With the adaptation of remote work culture, virtual meetings have become a vital part of everyone’s lives. As organizations prioritize to protect their employees from the global pandemic with several restrictions on traveling and work culture, there’s a definite possibility that virtual online meetings will continue to stay even after the global situation normalizes.
Once you have decided to host a virtual meeting, the next step entails determining the right virtual meeting platform. It is to make your event a remarkable and memorable experience for your employees.
But, before you plunge into your aims and endeavors to accomplish more productive virtual meetings, let us take you through an ultimate guide that will help you make your meetings more engaging and interactive;
What is a Virtual Meeting?
A virtual meeting involves people residing in different locations to connect at a time using the right online event technology to achieve a shared objective. Online meetings are generally simpler to plan and execute. They facilitate companies to connect and interact with a remote workforce, clients, stakeholders, and global delegates on a real-time basis.
Today, virtual meetings have become an essential component of various industries. If you want to connect with everyone in the organization, hire a new employee, discuss organization goals and objectives, or offer training sessions to your employees, consider hosting virtual town hall meetings, virtual conferences, and virtual AGMs to meet your agenda.
Types of Virtual Meeting
Digital tools proceed to pave the way for effective means of interaction within companies. One of the most important advancements to get everyone from the organization on the same page is through virtual meetings.
Virtual Corporate Meeting
They are defined as business-oriented meetings where the virtual attendees represent the same organization, corporate society, joint-venture, or client associations. The different types of virtual corporate meetings are; Virtual Board Meeting, Virtual Investor Meeting, Virtual Shareholder Meeting, Virtual Roundtable Meeting.
Virtual Sales Meeting
This meeting is the accumulation of processes and technologies through which different salespeople engage with global buyers remotely using synchronous and asynchronous communications. These meetings gained extreme importance after the global pandemic hit the world. A prosperous virtual sales meeting majorly depends on the online event technology solution that enables every attendee to connect and interact seamlessly. The most popular virtual sales meetings are; Virtual Pitch Meeting, Virtual Sales Meet, Virtual Sales Kick-Off, Virtual Annual Sales Meeting.
Virtual Annual General Meetings
These are important assets for several associations, companies, and businesses to come together and have valuable discussions to keep everyone on the same page. AGMs are becoming a popular choice due to various causes, the most important being the excellent engagement opportunities that they provide. Starting from employees, managers, to stakeholders of the company, all of them can seamlessly connect through a reliable virtual event platform. An ideal virtual event venue should hold the ability to conduct live Q&A sessions, polls, surveys, track attendance navigation, and many more.
Virtual Conferences
Virtual Conferences, the term itself is broad and self-explanatory. An online conference meeting is conducted between a wide group of people who come together to discuss mutual themes and agendas. Look for an end-to-end virtual event platform that allows speakers, audiences, organizers, and exhibitors to network, and interact remotely using a virtual environment and have memorable experiences through video/audio conferencing.
Virtual Townhall Meetings
An immensely successful Town Hall Meeting is primarily a gathering of participants located in diverse locations. Attendees can access these online meetings from their desired location through any means such as smartphones, computers, laptops, or tablets. They are an excellent communication means for a company to have meaningful interactions between the employees and administrators. Besides this make sure to choose a virtual venue that can also add a fun element like a leaderboard challenge, crosswords, word game, quiz, and a lot more to encourage engagement among the attendees. Nowadays, there’s another type of meeting termed virtual all-hands meeting similar to town hall meets that has been gaining extreme popularity.
Virtual Team Meetings
Although this was imposed on us by the global pandemic, today, it seems to be a great option to connect with your employees or team members remotely at a time. An ideal virtual event platform enriched with several IT tools, digital advancements, and shared applications lets you conduct successful and interactive virtual team meetings. Some most popular types of virtual team meetings are; Virtual Office Meet, Virtual Staff Meeting, Virtual Stand Up Meeting.
Benefits of Virtual Meetings
1. Cost-effective
Hosting a virtual meeting eliminates the expenses of traveling, accommodation, transportation, food, and catering. This amount can be invested into the company for enhanced research and development, hiring, corporate development, and resources. Often various stakeholders and potential leads miss the chance of attending a virtual annual general meeting because of the distance. Hence, this is why choosing a virtual platform for meetings will encourage maximum participation.
2. Encourages Maximum Participation
Conducting virtual meetings promotes better reach and increased attendance. These online meetings are hosted on a web-based platform that allows the audience to attend the event from different locations. Attendees can seamlessly log in from their laptop or mobile to take part in several virtual team meetings, virtual corporate meetings, virtual sales meetings, virtual board meetings, and many more.
People who miss the chance of attending on-site meetings due to any restriction find virtual meetings extremely beneficial.
3. Increased Opportunities
When we talk about on-site meetings, most people either miss the opportunity of attending them due to busy schedules or travel concerns.
But with virtual meetings, these concerns can be eliminated. It eventually leads to amplified attendance and increased opportunities. To host a prosperous virtual meeting, make sure to leverage the right online meeting platform that works on advanced methodologies and digital tools. With the right virtual meeting platform, you can include live audio & video content or share your presentations with the attendees seamlessly.
