4 Tips on How to Hold a Great Virtual Meeting

Written by Sessions | March 25, 2022

In 2022, the aspects of your professional life that haven’t been digitalized are few and far between. From chatting to conferences, everything is now happening online. Virtual meetings have now become part of the norm. And they’ll continue to be a part of our professional life for as long as we work.

Some of the principles of holding a meeting remain the same regardless of the medium in which they occur. But others become more relevant for online meets. It’s never too late to upskill your abilities to hold online meetings and get the best experience possible for all participants. Here are four tips I find essential for online discussions:

Tip #1: Have a meeting agenda

Time is money. According to a report by Doodle, the US only lose around 399 billion dollars with the time employees spend in unproductive meetings. And the main reason is the lack of a structured agenda.

Sessions is designed to incorporate the Agenda within all of your meetings. You configure it once and then save it as a template for all your future appointments. You import it, and you’re good to go!

You add in Sessions Agenda all the resources you’ll need for the gathering to easily find in one spot: videos, documents, surveys, images. With the platform’s native tools and integrations, almost everything is possible.

Tip #2: Diversify to avoid boredom

Monologs are for plays and movies. In meetings, everything should be a conversation. It should also have diversity: you can get your point across using multiple ways: a presentation, a video, a song, a drawing, a brainstorming meeting.

Sessions brings in one place all the tools you may need to do just that without having to switch to 5 other platforms or apps. It has integrations with YouTube, Vimeo and Twitch for videos; Miro and a native Smartboard for designing; Figma, Adobe XD, for prototyping and Canva for presentations. These are some of the tools you can use to create an efficient virtual meeting. Configure and enjoy them in your session!

Tip #3: Engage your audience

A meeting with a few people is easier to manage. But what happens when you have dozens? They could be all involved (which would leave you overwhelmed) or be passive. Neither is desirable.

Sessions offers solutions for both scenarios:

To easily manage your queries, ask participants to use Sessions tool, Questions. It allows you to have all submitted questions in one dedicated area, where you can easily find them and answer them. When you answer a question, you can select it and display it on the screen for everyone to see.
Use Sessions’ built-in Form to survey your audience directly on the platform. Also, take advantage of the integrations with Slido and Mentimeter to create engaging presentations, polls, quizzes and Q&A sessions.

Tip #4: Take notes of what happened in the meeting

Spoken words fly away; written words remain. The truth is, everything that’s important should always be written down, especially in complex meetings where there are more topics discussed.

Precisely for these instances, Sessions has two possibilities:

Takeaways is the meeting’s minutes. You write down the gathering’s most relevant points. All your participants will receive them via email (as long as they have a Sessions account).
My Notes is where participants can write down private information. After the meeting ends, provided they have a Sessions account, your audience receives their notes via email.

We hope you got some great tips and that you’ll implement them in your next meeting. Whether you are already a Sessions user or not, nothing is stopping you from getting the most out of your virtual meetings.

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