5 Ways To Ensure The Perfect Zoom Call

This March, over 200 million people joined a Zoom meeting each day. That’s increasingly than the population of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the UK, combined.

Because of social distancing, Zoom has brought in increasingly zippy users in the first 3 months of 2020 than it did in all of 2019, equal to Zoom founder Eric Yuan.

To help ensure your next Zoom meeting goes off without a hitch, here are 5 simple hacks to alimony in mind surpassing you dial in:

1. Find your light

Before hopping on a video call, double trammels your lighting. The darkest corner of your small living room may be the perfect spot to rampage watch your favorite tiger show, but it isnt unconfined for a video call. The light from your laptop screen isnt unexceptionable (or flattering) unbearable to properly illuminate your squatter in the dark.

To make sure your video isn’t too dimly-lit (read: creepy), find a seat closer to natural light. A window slightly off to the side or in front of your work station works best. If the windows overdue you, the sunlight will wreak havoc on your webcams will-less light welding feature.

If natural light isnt an option, utilize whatever light you have available. Pro tip: If you only have a sedentary lamp, point it towards a nearby wall so the light bounces off of that surface, and when onto you. This will make the lighting less harsh when it hits your face.

2. Set the stage

This goes without saying, but nobody wants to see your messy bedroom during your video call. You wouldnt bring your dirty laundry with you to the office, so dont bring it on Zoom either. Backgrounds with tons of scramble can distract the people youre chatting with.

Find a increasingly simple backdrop. Curbed wordsmith Jenny Xie recommends using plants:

In the time of unvarying videoconferencing, plants can be helpful shortcuts for creating an impressive virtual interior.

Vibrant colors, artwork, and bookshelves moreover make for a unconfined scenery for your video yack (plus, theyll make you towards cultured to your coworkers).

Make sure to stave sitting in front of unshut doors at all costs, especially if you dont live alone. Youre unseat to run into willy-nilly interruptions if other people towards in your background, whether your roommate walks out of the washroom in a towel, or your toddler barges in to demand you read them a story. If it can happen to a BBC interviewee, it can happen to you.

3. Sharpen your appearance 

Wearing a piece of suit and embodying its symbolic meaning will trigger associated psychological processes, equal to a study published by the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Whoa.

In plain English, that ways dressing for work as you normally would can help you work as productively at home as you would in the office. Operating under your desired level of repletion is integral while youre WFH, but sticking to the routine of unquestionably getting dressed (at least from the waist-up) can help you maintain your productivity.

Keep in mind that you shouldnt just cater your visitation to your coworkers, but moreover to yourself! If youre on Zoom all day, you’ll be spending a lot of time staring when at yourself through the grainy lens of your computer’s webcam, which can be disconcerting. So make sure you like the way you look.

At a minimum, flatten your bedhead and floss the poppyseeds from your morning bagel out of your teeth. It could save you a bit of embarrassment later. And try seeing how your favorite shirt affects your mood and productivity. Science says youll finger the way you look.

4. Customize your preferences

Dont forget, your virtual preferences are just as important as your physical ones.

If youre having trouble finding a scenery in your home that youre well-appointed displaying to your team, try a virtual background. Choose from the options Zoom has misogynist via the video settings, or upload your own!

To stave any audio or visual faux pas immediately upon inward the call, you can moreover hibernate your video and mute your audio by default, until youre ready to make your big reveal.

Scrambling to hit the mute sawed-off upon joining a undeniability can be cumbersome, so consider toggling these in the settings beforehand. And if youre set to mute by default, you can simply printing and hold the spacebar to unmute yourself when you want to speak.

5. Treat your Zoom undeniability like an IRL meeting

Aside from your physical space, youre moreover going to want to diamond your schedule to optimize your call, as you would for IRL meetings.

Although a Zoom meeting is fundamentally variegated from an in-person meeting, its important to treat it as such. Working within some bilateral guardrails is key.

First off, be on time! Save the other participants of your priming undeniability the potential ineligibility of having to start without you and then subsequently repeat themselves in the wake of your tardiness. Set timetable notifications, phone alarms, handwritten notes on your WFH workspace- whatever you have to do to remember to dial in on time.

Having an voucher is moreover crucial. Know whats on the docket, and try to stick to it. If you know your teammates like to reservation up, consider scheduling a couple Zoom meetings throughout the day entirely defended to conversation that might otherwise be held virtually the water cooler.

Wes M., Lemonades NYC Office Manager, advises subtracting office chit-chat to your daily schedule:

Since were all working from home, were losing that face-to-face time in the office where we usually reservation up with each other. It’s important to schedule Zoom chats that are informal, where you’re just transmissible up with people, so you’re not reducing productivity in your scheduled calls

While its helpful to treat your video calls like in-office meetings, its moreover helpful to unclose that youre all working remote and within the confines of an internet connection. Account for some lag, and wait your turn to speak so youre not unwittingly talking over the other participants. For larger meetings, consider assigning a host who can alimony the conversation organized.

End meeting

Nothing can completely replace face-to-face interactions. But while were all doing our part to social loftiness for the foreseeable future, itll behoove you and your team to sharpen your Zoom chops.

A lot of the nuances that make a Zoom undeniability successful can only be learned by practiced Zooming, and with help from your teammates. So next time you have a priming undeniabilit with a poorly-lit coworker whose video looks like its streaming from Chatroulette please, let them know.

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