Making Video Conferencing a success

Video conferencing has been on the rise ever since the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. It has seen communities come together over the digital medium and is now a popular choice to make those crucial plans and business deals. As there has been no other way to communicate face to face its forced people to take this on board and the overall verdict has been overwhelming as users are learning a lot more and speeding up their working day.

The do’s and don’ts

Have a plan

Make sure especially in a business environment you have an outline of what the video call is going to be about and having list of questions and/or comments is a great way to a free flowing call. Thus speeds up the meeting and will not need to reschedule saving you time for another client.

Add it to your calendar

As long as you have accepted or declined a video call you need to make a note of it. Most video calling apps will give you the option to add the appointments to ical, outlook and google calendar. If you find that you will not be able to attend the meeting or need to reschedule then you can easily edit your appointment on the calendar and that will notify your recipients immediately.

Update and test equipment

Make sure that everything works before making that all important call. Certain factors can add to the stress of your device or software not working.

test the camera is working and allow the software to access it
test the volume/speakers and allow the software to access it
- adjust the volume input/output
- use headphones with a mic built in
update the software if prompted to
familiarise yourself with the features of the software

Location

It is advisable to be located in a quiet room with little or no distractions (email notification, phone call, texts ect). Make sure that anything behind you won’t be a distraction to the other users and don’t forget to hide any private documents you may have on display.

The mute button

At some point with a conference call users may have a presentation of some sorts to get through with a Q&A at the end. It’s really a good practice to click the mute button minimising any distractions and allowing the other user to be audible through out.