Sixfast- to-learn and easy-to-implement tips that increase a lot your chances to run successfully any video conference
In a world of virtual conferences where the mantra is to engage participants in any way and by all means, the importance of a good video experience for your guests cannot be underestimated. To understand the importance of video communication, consider that, according to the US Department of Labor, people retain 65 % of the information delivered through a combination of visual and verbal messages against a poor 10% of the communication delivered through verbal messages only.
Video conferencing is the only medium that allows you to communicate on both ways today. Therefore, assure your guests the best in term of video experience is crucial for whomever, whether he be a speaker, a marketer or a business man. These five tips will help you to make you and your participants to profit as much as possible from video conferences.
First, eliminate environmental noises: nothing is more annoying for your guests than hearing ringing phones, text message typing or other not pertinent noises on the background. Before any meeting, please ask the participants to close, mute or silence their mobiles. Naturally, you have to do the same.
Keep eye-contact with the participants to your video conference. Keeping eye-contact is crucial also in real life meetings. This is quite easy to do, you have simply to set your web cam at eye height and watching it while speaking.
Ban side conversations. People that start chatting to each other are annoying during real conversations, never mind in a virtual meeting. Therefore, you should ban side conversations and ask people to devote their attention only to the speaker. Today, video conferencing tools like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) enable clients to easily disallow or mute peer-to-peer chats and side conversations.
Dress up for the occasion. Clothes make the man, we say. This is true in both real and virtual life. Therefore, take care of your appearance, exactly as in real meetings. Before the meeting shave yourself, visit your hairdresser and wear appropriate clothes for the occasion. Video won’t save you if you look wild, dirty or not properly dressed up.
Be natural. When speaking, be relaxed and natural as much as possible. Try to make the meeting an enjoyable process for any participant, by smiling, laughing if it is the case, and answering questions. If you feel self-confident, participants will realize it immediately, and they will be relaxed as well. Putting your guests at ease increases a lot your chances to successfully run your video conference.
Take care of the visual noise. Noise is also visual. Ban anything in the background of your screen that can cause distractions, like paintings, posters, furniture, people that come and go. Ideally, you should have a white panel behind and nothing else.