Recently, I attended a webinar hosted by one of the biggest names in live-streaming today, GoToMeeting. The webinar, titled Transform Your Average Meetings to Top-Performing Events, had some very insightful tips for maximizing your online meetings presented by Communications Expert Nina-Nike Velander. I highly recommend viewing the entire webinar, which I will link below, but here are some of my main takeaways from this presentation:
Always Have an Agenda!
Agendas are extremely important when preparing for any virtual meeting. Having an agenda prepared ahead of time to share with your attendees before your meeting will increase the attendance of your presentation. You can even ask for agenda suggestions from your attendees. This can promote inclusion and attendee engagement as well.
Presentation Flow
Research shows that the biggest items of your agenda aren’t the ones that necessarily take up the most time during your meeting. The topics that tend to be covered the most are usually the first items in an agenda, due to a combination of the length of the presentation and attention span of attendees. Starting your meetings with the most important topics will ensure that they are tackled for the correct length of time, helping the flow of your presentation. You can also try to create a story throughout your presentation that allows you to seamlessly lead to other agenda items.
Starting your meetings with the most important topics will ensure that they are tackled for the correct length of time, helping the flow of your presentation.
Personalizing your Presentation with a Webcam
Try to always promote the use of webcams. In a presentation, only viewing a screen showing slides could lead to attendees losing interest. By having your webcam active throughout your meeting, it will add personalization to your meeting and help your attendees be more engaged.
Additional Tips
- All meetings and presentations should be considered as important as events and should be treated as such!
- Try to avoid starting meetings at full hours, such as 11:00 am or 2:00 pm. Starting your presentations at times such as 11:15 am or 2:45 pm can increase attendance rates due to attendees having more time to finish their previous meetings.
- Icebreakers! Usually, meetings and presentations are started a little early, but we still want to wait for other attendees to join. During this time, it is highly recommended to engage your current audience using icebreakers.
These are just some of the few things Nina goes over in her presentation. If you would like to learn more about this topic, you can watch the webinar Transform Your Average Meetings to Top-Performing Events.
