21 Power Strategies for Online Meetings
Increase your Online Meeting Productivity
Online meetings are now a regular feature of our online work. Some weeks there are two meetings and sometimes there are four. However, are all these meetings effective in helping us reach conclusive decisions about the work we are doing? Are all these online presentations productive and do they lead to concrete action? These are just a few of the questions we need to ask ourselves.
I have listed below a few key strategies to help you to make the most of your next online meeting and presentation.
1. Online Platform: Select the right video conferencing platform that enables you to connect with your group. Zoom, Webex, Adobe Connect, Google Hangouts, and others are just a few of the online meeting platforms which do a great job connecting us all in the virtual world.
2. Theme: Create a Theme for your meeting and display that theme or slogan on the virtual meeting invitations, backgrounds, resources, and documents.
3. Invitations: Email your invitations with clear instructions on how members of the group can connect online for the meeting.
4. Etiquette: Include a pdf document stating the online etiquette that is expected from the attendees.
5. Security: Ensure that the meeting invites only go out to members of the group. Inform members that the meeting is not for outsiders. Password protect all your meetings for additional security.
6. Introductions: The Moderator of the meeting will need to introduce themselves at the start of the meeting and then invite all the attendees to introduce themselves to the group.
7. Chat Function: Keep your eye on the Chat feature and monitor it or get someone else to respond to queries as the session continues.
8. Ground Rules: At the very beginning set up your ground rules for the meeting and limit unnecessary interruptions and distractions. It is up to you as the organizer to ensure a safe learning environment and to provide equal opportunities for all who participate.
9. Waiting Room: Use the ‘Waiting Room’, facility to control who joins the meeting taking place.
10. Booking sheet: Keep a copy of the booking sheet close at hand, so that you know all participants in the room. Ensure that you know how to manage (and remove) participants, as well as all the other features which the online platform has to offer.
11. Agenda: Prepare an Agenda for the meeting so that all points are discussed in time and nothing important is overlooked.
12. Lecture Recordings: Record your lectures, upload them to your site after the lecture and email the link to all the participants. It is not necessary to stream your lectures for the public unless you want to do so for your project.
13. Presence: Instead of just displaying a photograph of yourself on the screen, show yourself.
14. Length of Videos: Make your online video presentations short to keep them interesting and the audience attentive.
15. Activities: The Assignments for the group should be interactive as the main group is divided into smaller groups who use break-out rooms for discussions.
16. Slides: Always make sure to test your slide presentations before the main meeting takes place. This prevents the possibility of anything going wrong on the day of the meeting.
17. Resources: Use existing resources so that you do not have to spend additional time, doing fresh research, for creating new resources.
18. Moderator: Appoint someone before the meeting to moderate the discussion so that everything is covered during the meeting.
19. Feedback: request for feedback from the group just at the end of the meeting. Encourage the attendees to answer a few questions based on the topics discussed, before the online discussion comes to an end.
20. Rewards: Give your attendees the rewards of resource materials and other freebies at the end of the meeting. This will make them come back for other meetings in the future.
21. Backgrounds: Create a great “Zoom Background” design on a design platform like Canva and upload it as your background for your next online meeting.