10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Zoom Video Conferencing

Nearly the combined populations of France, Canada, Spain, Argentina, South Africa, North Korea, and Australia. That, according to Zoom, is approximately how many people participate in meetings daily on Zoom — as of April 2020, approximately 300,000,000. Zoom and every other online meeting and collaboration platform has exploded in popularity and usefulness in recent months. Whether you’re a student, teacher, employer, employee, or just someone trying to keep with far-flung friends and family, Zoom can be a powerful and useful system for hosting and participating in “meetings” or zooms online.

Zoom meetings are like in-person meetings. Not always comfortable, not always productive, and not always much fun. Here’s ten tips for how to get the best out of Zoom depending on what you’re using it for.

Looking to project a particular style?

Not everyone has the perfect or appropriate backdrop for a Zoom call from home or wherever one is working. Or maybe you just want to project more personality than the bare wall in your workspace offers. Either way, Zoom allows you to insert a virtual backdrop. On a desktop, simply go to Video Settings > Virtual Background, then click the arrow next to the video icon. Click “Plus” and pick an image from your photo gallery to appear behind you during the meeting. If you want to create something a little different, you can create your own custom background using Canva.

Integrate your meetings and participants’ calendars

Do you host lots of meetings on a recurring basis? You can use an application builder like Zapier to automatically add an appointment to the calendar of participants in any meeting you set up using Zoom. Zapier has automations off-the-shelf for calendar apps such as Google Calendar and Calendly, plus the option to build an automation for other calendar apps. Along the same vein, Zapier has integrations to alert meeting participants in their appropriate Slack channels, too. These options are ideal for recurring team or client meetings and for hosts who schedule lots of meetings but don’t have someone hovering near by to get all the follow-up scheduling and confirming done.

Use the option to create recurring meetings so you don’t have to recreate the wheel every time

If you use Zoom for regular meetings with the same group of people and will use the same meeting settings every time, you don’t need to go through the rigamarole of creating a new meeting and sending out a new url to participants everytime. Create a recurring meeting. That first url you send to participants will be the only one they’ll ever have to use.

Do you know who was there?

If you held a Zoom meeting for a large potential group of attendees, but didn’t take attendance or keep track of who said they’d attend, you can get that information after the fact from Zoom. This is an ideal feature for employers who do training through Zoom and need to confirm who received the training and when. To get a list of participants after the fact, simply access usage reports under Zoom Account Management > Reports > Usage Reports > Meeting. Select the appropriate dates and type of report you want, and Zoom will generate one. This is an option only available to hosts who administer or own the Zoom account and who have a Pro, API Partner, Education, or Business plan.

Know who you’re talking to

It’s one thing if you are in a meeting with close colleagues, but what if it’s a room of prospects, students, or strangers. Make sure to be able to see everyone’s name. You can ensure you see participants’ names by going to Settings > Video and selecting Always display participants’ name on their videos.

Look your best

Cameras on our phones, computers, tablets and devices are not always the most flattering. Zoom can’t freshen up our makeup or hair, or get rid of the 5:00 shadow we’ve been nurturing for days, or pluck your unibrow, but it can soften the focus a bit to help us look a little better. To help Zoom help you to look your best, go to Settings > Video and select Touch up my appearance.

Create a video recording of your meeting

If people who were not able to attend a meeting need to be able to obtain the same information later, or if you want to be able to review the meeting at a future date, keeping a video recording of your meeting is an excellent idea. You can store a video recording of your meeting locally (on your own computer) or in cloud storage provided by Zoom (to paying members). When considering recording video of your meetings, give some thought to whether you see only the host or whether you want to record everyone. You can select from among those options in Zoom’s settings. (If you’ll want to make a text transcript of your meeting (see below), you’ll need to store the video in the cloud, not locally.)

You can also generate a text transcription

If you’re a paying Zoom user, you can generate an audio transcript of your meeting as a text file. To generate a text transcript, you’ll need to first save a video of the meeting, then later access the Cloud Recordings > Audio transcript section to process that video recording. You’ll have the option of including that text transcription with the video recording, or having access to the transcript separate and apart from any video recording.

Learn some handy shortcuts

Shortcuts can save your life. Well, that may be unnecessarily dramatic; they can certainly save a meeting, save some embarrassment, or just make life easier. Here are some PC keyboard shortcuts for key functions that can come in handy in a lot of Zoom meetings. (These are seven useful shortcuts, but to find them all, go to Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts.)

• Mute and unmute Audio:                   Alt+A
• Turn off the video:                             Alt+V
• Simultaneously mute everyone:         Alt+M (for hosts)
• Restart or pause screen sharing:         Alt+V
• Commence recording meeting:          Alt+R
• Put hand up, or pull hand down:       Alt+Y
• Automatically open invite window:  Alt+I

Use breakout rooms

Some meetings just beg for a quick sub-meeting or side chat between two participants outside the line of sight and earshot of the rest of the participants. Zoom offers breakout rooms for just such a purpose. Hosts can create breakout rooms in advance and assign particular participants to those rooms. Each individual room is, for all intents and purposes — except that cloud recording is not available in breakout rooms — its own Zoom meeting. Breakout rooms are available to paid plan users by going to Account Settings > Meeting > Allow Host to Assign Participants to Breakout Rooms When Scheduling. Within a session, hosts will be able to access each breakout room in their own video conferencing menu, and will even be able to move between those breakout rooms to communicate with those breakout meetings as required.

May all your meetings be productive and not a minute longer than necessary. 

Scott Jones is the CEO of 123 Internet Group, a full service digital marketing agency with a head office in Milton Keynes and further locations in Northampton and London we support a national audience with web design and development, search engine marketing, social media management, hosting and email services. For more information about our services or advice on how to improve your online marketing activities please reach out and connect with us via our website or our social media channels.