As more people are working from home nowadays, online meetings have started to become the norm.

But conducting online meetings is very different from in-person meetings. The lack of physical presence can make it difficult to engage and inspire your audience.

Fortunately for you, we have gathered here some great tips to help you succeed and make a great impact on your next online meeting.

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Preparation stage

1. Schedule the meeting

What time works for you and your guest? What information should you include in the meeting invite? These are the questions you need answers to while scheduling meetings. And, when trying to schedule one, sometimes it’s easy to find yourself in a boringly long email chain trying to figure out the best time and date for everyone.

However, it’s much less of a hassle if you use a dedicated meeting scheduler app to streamline the process. Using one allows you to define your availability, remove the risk of double booking a time slot, and eliminate the back-and-forths.

2. Set the agenda

A meeting agenda is a list of topics or things you want to cover during your meeting. The whole point of the agenda is to give participants a clear understanding of what should happen in the meeting and how long it should take.

Having this information prior to the meeting ensures that it proceeds efficiently and productively.

Whether you have a short, 30-minute scrum meeting or one that lasts a full day, use these steps to write your agenda:

• Chalk out the meeting’s goals
• Ask the participants for inputs
• List the questions you want to ask
• Identify the purpose of each question/topic
• Estimate the amount of time to spend on each question/topic
• End each meeting with a summary

3. Design a great presentation

The presentation is the most important part of an online meeting. If you are going to give a presentation to a remote audience or team, make sure you use a fast and easy-to-use web conferencing tool. After all, it is the medium in which you impart your knowledge to your audience.

As a presenter, your use of words and intonation is even more critical. Designing a presentation deck for an online meeting has additional visual and technical considerations compared to those for in-person meetings.

Colors, the number of words used in each slide, and pictures — all have to be carefully selected to help maintain the audience’s attention throughout the presentation and prevent information overload.

4. Rehearse thoroughly

Never walk into any meeting unprepared. This is especially important if you are the one making a presentation. It can be even more difficult to wing it when you’re not interacting in person.

Plus, rehearsing helps you overcome the fear of being on camera. Do a demo meeting with a friend or family member, or just practice alone by yourself.

5. Set regular reminders

To be honest with you, I had to set up a reminder to finish writing this piece. Given that work from home is the “new normal”, we have to constantly deal with work and house chores. So, the need for setting regular reminders has become really important, which you can easily do in a tool like ProofHub.

If you generally use Google Calendar for your meetings, set up a Slack reminder or a notification in Microsoft Teams for any changes to the meetings or even to remind you of upcoming meetings. If you are a fan of doing work without a lot of automations, try using Google Tasks to set up reminders. Best part of using Google Tasks is that you can directly add tasks from your Gmail; and all tasks added in your Google Tasks are automatically synced to your Google Calendar.

You can also go ahead and send out reminders that reach people even when they are offline. SMS communication reminders are on the rise since they are able to reach a wide range of audience even when they are offline.

Execution stage

6. Make a great first impression.

The time has come. You’re all prepped up to give your presentation. But to hit it off with your guest or audience, you have to make a great first impression. In fact, it only takes a tenth of a second to make a first impression.

In other words, when you meet someone for the first time, you need to be on your game from the very beginning. Here are some tips to help you out:

• Be mindful of your body language and posture
• Make eye contact
• Modulate your pitch and tone of voice
• Choose your words wisely
• Dress the part
• Put your phone away

7. Enjoy a little small talk

Believe it or not, small talk is integral to your success. Even the most extroverted people struggle when it comes to making small talk with strangers; especially when that small talk is just killing time before you ask them for something — and mostly that something is money.

Now, how to make small talk?

• Ask open-ended questions: Almost everybody enjoys talking about themselves. Not only are we our favorite topics to talk about, but it’s also easier to discuss oneself than something you know little about. And, open-ended questions generate an interesting, dynamic conversation and encourage the person you’re speaking with to open up.
• Be an active listener: It’s common to tune out occasionally, but you’ll create much stronger connections if you pay attention. The other person will notice how keenly you listen to them. In addition, it’s much easier to ask relevant questions and remember details to bring up later if you’re attentive.
• Show enthusiasm: Small talk might not always be easy to do. But, if you go into it with the right attitude, you can actually have fun. View these conversations as opportunities to learn more about other people. You never know whom you’ll meet or what they’ll have to share — so embrace the chance it’ll be an amazing discussion.

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8. Discuss their needs and ask questions

No one wants to go to a meeting where one person talks the whole time. If you tend to go on and on in a meeting, dominating the conversation, try these three things.

1. Make notes and stick to them: Give yourself a time limit, and condense what you have to say into that amount of time.
2. Send the agenda around in advance: Tell people whose opinions you want to get that you are hoping they will speak up.
3. Give every participant an opportunity to speak up: Let everybody get the space to talk. Some people will pass, but at least they were given the chance and didn’t have to interrupt you to get a word in. Let them do most of the talking.

9. Wrap things up nicely

At the end of the meeting, don’t just say goodbye and move on with your day. Instead, end with a quick recap about what happened in the meeting — the decisions made and actions agreed on. In addition, let the others know what to expect next, such as sending out meeting minutes and a link to the meeting recording (if possible).

And of course, thank everyone who attended the meeting for their time. A successful online meeting requires active participation by every attendee. So, show your appreciation for their efforts by saying thank you before closing.

Follow-up stage

10. Follow up with the participant(s) and ask for feedback

As said earlier, first impressions matter. Then again, so do second impressions.

If you had an excellent meeting with someone, following up with them can help you build a relationship, strengthen it, and reach your objectives — whether you’re trying to get a job or make a sale. The best way to do that is by sending them an email and showing appreciation.

And if you weren’t able to provide answers to certain questions during the meeting, this email can be the best place to provide that information clearly. Plus, if everything goes well, you can make arrangements for the next video chat follow-up.

Final thoughts

Online meetings do not need to be tricky. Follow the guidelines above and you will be off to a great start.

Remember — the goal with these meetings is to better understand your audience’s needs and build a relationship with them. Use your time wisely and you’ll be rocking it out in no time.

About Author

Vimal Bharadwaj is a Product Marketer at Automate.io. He is passionate about all things B2B SaaS. He is also an avid reader and a big NBA fan. His goal in life is to constantly learn and get better before the robot overlords take over the world in the year 2050.

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