Avoid These Zoom Meeting Mistakes
Zoom is a great platform that you can use to grow your business. Unfortunately, not everyone uses it right, and they end up with Zoom events that do not achieve their goals. In this article, we will discuss the most common mistakes that people make with Zoom meetings so that you can avoid them and get the best results.
1. Not Planning your Zoom Event
While it is sometimes OK to have a one-to-one Zoom call with someone without any planning, it is a different story if you are scheduling a meeting with a number of participants or a webinar.
You need to decide what you want to achieve with your meetings before you hold them. If you don’t do this, it is straightforward to wander all over the place, confusing your attendees.
Ensure you have all your materials prepared before your Zoom meeting. This includes presentation slides, web pages you want to use, applications, etc. A good tip is to open web pages and applications on your computer so that you can quickly bring them up when you share your screen. Nobody wants to see things loading.
The best Zoom events are always well prepared for. You can practice your event on your own before you go live and record this to identify weak areas that need to be addressed. If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.
2. Get rid of Distractions
There is nothing worse than a significant distraction in a Zoom event. If you are explaining a complex concept and suddenly your phone rings, you will lose your audience. You must do everything that you can to eliminate distractions.
If you are hosting your Zoom event from home, keep your children and pets away. Screaming kids and barking dogs are not conducive to a good Zoom business meeting. We understand that you love your kids and pets, but they can be distracting, so do the right thing here.
Check your background before launching your Zoom meeting. Does the room you are using look cluttered with stuff? If it is, this will distract your audience, and they will quickly form a wrong opinion of you that you want to avoid at all costs.
3. Be Interactive
Nobody wants to attend an hour-long Zoom event where the host rambles. This is very boring for the participants. Make your Zoom events interactive by getting your audience to participate as much as possible.
One of the best ways to do this is to allow them to ask questions that you will answer. You can have questions and answers at the end of each section (if appropriate) or at the end of the meeting. Ask your audience questions as well to test for understanding. Use surveys and polls for even greater interactivity.
4. Not Timing your Zoom Event
The attention span of human beings is getting less and less. Studies have found that people will digest information best in 7-minute chunks, so bear this in mind with your events. If you tell your audience that your event will last around an hour, stick to this as much as possible.
Why You Need To Use Zoom In Your Business
When writing this article, the coronavirus pandemic is gripping, making it challenging to meet people face-to-face. As a result, the number of people using the Zoom platform has grown significantly as it provides a great way to connect with people during quarantine.
Even after the pandemic, there are many good reasons why you should use Zoom to grow your business, and we will cover the most important ones here. The Zoom platform is very flexible; you can do many things with it, even with a free account.
Collaboration with your Team
Many businesses nowadays outsource specific tasks to freelancers located anywhere in the world. If you have a small business, you will unlikely have the budget to recruit web designers, copywriters, programmers, etc. So it makes sense to outsource these kinds of roles.
Communication is essential with anyone you have outsourced tasks to. You need to ensure that they fully understand what you need, and it will help explain to them the role they are playing in developing your business. Zoom meetings are a very convenient way of doing this.
Even if you have your employees, they may be located in different offices, and it is far more cost-effective to hold a Zoom meeting to discuss business than having everyone travel to a single location. The bottom line is that Zoom helps you better collaborate with your team and save money and time.
New Leads and Customers
You can use Zoom to generate leads and acquire new customers. For example, the Zoom webinar platform is a great way to do this. You can also use Zoom meetings with your existing customers to generate more business.
If you have a business that people worldwide can benefit from, you must use Zoom to communicate with them. Even a local-based business can benefit from using Zoom. There are many examples of local companies using Zoom to provide their customers better service.
An excellent example is when a restaurant accepts Zoom calls to discuss menu options, specials, etc. If you want to order food delivered to your home, you can use Zoom to speak with the restaurant to ensure you get precisely what you want.
Training with Zoom
You can use the Zoom platform to train your students. Let’s say you offer a Zoom training course on social media marketing. You can charge people to attend your live Zoom training sessions and then use the features within Zoom to deliver the training.
It is possible to train or coach with a one-to-one Zoom call or train a group with a Zoom meeting. You can share your screen to provide “over-the-shoulder training” and use the whiteboard feature to explain concepts. Prepare a presentation on your computer and then share this with your students for learning.
These are just three great ways to use Zoom to grow your business. We recommend you look at what Zoom can do and identify how to use it to your advantage.