“Hey, can you hear me?” “Yeah, hi, I can hear you, but I can’t see you!” “But my webcam is on!” “But I still can’t see… oh, there you are! Now I can see you!”
Video conferences always start this way, and anyone who says otherwise isn't telling the truth.
Today, 54% of meetings have participants who are not in the same office, country, or time zone, and this percentage is steadily increasing.
Here are a few simple tips to help you have high-quality video conferences:
- Dress appropriately. The image of the “smart worker”—wearing a suit jacket and tie on top and shorts on the bottom—has become legendary. Even during video conferences, dressing appropriately will make you look more professional.
- A neutral or blurred background. Kitchens, living rooms, and home offices—no matter how beautiful they may be—can be a major distraction for everyone in the meeting, especially if they’re cluttered. So try to use a neutral background, such as one with a plant. This will help keep participants’ attention focused.
- Run an audio and video test 10 minutes beforehand. All meeting and collaboration platforms allow you to run tests by joining early to check that your audio and video are working. Plus, being ready in advance will ensure the meeting starts without any delays.
- Try to position the webcam at eye level. Depending on how far away the webcam is, the way our face appears can affect the meeting: if it’s positioned below eye level, only part of our face may be visible, which can distort the view for other participants. So raise your computer or place an external webcam above the monitor.
- Please follow the rules of etiquette and mute your microphone when you’re not speaking! Meetings often have more than five participants, and if everyone were to speak at once or if there were background noise, the call quality would suffer significantly. So, turn your microphone on only when you’re speaking, and mute it at all other times. And remember not to move around unless you have a professional microphone—otherwise, no one will be able to hear you!
There are tons of tools for meetings and presentations—here are our favorites
- Microsoft Teams
- TeamViewer Meeting
- Slack
- Cisco WebEx
- Google Meet
