from West Elm (the pool! The NYC skyline!) but our CEO has a fun bar background for any meeting that happens after 5 PM.
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Check your lighting.
Webcams are better than a laptop camera, and you can add a webcam light if your face seems shaded. Zoom has a feature we love called Touch Up My Appearance, which is the closest we might get to a virtual makeover.
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Think about your message.
What’s the purpose of the meeting? Have an agenda, and keep people on track. We know that our virtual staff meetings often head in strange but entertaining tangents; when you add more and more people, the risk is increased. A handy tip is to ask participants to raise their hands when they have a question. You, the host, can manage both the interrupting and the time much better this way.
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Share wisely.
Remember that sharing your screen means everyone will see what you’re seeing. Before sharing, close the bank website where you were balancing your checkbook and the argument-via-chat you were having with your spouse/kids/sister/friend.
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Use a virtual whiteboard.
Zoom offers this functionality for free. You can create and share pages, as well as save the board as a PNG file. You can also annotate your screen share.
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Get connected.
You can sync online meeting platforms with your calendar, so that you have an option to choose an online meeting whenever you schedule one.
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Start a queue.
You can enable a waiting room (helpful if you’re seeing one person at a time, such as for a performance review) and require a password, or authenticate your users by domain. Zoom, as well as other platforms, is HIPAA compliant.
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Make it fun.
Have a virtual happy hour, let everyone introduce their pets, conduct a meeting in your pajamas. We all miss laughing at jokes in the office, so it helps to inject a little levity here and there.
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Practice, and require, proper Zoom etiquette.
Wear clothes. Brush your hair. Mute your microphone unless you’re speaking, but particularly if you’ve got a dog barking/child crying/conversation with your neighbor going on. And, it should now go without saying – don’t bring your laptop with you if you need a mid-meeting bathroom break.
With these tips, you’re sure to navigate our quarantined waters with professionalism. Whether we’re talking about the way users interact with your website or the experience of attendees at your Zoom meeting, usability and the user experience will always dictate intangible and powerful feelings about your organization. Make sure you’re offering an experience that will ensure those feelings are happy ones!