Continuing from our last 7 tips for web video conference calls, here are 7 more.
1. Annotation
When showing slides, documents, graphics, or searching the web you can annotate everything like you were writing with a pen on the screen. Good video conferencing software like GoToMeeting will allow you to do this.
Annotation is good for drawing the audience’s attention to a specific item and making things easier to explain.
2. Q&A Session
Having a question and answer session towards the end of video conference calls will be very beneficial.
A video call is supposed to be interactive and your audience should get a chance to express their opinions and ask their questions.
Bear in mind that the Q&A session of a video conference call can get quite lengthy so budget this into your time. The Q&A session could take just as long as your actual presentation. Even allowing up to 30 minutes for this can be acceptable.
3. A summary
The last few minutes of a videoconference should be spent summing up what was discussed to keep everything fresh in people’s mind. Laying out some further reading or “homework” is often a good idea.
4. Measure Results & Show stats
A good video conferencing platform will include statistics that can help you measure how successful your conference was. Almost all aspects of the whole video call can be shown in some form of report allowing you to evaluate your audience participation, as well as many other factors.
These statistics can also be useful to show to your audience in a follow-up email as people are often intrigued by stats. For example your stats may show that one person didn’t say anything during the whole video conference, which may encourage them to share ideas in future.
5. Homework & Follow up
Before the video conference call is over give everyone some homework, be it just something to read. This helps keep people thinking about what was said in the conference keeping it fresh in their mind.
Also ask them to email feedback or comments about what was discussed in the video conference.
Your video conferencing platform should make it easy for you to email and follow everyone up with a standard email and even automate it for you.
6. Archive Presentations
Not everyone may have been able to make it to the video conference and sometimes people who did attend would like to re-visit some of the things discussed. For this reason it is important to record and archive your video conference calls and make them available over the internet.
7. Practice Run
If you have your video conference all planned out it is still very important to have at least one practice run where you actually use the video conference call software so that you are familiar with how it works.
Time is precious and you certainly don’t want to embarrass yourself and lose time by making mistakes during a live video conference call.
