10 Beginner and Advanced Tips for Upping Your Zoom Game

I’m a media and public speaking coach, and because of the onslaught of videoconferencing during the pandemic, we now all have to up our games.  And there are some super simple tips — plus a few next-level moves for you advanced level folks — that can help everyone come across better in this virtual environment.  Here are my top 10 — but I’d love to hear your tips and hacks in the comments, too!  And please passive aggressively share this with your co-worker who did the last Zoom with the camera positioned up his nose hairs.

And of course, this is recognizing that being able to be on 50 Zoom calls a day is a privilege — for those of us still lucky enough to have work during this monstrous crisis.  That being said, looking like your Zoom screen is an audition tape for a low-budget hostage film is plainly abusing your privilege.  Let’s fix that.

1.  LEVEL UP THAT CAMERA

I don’t mean get a better camera, the one on your computer is probably fine.  I mean raise your camera to eye level.  Which for most of us means putting books under our laptop until the camera is level with our eyes.  You don’t want to be looking down at your audience.  That’s condescending.  And visually unflattering to you.

2.  MAINTAIN CONSTANT EYE CONTACT

This one is tricky but important.  Think about how you experience Zoom.  For you to have the experience of the person on your screen looking you in the eyes, that person actually needs to be looking at her camera.  So if you want your audience to feel like you’re looking them in the eyes — which is especially important when you’re the one presenting — you need to maintain 1000% constant eye contact with your camera.  Yes, I know there’s no such thing as 1000% but that’s the point, you literally have to try hard to do it all the time and then some when you’re the one speaking.  Or even if you’re listening, say to a co-worker sharing a hard moment, and you want them to feel like you’re looking at them.  Need a reminder?  Stick a post-it on your screen with an arrow pointing at your computer for the times you need it.

3.  KNOW WHERE YOUR CAMERA ACTUALLY IS

This is mainly for my Mac laptop friends:  Your camera is NOT the little green light.  The green light is just an indicator that your camera is in use.  But the camera itself is actually about a centimeter to the left of the green light.  So don’t look at the green light, look at the actual camera.

4.  LIGHT FROM THE FRONT, NOT THE BACK

If you have windows with nice natural light, position yourself so you’re facing the windows.  And/or if you need extra light, put a lamp in front of your face just behind your computer or off to the side.  You want the appearance of natural, bright (but not too bright) lighting.  Think home office in a rom-com, not home office in a serial killer biopic.   

5.  GRAB A PIECE OF WHITE PAPER

Put it on the table underneath where your chin is.  It will bounce a teeny bit of light upwards and help cancel out those bags under your eyes from the fact that it’s impossible to be on this many Zooms and working constantly while running a full-time homeschooling and daycare operation.  

6.  UPGRADE YOUR REAL-LIFE BACKGROUND

There are highly trained, massive teams of people making those rom-com offices look just so.  Pretend you’re one of them and give your background a little attention.  Some well-placed and well-chosen books.  An ironic but subtle tchotchke (my Lily Tomlin prayer candle is a personal favorite).  Plants are great.  And if you don’t have shelves or art or, well, anything but a giant blank wall, do something about that.  Grab a cute piece of fabric and use some thumbtacks to hang it on one side of your background.  Try some twinkle lights or white-corded Christmas tree lights draping vertically (it’s more slimming).  One of my clients with a great design eye did a combination of these — and the effect is a designed backdrop that doesn’t look too deliberate or fussy.  That allows you to stand out for what you’re saying — not for how bad your setting is. Oh, and also FYI, virtual backgrounds are not appropriate for high-stakes Zoom meetings.

7.  A WORD ON MICS AND HEADPHONES

Previous points not withstanding, being heard is more important than looking good.  Truly.  The whole thing is a waste if the people on the other end can’t actually hear or understand what you’re saying.  So if there’s noise in your background, or if you’re soft-spoken, wear a headset or some Bluetooth headphones or whatever the heck you have that works.  And make sure you know where the microphone part is and don’t bump it with your hands or put it where your hair will brush it and make noise.  

8.  FRAME YOUR SHOT

Generally speaking, you want your videoconference shot framed from your mid-chest to the top of your head.  And you don’t want the top of your head chopped off.  You actually want a little space above your head in your camera framing.  All of which means that you shouldn’t be right on top of your camera — say with your face filling up most of the screen.  But you also don’t want to be too far away, so that your just a tiny feature of what everyone is seeing.  Obviously this depends on the work you do, and what else your colleagues need to see around you, but most often the point of you being on a Zoom is YOU being on a Zoom.  So as a rule of thumb, 50% of the pixels in the camera shot you’ve set up should be you.  That rough formula gives your audience a good amount of you, while not being too much or too little.  

9.  GESTURE BELOW THE FRAME

You’re a hand talker.  I get it.  I’m an East Coast Jew, my hands are actually the motors of my speech. However, in a properly framed Zoom call, we shouldn’t see your hands that often.  Unless you’re deliberately holding up three fingers to tell us that you’re going to make three points, and thus seeing your hands in that moment is deliberate and important, most of the time your gestures are more about giving you the animated energy that will come across on the screen for the rest of us even if we can’t see your hands.  So keep them around your belly button.  In fact, if you really want to go to town gesture-wise, push back from your desk/table a bit so you have room to maneuver.  But try to gesture in a horizontal plane around your belly, so that those of us watching get the emotional effects and energy of your gestures but don’t actually see you gesturing.  Because in a tiny camera frame like that, gestures can be distracting.  So this way you keep them mostly to yourself.    

10.  SIT UP, DAMMIT

Posture is everything.  We might not notice if someone is slouching at an in-person meeting with 20 other folks in the room, but on a video conference, we’re gonna notice — especially if only ONE person is slouching and everyone else isn’t.  So sit up.  A good rule of thumb here is, especially when you’re presenting, pretend your chair doesn’t have a back and sit in the middle of the seat you’re in.  Plant both feet firmly on the ground — no sitting cross-legged when the spotlight is on you.  Sit up as tall as you can, pulling your spine to its full length/height.  And then, tilt forward.  Just a smidge.  So you look just that little bit extra engaged.  Trust me, it looks great on camera.  Also, if your grandmother never told you, tables are for wrists, not elbows.  Don’t lean on your elbows on your desk/table or that ruins the whole sitting up concept.

There are plenty of other suggestions, plus ways to improve your own unique performance in video conferencing, but these are the catch-all basics.  Bear in mind, you won’t use all of these all of the time.  For informal calls with teams I know well, I still spend plenty of time with my laptop on my desk, looking down at the camera, with my ceiling light halo-ing my head from the back.  Sometimes you even gotta break your own rules.  But when it counts, when I need to be “on,” these are my go-to tips.  And I hope they’re useful to you. 

Again, would love to hear any good hacks you’ve come up with, too.  Share in the comments!