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Get Krisp for Zoom NowHow Video Meetings Can Help You
A lot of times the people we meet and interact with do not live in the same area we do.Β So often people in our personal network, our team members, business partners, or clients and subscribers live far enough away that paying a visit in person is not feasible.
You can always call them on the telephone or write them a text or email.Β But the closest thing to visiting with them in person is chatting with them through a video call.
Communication
With video meetings, you can see non-verbal messages, gestures, body language, and interact in a more real way.Β In a good video chat platform, you can also share or control each other’s screens, share files, links, websites, and engage many people at one time.Β The experience can increase a sense of team and a feeling of camaraderie.
Cost Effective
Video meetings can be free or relatively inexpensive especially compared to phone calls both domestic and international.Β The difference there can be astounding.Β I helped an organization set up a video meeting service between their five offices and saved them $3,000 of calls between offices.Β In our business, we used to budget a hundred or so dollars a month for business calls domestic and international — now that’s a thing of the past.
More Productive
Moreover, you can get much more done in a video meeting compared to a phone call (especially with multiple people), a text chat, an email conversation, a Facebook Group, and any other medium than actually getting together in the same room.
Unfortunately, many meetings drain more time than they produce results.Β Being able to actually get some work done in a meeting or hone and perfect the work you are doing is very important.
Save Travel Time
Video meetings also save travel time.Β Many of the people you want to meet with may have a hard time, even if they live in the same town, scheduling time not only for the hour meeting but the half-hour commute both ways.
In fact, not only do you save time traveling, but you can spend more time supporting, discussing, learning, and growing those relationships (time that would otherwise be spent alone).Β Of course, this doesn’t apply if you are attending the online meeting while you are traveling.Β And that brings us to control, attend the meeting where you want, when you want, and how you want.
Participant Participation Control
In video meetings, participants can show up in their pajamas, they may be able to be with family, work on something quietly while participating.Β Participants can also control their level of involvement especially in large meetings where they might not need to be actively participating or listening to parts of a particular meeting.Β A participant may be a party to a meeting even when sick, driving, or preparing dinner.Β They can choose to either share their video, audio, both, or none.
In our business, we have tried all the various popular video call platforms.Β Our favorite platform is Zoom.
Why We Like Zoom
- Invitees don’t need an account
- Easily installs on any device
- Just one link to share
- You can record to your computer or cloud
- People can join by phone or device
- Chat (private and everyone)
- You can share screens (and even control someone else’s screen)
- There is a Free and Paid service
- THE MAIN REASON: Having used this platform for literally hundreds of time, I have never had to show someone how to set it up.
Other Platforms We’ve Tried
Just a heads up.Β Things change all the time.Β Much of the technology experience I have had with these various platforms may have already changed by the time you view this video.
FaceTime
FaceTime is great if the other person has an iPhone or Apple device, but you can only have one person on the call at a time, and you can’t share your screen, files, or chat.Β And sometimes, people are not aware of what their FaceTime contact is (email address, phone number, or what).Β Although it is simple it still needs some setup.
Skype
For the longest time, Skype was the best way to video chat with someone.Β It is available on almost any device and has all the bells and whistles of video chat platforms: many people, file sharing, and chat.Β For people to join, however, they need to set up an account.
Facebook Messenger Video Chat
This is great if you chat with one person and they are on Facebook.Β The cool thing is that many people already have messenger installed and you are already communicating with them in a chat.Β All you need to do is to convert that chat into a video call.Β The only problem with this system is that people need a Facebook account to connect with you…Β And they need to be your friend.Β Not great for instant connection to people you just met.
Hangouts
Hangouts is awesome.Β You can have many people on one call, share files, documents, and use many different devices.Β Like Skype, however, your attendees need to set up a Google account.Β This can be tedious at times to help would-be invitees set up a Google account they don’t want.
GotoWebinar
This works if you have the money and the time to figure out how to work it.Β There are some awesome reasons to use a platform like this if you have a big audience.Β It can hose a webinar with login details and reminder emails.Β But then again,… so can Zoom.
Instructions for How to Use Zoom
Get an account
Other people you will chat with don’t necessarily need an account, but if you are the host, you will need to set one up.
Go to zoom.us.
Pick out a plan.Β If you don’t know what to start with, start with FREE, the only real limitation is when you are meeting with several people you can only meet for 40 minutes.
Personal Meeting Room
Once your account is set up, you can prepare your online meeting room.Β My suggestion is to keep it simple.Β Just use your onlineΒ Personal Meeting Room.Β The link stays the same for all your meetings.Β It is simple and easy for people to save and find when they need to get online.
You can think of your online Personal Meeting Room as a virtual room you have where you and your friends can come together and hang out.
You can also schedule meetings, but I never found the need to add any of that complexity.
You can get the link for you online Personal Meeting Room from either the my profile tab or the My Meetings Tab.
Settings
There are many ways that you can use and tweak Zoom.Β Here are my favorite settings to look out for:
- Play a sound when someone joins or leaves the meeting room
- Remote Support (PAID feature) allows you to control some else’s desktop — great for helping someone figure out or set up something.
- Local Recording — allows you to record your Zoom Meeting to your desktop, which you can store or upload to some place like YouTube (which is what we do all the time)
- Email: Get an email whenever anyone joins your meeting before the host.Β This is great and gives you an idea of who is accessing your online meeting, and may remind you when no one shows up.
- Allow people to join the meeting before the host (in the individual meeting room settings).Β This is awesome.Β It is like an online virtual lobby where people can mingle before or after a meeting.Β As the host you can leave the meeting early and people can stick around and chat.
Those are my favorites.
Other Features
Polls.Β You can set up and take a poll from everyone in your online meeting.Β I have used this feature once.Β Works great, but most of our meetings are under 20 people, so I never found the need.
Back drop.Β There is a setting where you can replace a green-screen background with any picture of your choosing.Β Really cool feature, but mostly for us it was a gimmick.Β Made a great Christmas video, though.
Chat.Β This is really cool when you participants want to ask a question, but don’t want to interrupt the lesson or discussion.Β It also allows other participants to help each other.Β They answer their questions.Β One might ask, “What did he say on the last slide?”Β And everyone is eager to help.
Participant Manager.Β This allows you to mute and un mute people and see who has excess background noise, etc.Β You can also take a quick toll of who is online and who you are talking to.
Share Screen.Β Allows any participant to share their screen.
Annotate.Β When a screen is shared any of the other participants can write on it.
Record.Β As mentioned before you can record your online meeting.Β There is even a feature to record to the cloud, which we used before when we directed a meeting from the car.
Conclusion
I hope by now that you have an idea of how all this can help you maintain your relationships, network, business, team, and other groups.Β Of course, you are not required to use online meetings and you should no feel obligated to do so just because someone else is doing it.Β However, now you are informed and equipped with the know-how to enable you to leverage this powerful tool.
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