If you frequently host or attend Virtual Meetings, Aira – AI Meeting Assistant can prove to be very useful. Well, if you haven’t heard about this tool, you’re missing out on something amazing. Read along to know about its significance in your life.
Virtual Meetings were there for quite a long time. However, this pandemic has made them more frequent (Zoom saw 200 million participants each day in 2020). But most meetings aren’t productive, which can cost you time and money.
However, you can change this notion by keeping in mind a few things. Below, you can find some amazing ways to help you enhance the virtual meeting experience. You’ll also find a brief comparison of google meet vs hangouts to help you choose better.
So, let’s begin.
5 Amazing Ways to Enhance Your Virtual Meeting Experience
1. Encourage Participation
One way to make your virtual meetings better is by increasing participation. The more interaction you encourage, the more productive the meeting will be. It’ll help in giving the feel as if a physical meeting is going on.
Also, you can host an ice breaker session before jumping into the meeting. It’ll make the team members familiar with each other. And thus, you can expect better participation.
2. Be on Time
Now, if you are not present in the meeting on time, other participants might lose interest. So, make sure to always stay on time. And you can ensure this with Aira – AI Meeting Assistant.
Aira: AI Meeting Assistant is an amazing tool meant to enhance your meeting experience. It’ll pick the meeting time from your calendar and will automatically join the meeting. This way you won’t ever be late.
3. Set Objectives/Goals
If there’s too much to discuss, even physical meetings become meaningless, let alone virtual ones. So, set specific objectives or points you need to talk about in the meeting.
What if there’s too much to discuss? Well, in that case, you can use Aira – AI Assistant. It records the conversations and prepares transcripts for you when the meeting ends.
Also, it helps you with notes, action items, and keywords to ensure that you miss nothing.
4. Stay Interactive & Engage with others
Manier times, participants turn off their video and zone out. While someone is not on the screen, they’re probably doing something else. And this is something you should avoid from happening.
To engage with your team, you can: –
- Talk to them more frequently
- Ask for their response/opinion/views
- Use stories frequently
- Use Visual representation
This way, everyone will stay active and engage with you. It’s another good way to enhance the virtual meeting experience.
5. Keep a note of the time
Staring at the screen for long hours is hard for everyone. So, make sure that you keep a note of the time and keep the meeting time brief. What if you’re lost unloading information?
Well, in that case, you can use Aira – AI Meeting Assistant. It comes with this amazing feature known as Meeting Minutes, which is based on AI. This feature calculates the meeting minutes using which you can track the time.
It’ll help you wrap up the meeting on or before time. Here’s a bonus tip. Sometimes, wrap the meeting 5-10 minutes early than scheduled. You might now know, but it will give good relief to your employees.
Most meetings are around 31-60 minutes long, as per Attentiv. So, keep the duration of your meetings well within this limit
6. Don’t act like the boss
We know you’re the boss but don’t act like one in the meeting. If you are the one speaking all the time, it’ll bore your team members. They might start multitasking or disconnect the meeting altogether.
So, to avoid this, talk to your team and engage with them. Let them speak and ask their opinions. Even if you ask the opinion of two participants, the others will automatically stay alert.
7. Stay Professional
Now, this one’s a no-brainer. Yes, you want to engage with the participants and open up. But as the manager or the host, you need to ensure professional behavior.
Professional behavior and discipline remind the participants that something serious is happening. Here is what you need to focus on: –
- Time zones: If you’re working with an overseas team, make sure you keep a note of the time zone. After all, you don’t want to schedule a meeting when it’s midnight in one of your participant’s countries. Use a time zone converter and schedule a meeting with everyone’s consent.
- Dress Properly: Don’t join the meeting in the Bermudas. Stay professional as you were in the office. It’ll help in maintaining discipline.
- Turn off Microphone if not in use: When you’re done speaking, turn your Microphone off. After all, you wouldn’t want your team to listen to loud typing or your dog barking, right?
- Keep the questions for the end: In case you’re hosting a non-interactive meeting, schedule questions for the last. It’ll help you move more smoothly as there won’t be any interruptions in between.
- Don’t use your phone unless totally necessary: Don’t use your smartphone during the meeting unless necessary. It’ll portray as if you’re not interested in the meeting.
Which software to use for Virtual Meetings: Google Meet vs Hangouts
Well, both this software gets the job done. However, Google meet is meant for larger companies and hangouts for smaller ones. Hangout is free, while Google Meet is a paid service.
Google Meet comes with numerous features and is more professional. However, Hangouts is more of a casual video conferencing software.
You can check this comparison of Google Meet vs Hangouts. The insights in the above link will help you make the right choice.
Conclusion
Virtual meetings can be productive for some and useless for others. It depends on how you want to make it sound like. If you follow the above tips and use Aira – AI Meeting Assistant, you can increase productivity. Also, you can enhance the entire virtual meeting experience both for you and for your team.