4. Environment-Friendly
Virtual meetings are surely an eco-friendly option that runs on green technology. People attending the event from remote locations leads to the minimization of carbon footprints. Apart from a decrease in carbon emissions, this eco-friendly option eliminates traveling, disposal of waste, and paper printing. All of this eventually lets you contribute towards a cleaner world.
How to host a Virtual Meeting?
Keeping attendees engaged during online meetings can be a challenging task. Therefore, to keep participants involved during any virtual investor meeting, virtual shareholder meeting, virtual roundtable meeting, or any other meeting taking place online, keep a strategic approach and ensure that the content you present is highly engaging.
To make it simpler and easier to understand, here are some essential points that you can go through before you decide to host a virtual meeting;
1. Be Clear With Your Meeting Agenda
Before you determine to host an online meeting, be clear with your meeting agenda and objectives. It will help you deliver the message or fulfill the purpose of your event seamlessly. Also, when you have definite objectives in your mind, it becomes easier to foresee the expected outcomes of a virtual event.
2. Pick The Most Suitable Virtual Meeting Platform
It is vital to choose your virtual venue partner wisely. A platform that incorporates the right virtual meeting technology and the ongoing virtual meeting trends helps you deliver unforgettable event experiences.
Make sure to receive a demo from the virtual event platform you choose to ensure that the platform’s features and innovations meet your business needs appropriately.
3. Invite People
At this stage, take some time and think about who shall be your attendees apart from the employees of the organization. After you have prepared a list of people who you want to visit your event, start sending them invitation emails. Post about your virtual meeting and its date & timing on the company’s official website and social media handles to encourage more participation.
4. Schedule Carefully
Be very reasonable and wise while choosing the date and time of your virtual meeting. Since you’ll be expecting people from different time zones, make sure to use efficient tools to help you plan better.
5. Set Some Specific Guidelines
Setting definite guidelines is an effective way to maintain the meeting structure. It will let the attendees behave appropriately and assure the successful running of the online meeting.
Let your attendees know how they’re supposed to contribute to the virtual meeting. For example, they should mute their mic when speakers, presenters, or other attendees are speaking, or they should introduce themselves before speaking.
6. Promote Engagement
It can be very boring to sit at the same place and stare at the screen for long hours. To eliminate this, it is important to keep your virtual attendees hooked and involved throughout the event. Consider including live polls, quizzes, surveys, and exciting games to make your virtual meeting more interactive. To do this rightly, make sure to choose an all-in-one virtual meeting software that has numerous features like AI matchmaking tools, virtual networking tools, CXO lounge, and a lot more to deliver life-like event experiences to your attendees.
7. Collect Relevant Feedback and Take a Follow-up
It is another vital aspect of a virtual meeting, virtual sales kick-off, virtual staff meeting, or anything of its kind. The valuable feedback of your attendees will give better insights into the features that were the hotspots of your virtual meeting. You could ask your attendees to fill up simple survey forms. A proper follow-up will help you make significant improvements to host an even better, and successful virtual meetings. Hence, this is why select the right virtual event platform company that will help you with accurate data, insights, and the ROI of your event.
8. Perform a dry-run
You should never miss out on this point. A dry-run is very important before any virtual event to avoid any kind of unexpected hindrance on the main day. Ask your virtual meeting platform provider to perform a test rehearsal with all the features, technologies, or innovations. It will help you understand how the platform will actually look or appear for the attendees and exhibitors.
The Role of an Ideal Virtual Event Platform
To notch up the level of your virtual meetings, it is important to pick an all-in-one virtual event platform. With the adoption of multiple video conferencing and collaboration features, you can combine branding and messaging in the right way. For instance, business, industry, and company events include a large spectrum of attendees coming together to consume valuable content, interact with specialists and engage with other attendees on a real-time basis.
Another primary highlight of a virtual event platform is its ability to customize branding. With the right event technology, they help you customize the brand logo, representation, colors, etc to leave a lasting impression. Therefore, it is vital to choose an online event platform that can smoothly incorporate the aspects of your virtual meetings.
Besides, hosting a virtual meeting, your online venue partner should be able to provide a mixture of engagement tools. This will help you facilitate and promote attendees to share their opinions, make relationships, and interact with others in real-time.
A Quick Checklist That You Should Go Through Before You Host a Virtual Meeting
- Determine your event objective and goals
- Plan out your budget
- Create an effective content plan
- Select an ideal virtual event platform that leverages the right event technology and is 100% secure and reliable
- Promote your virtual meeting
- Make sure to deliver a life-like and engaging event experience for your attendees
- Perform a test rehearsal
- Collect relevant attendee data and feedback
- Measure the ROI of your virtual meeting
Final Word
Companies increasingly conduct virtual meetings to interact with team members across the globe. However, these need various communication and engagement approaches when compared to face-to-face meetings.
Therefore, consider investing extra time in planning your virtual meeting. Get familiar with the virtual event platform in advance, and decide a probability plan to manage common glitches. Also, make sure that your virtual venue partner includes excellent tools to avoid or troubleshoot any technical flaw.
