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 just 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 then it is very easy to wander all over the place leaving your attendees totally confused.
Make sure that you have all of your materials prepared prior to your Zoom meeting. This includes presentation slides, web pages that you want to use, applications, and so on. A good tip is to have web pages and applications already open 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 as well and record this so that you can 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 major distraction in a Zoom event. If you are explaining a complex concept and suddenly your phone rings then you are going to lose your audience. You must do everything that you can to eliminate distractions.
If you are hosting your Zoom event from home then keep your children and your pets away. Screaming kids and barking dogs are not conducive to a good Zoom business meeting. We get it that you love your kids and your pets but they can be a real distraction so do the right thing here.
Check your background prior to launching your Zoom meeting. Does the room you are using look totally cluttered with stuff? If it is then this will distract your audience and they will quickly form a bad 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 just rambles on the whole time. 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 which you will answer. You can either have questions and answers at the end of each section (if this is 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 then try and stick to this as much as possible.
Why You Need To Use Zoom In Your Business
At the time of writing this article, the world is gripped by the coronavirus pandemic making it difficult to meet with people face to face. As a result, the number of people using the Zoom platform has grown significantly as it provides them with 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 and you can do a lot of things with it even with a free account.
Collaboration with your Team
A lot of businesses nowadays outsource specific tasks to freelancers who could be located anywhere in the world. If you have a small business then it is unlikely that you will have the budget to recruit web designers, copywriters, programmers, and others. So it makes sense to outsource these kinds of roles.
Communication is very important with anyone that you have outsourced tasks to. You need to ensure that they fully understand what you need and it will help to explain to them the role that they are playing in the development of your business. Zoom meetings are a very convenient way of doing this.
Even if you have your own employees they may be located in different offices and it is far more cost effective to hold a Zoom meeting to discuss business than it is to have everyone travel to a single location. The bottom line here is that Zoom helps you to collaborate with your team better and save money and time in the process.
New Leads and Customers
You can use Zoom to generate leads and acquire new customers. The Zoom webinar platform is a great way to do this for example. You can also use Zoom meetings with your existing customers to generate more business from them.
If you have a business that people around the world can benefit from then you must use Zoom to communicate with them. Even a local based business can benefit from using Zoom. There are many examples of where local businesses have used Zoom to provide their customers with a better service.
A good example of this is where a restaurant accepts Zoom calls to discuss menu options and specials etc. If you want to order food to be delivered to your home you can use Zoom to speak with the restaurant to ensure that you get exactly what you want.
Training with Zoom
You can use the Zoom platform to train your students. Let’s say that you offer a 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 you can also 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 that you can use Zoom to grow your business. We recommend that you take a look at what Zoom can do and then identify how you can use it to your advantage.