The introduction of the online stage compelled organizations to adopt the format of conducting the meetings virtually. These virtual meetings can be attended by employees, shareholders, and managers from different remote locations at a time. Virtual meeting platforms offer an opportunity for organizations to recreate the environment of a physical meeting by keeping the attendees hooked and involved throughout.
Ready to take your meeting online? Let us walk you through some excellent tips, ideas, and tools that can elevate the level of your online meeting;
What is a Virtual Meeting?
A collaborative event where employees, shareholders, and managers come together to discuss relevant insights, future strategies, latest updates and celebrate the company wins. With its online format, you can employ effective virtual meeting tools to deliver a memorable event experience.
How to Host a Virtual Meeting?
With the practice of remote work culture, it has become more important to host frequent virtual town halls and meetings to keep your employees in the loop. Let us take a look at some of the best online meeting ideas and practices;
Set clear meeting objectives
Before you start making strategies for your virtual meeting, it is important to identify the reason for hosting this. What do you aim to achieve from this event? or “What would be the outcomes of this virtual meeting? Relevant answers to these questions will help you learn about the direction in which you should conduct your meeting.
Do your research for the most suitable meeting platform
A virtual meeting platform is a forum where everyone would connect to discuss recent industry news, make future strategies, or learn about the company’s progress and developments. Hence, you should wisely choose your enterprise solution. Check for the platform features and confirm if that would suit your business needs. An ideal meeting platform should include the following features to deliver impactful event experiences;
- 100% security and trustworthy
- Customization abilities
- 2-way video conferencing
- Multi-device functionality
- Excellent audio, video, and chat functions
- Exciting engagement tools
- Robust analytics
Decide a definite meeting Agenda
A clear meeting agenda helps maintain the show flow of the event. Attendees stay notified about the order of the sessions. Also, this practice helps eliminate the chaos or confusion created by people attending virtual meetings without proper planning. To be more precise about the Agenda, you can discuss it with your managers or senior officials. It will help you learn about the activities you need to include along with their estimated duration.
Begin with an icebreaker activity
With meetings happening virtually, it does not mean that you cannot make them interesting or memorable. You can choose to keep some time for casual chats or icebreaker activities to keep your attendees engaged. During this time, you can get a little friendly and ask questions like What are their future goals? Which is their next holiday destination? What is their favorite pastime activity, or What do they enjoy doing the most during their leisure time?
Keep the joining procedure super simple
During online meetings, conferences, or town halls, people expect maximum participation. Hence, it is important to keep the joining process super comfortable in order to eliminate attendee drop-off. Make sure that your attendees do not go through unnecessary downloads or hectic set-ups. You can share the meeting link with everyone and ensure that it is simple clickable attendees can join in one go.
Set particular ground rules
If you wish to maintain the decorum of an online meeting or avoid any confusion, make sure to set some definite ground rules. Share these rules with each participant in advance. These ground rules include;
- If an attendee is speaking, the other participants should mute their mic
- Virtual attendees should try to avoid background noise to eliminate distractions
- Attendees should always introduce themselves before speaking, especially if it’s an audio call
- Also, they should use features like a raised hand function to ask their query
Promote 2-way interactions
With the aim to recreate the experiences of an in-person meeting, it is important to leverage live chat features and excellent video & audio tools to let attendees interact with each other. Besides this, some leading virtual platforms also provide features like virtual networking tables and AI matchmaking to let attendees have 1:1 & group discussions or connect with like-minded people respectively.
Keep it to the point
The online meeting includes everyone’s involvement. Therefore, it is important to plan sessions that are simple and understandable. The slides, presentations, or videos you prepare, keep it short and simple. Avoid using eye-straining font, graphics, or images. Besides this, you can integrate multilingual abilities to make it convenient for everyone to understand.
Back it with 24/7 customer support
An event with a strong technical base holds the ability to provide real-time assistance to the attendees and solve unexpected errors at the earliest. Virtual meeting platforms that provide immediate assistance to the attendees help improve the platform experience for them.
Perform a test rehearsal
Any online event calls for multiple rehearsals and dry-runs to ensure that you do not miss out on anything. With people joining virtually in the meeting, ask your attendees to check their system configurations. Test your Internet connection and platform features to get an overall glimpse of how it would actually appear on the D-day.
An Important Checklist of Virtual Meeting Tips;
- Select an ideal virtual meeting platform
- Make way for 2-way interactions
- Leverage a live chat feature, 1:1 & group discussion functions to let people engage and make new connections
- Set specific ground rules to maintain the dignity of your meeting
- Create interactive sessions and include a variety of speakers
- Include tools like live polls, Q&As, surveys, photobooths, AI matchmaking to drive audience engagement
- Perform a dry-run with the platform features, run multiple system checks, and test the connectivity of the Internet
Final word
The best method to keep your attendees engaged is by incorporating effective tools and features with a profound learning of attendee viewpoint. Once you have determined the meeting objectives, create a fruitful strategy that can deliver remarkable event experiences.
