Zoom-tastic Events that Engage

 

Welcome! I’m so excited to share our training with you.

I’m Jennifer Buchholz of Excel & Flourish, and this training is all about how to get virtual events and meetings that ENGAGE!

In this training, we’re doing an actual meeting/training that demonstrates some techniques to engage your attendees.

Here’s the training. For an overview of what we’ve covered and minute-markers for topics, see below.

Enjoy the video:

Pro Tips:

(with minute markers)

  • 2:48 - Have something to do to engage participants as they’re joining the meeting. This will help them get focused on the event/topic at hand.

    • Music

    • Survey

    • Poll

    • Chat messages

  • 3:18 - If you’re letting people in early or starting after the schedule time, put the start time in the chat. Note that people can’t see chat messages posted prior to joining, so re-post as new attendees arrive.

  • 3:30 - Pre-write the chat posts. Have them ready to go and copy/paste them so you can focus on running the meeting?

  • 4:14 - Consider pre-typing your Q&A questions or FAQs so they are ready to post or could be handed off to an assistant

  • 5:03 - Ask a variety of questions to engage - be clear on what you’re asking and how you want them to respond

    • Closed questions - yes or no - show them how you want them to respond - like raising their hand or using the raise hand feature

    • Open questions - needs more details - use the chat to screen answers and then call on those who participated

  • 7:32 - Screen Sharing Tips - Have a PowerPoint or some way to share an agenda - sets the tone for the event and shows how it’s organized

    • Double check that everyone can see your screen sharing - the right screen being shared.

  • 8:28 - Sharing the Google Form - this is just one tool that you can use to capture data - get some quick reactions about the content/event/format. Sometimes when I’m delivering training, I use this to identify the group’s biggest challenges and that’s where we start the training. It can be a needs assessment or a gut check, or whatever - but the great thing about it is that you can share the results visually with the group. I like Google Forms because they are free, flexible and not tied to one platform (like a Zoom Poll).

  • 9:38 - Dual Monitors in Zoom - try it! It’s how you can SEE the EYEBALLS and check for engagement and understanding.

  • 12:33 - Set Expectations about what attendees should expect for the event.

    • On camera or not?

    • Listen only (or need to see)

    • Agenda

    • Break frequency

  • 14:20 - Hybrid events - get help!

  • 16:32 - Check In - Engagement Slide - Activity - how to use annotation - be sure to turn on the Security Setting when sharing the screen for the first time to to allow participants to annotate on shared content.

  • 22:33 - Roll Call - Engagement Slide - Activity - a structured approach to getting feedback from participants

  • 25:03 - Why PowerPoint - Zoom has a whiteboard and it’s great - and you can save what’s done on the whiteboard. But you can’t create a structure on the whiteboard in advance and you can’t have multiple structure options built in. That’s why I love the engagement slides on PowerPoint - I have a variety of them ready to go based on what I might do in the event - I just pull one up - easy peasy.

  • 25:33 - HOLY MOLY! Zoom is going to kick me out during my own dang meeting! Here’s how to gracefully exit and set an expectation for participants.

    • NOTE if you do get stuck (screen freezes and doesn’t come back) during your own Zoom event, on a Windows machine, go to your task manager (CTRL+ALT+Delete), select Zoom and End Task. That will shut down Zoom and bring you right back in.

  • 26:35 - Always have a Co-Host! They can help manage the waiting room, polls, muting and more.

  • 28:24 - Tips for Hosts and to share with First Time Zoom users.

  • 30:26 - Audio Settings and how to Troubleshoot - provide verbal guidance and also have that ready to post in chat.

    • Sample post: If you’re having trouble hearing us, go to the bottom left corner of your screen. Click the up arrow next to the microphone/mute button. Check the speaker you’re using is selected. You can run a Test Speaker & Microphone right now - it won’t disrupt us. Last resort is to Switch to Phone Audio - click that and follow those instructions to dial in to the event.

  • 32:25 - Fashion Advice from the Queen

  • 33:18 - Camera Settings - making sure you look great!

  • 34:23 - Bandwidth Issues

  • 35:21 - Time for Questions - don’t wait until the last 5 minutes and try to squeeze questions in. Instead start gathering questions in the last 1/3 of the event.

  • 35:38 - Virtual Backgrounds - YAY or NAY?

  • 36:41 - Mini-Green Screen option

  • 38:31 - Name and Headshot - best practices

  • 40:44 - How to change your name

  • 41:37 - Some Zoom for Mac considerations

  • 43:27 - Touch up my Appearance feature

  • 44:42 - Differences on joining in the desktop app vs the web and joining from the link vs the app

  • 45:53 - Breakout Rooms - be sure you have enabled them - click here for details. Remember this is a HOST-only feature. The host can assign a new host to run breakout rooms if desired.

  • 50:46 - Script for starting breakout rooms: Okay everybody, we're going to be going into breakout rooms in just a moment. You've been randomly assigned and there's going to be ## people per room. Once you get into the room, you are going to be automatically transported there like magic, and you're going to have ## minutes in the room. In that room, you will (assign topic here including things like who’s the timer, who’s the note-taker, who’s reporting back and how, and what they’re to do). You'll see that timer in the upper right hand corner, so you'll see how much time you have left. You'll get a notification that you have # seconds left before you're pulled back into the main room. You can stay there for the whole extra ## seconds. If you have any other conversation to finish up, but otherwise we'll see you back here in ## minutes ## seconds.

  • 52:00 - Whiteboard/Slide

  • 52:39 - Polls in Zoom - be sure you have enabled them - click here for details

  • 54:04 - Contact me at [email protected]

  • 54:16 - Ask Me Anything - feel free to join me for my monthly Ask Me Anything Live Q&A Webinar - Register Here.

Grab the downloads here - just click on the image