Software Reviews Online

Knowing how to run an online meeting is becoming more and more important in business. Top leaders are equally comfortable working online or face-to-face.

Online meetings can save you money on travel, boost communication between workers and clients, even increase sales. If you run them right. Follow these 8 tips and you’ll be ahead of the game.

1. Have an agenda distributed ahead of time. This is even more important online than in “normal” meetings. Having the agenda in front of all the attendees — preferably

2. Practice with your web meeting software. As a leader, you should know how the features work. Planning to use the whiteboard? Figure out how to use it before the meeting. Only want to share one document from your desktop? Again, practice once and learn what to do. Few things are more irritating to meeting participants than waiting five minutes while the leader mumbles “hmm can you see this now?” in vain.

3. Make sure everyone’s prepared. Participants seem less likely to do their prep work (homework, if you will) for online meetings. I recommend a quick “how are you doing” phone call to anyone needing a nudge.

4. Keep a confident smile on your face. You’ll find that your tone of voice follows your face. Since the attendees can’t see you, they’ll read more into your voice than they would otherwise.

5. Make sure the background noises are silenced. Don’t speak from a noisy room. If you’re working from home make sure there’s a door between you and the household noises (pets are a perennial challenge here). Turn off your cell phone ringer and ask that others do the same.

6. Assign someone else to take notes. Unless the purpose of the meeting is to fine-tune a document, I can promise your attendees don’t want to watch you type on the screen.

7. Check to be sure points are understood. Online meetings don’t give us the chance to read facial cues - which often help us figure out whether everyone understands or agrees. As the meeting leader, make a point of asking for questions after each major topic. This works best if you specific questions about each main point rather than just saying “any questions?”

8. Manage the participants. Some online meetings tend to mushroom - people pull coworkers into the conference to listen in “just in case” and suddenly you have a lot of unexpected inputs. At the very least, you should know who’s participating. Start the meeting with a request to quickly list who’s in each location - your participants will appreciate knowing who’s hearing their input.

These tips will take you a long way in your desire to run a successful online meeting. Still feeling uncomfortable? Sign up for a free trial with a internet conference vendor (see resource box for helpful links) and practice a bit with a friend. You’ll both emerge knowing exactly how to run a meeting online.