COVID-19 has drastically changed our perspective in the business world. One of the biggest changes that entrepreneurs have been forced to make involves switching from in-person to remote meetings. Many of these meetings are hosted over the cloud, which is a major benefit for businesses.
There are countless benefits of hosting remote meetings. Obviously, during the pandemic, virtual meetings help people avoid getting infected with the COVID-19 virus. Virtual meetings can also be much more productive and cost-effective. This is why so many companies have decided to host virtual events with Vconference.
However, it is important to understand that there is a learning curve when you are hosting virtual meetings. You need to follow the right guidelines to ensure that you get the most out of them. Some important tips for virtual meetings are listed below.
Always have a clear agenda before starting a meeting
Have you ever participated in a meeting that seem to be going in a million different directions at once? These meetings are inherently unproductive. They tend to be even worse when you are hosting them online.
The most important step that you can take to avoid this problem is to make sure that you have a clear agenda ahead of time. You need to outline the basic goals of your meeting, which should include the messages that need to be communicated and the timeline for communicating them.
Appoint somebody to lead the event
You probably wouldn’t want to live in a city without a mayor or city council, because it would quickly devolve into anarchy. The same thing can be said about a virtual meeting that doesn’t have a meeting leader.
Long before the meeting is organized, you need to appoint somebody to be in charge of it. This person is going to be responsible for:
Choosing the meeting leader is going to be the most important decision that you make while organizing a virtual event. You can’t afford to make this decision lightly.
There are three important factors that you need to take into consideration when deciding who should lead the meeting. The first issue is that you should try to find somebody that is most knowledgeable about the material that will be covered. Secondly, you are going to want to find somebody that is a natural leader. Finally, you should try to choose a leader that has the most at stake with the issues that are being discussed.
It is unlikely that you will find a single individual that perfectly covers all three of the points listed above. You are going to have to balance them and figure out who will be the best fit.
Make sure you have all necessary technology at your disposal
You can’t possibly run a virtual meeting without the right technology. You are going to need to choose a VoIP platform to host the meeting on and make sure that everybody can connect to it. You should reach out to all participants in advance and let them know what platform you are going to be using, so that they have enough time to download the necessary software.
Make sure that all of the meeting coordinators and important stakeholders talk about the timeline in advance
You will need to make sure that your timeline is carefully coordinated before the meeting starts. All of your most important participants need to agree on the duration of the meeting. Once the general time constraints are in place, you will need to decide how long the meeting leader and other coordinators should spend on specific points. You should delegate most of this decision-making authority to them, but you should emphasize certain points that might require more discussion than others.
Get feedback after the meeting
After making any major decision, you should always reflect and see how it worked out. The same principle holds true when you are hosting a virtual meeting. You should pay close attention to the feedback of participants, so you know how to improve next time.