How to make your virtual meetings more fun

Virtual meetings are one of the most common ways for people to communicate, but they come with a unique set of challenges. Oftentimes, they turn out to be one-way discussions with listeners on mute, and are sometimes unproductive since attendees can easily multitask without drawing attention as they would in person.

Virtual meetings are an important part of any team working remotely, so you’ll need to keep them engaging and interesting. Read on to learn how you can make your virtual meetings more fun by making a few basic adjustments.

Add a visual element

Most of the time you’re in a virtual meeting, you’re likely looking at a series of boxes with your coworkers’ faces. Depending on who’s speaking, the order of the boxes will change and different people will occupy the main speaker spot. This constantly changing view is mentally draining for meeting attendees and can actually lead to video conference fatigue. 

Your meeting attendees have likely attended their fair share of virtual meetings throughout the week. Rather than giving them the same old experience, use Prezi Video to add a dynamic visual element to your meeting. Prezi Video is an easy-to-use video presentation tool that works with the top video conferencing platforms. With Prezi Video, your content will appear right next to you on screen, so you can add fun pictures, a diagram, or a key point you want to highlight without losing that facetime with the other people on the call. 

Prezi’s very own Lynn Tran talks about the benefits of using Prezi Video in this short video:

Encourage participation

What makes virtual meetings more fun and interesting is the ability for everyone to collaborate and contribute to the conversation. Don’t be so rigid with the format of your meeting, make sure there’s plenty of time for people to chime in and ask questions, and allow the conversation to influence the direction of the meeting.

Prezi Video is a great way to create conversational presentations that you can adapt on the fly. This is great for sales meetings with potential clients who may have a lot of questions, and for team meetings when a lot of people in the meeting may want to speak up.

You may also run into situations where just a few people dominate the conversation. Encourage everyone on the call to participate — a few easy ways to do this are:

• Running a poll. This is a great ice-breaker for the beginning of the meeting.
• Brainstorming using collaborative tools.
• Going “around the table.” At the end of the meeting, encourage everyone in the meeting to ask a question or share their perspective.

Set expectations

Every meeting should have clear objectives and the people attending them should know what’s going to be discussed. Before your meeting starts, send out an email outlining what you want to accomplish. Having an agenda is a great way to keep the conversation moving and avoid letting discussion topics peter out. 

It takes a lot of effort to organize a virtual meeting, so don’t waste time once you have everyone together. If you can’t pin down a discussion topic or justify a reason for everyone to meet at the same time, it could be that you don’t need a meeting. Or perhaps you could even cover the topics you want to discuss asynchronously by recording a video and sharing it with your colleagues.

Hosting a fun and productive virtual meeting is a little different than hosting one in person, but with the right tools and planning, your virtual meetings can be the highlight on your coworkers’ calendars. Learn more about what you can do to make your virtual meetings more fun and run more smoothly in ScreenRec’s ultimate guide to virtual meetings. You’ll find recommendations for tools, tips on planning and setting goals, and advice for encouraging more participation.

Prezi Video is an excellent way to break free from the “same-old” video meetings. If you want to see how you can use it to make your virtual meetings more fun, you can learn more about Prezi Video here.