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As you think about how to make online meetings more interesting, consider how you'll prepare, organize, and present your team meeting ideas. Are they interesting? Motivating? Use these steps in planning a meeting to create an interactive, productive, and entertaining session that will lead to better engagement and encourage greater participation in future online meetings.
Get Them to Show Up
There are various approaches on how to get people to come to meetings. You could make attendance mandatory, but wouldn't you rather have eager participants rather than reluctant ones? Knowing how to boost meeting attendance without having to resort to strong-arm tactics will make a big difference in your team's overall engagement and productivity.
Get Them Involved
There are many ways to encourage participation in meetings. Start by having meeting attendees introduce themselves. As each participant speaks, ask if they have a cool or funny nickname that they like, and then refer to them by that name throughout the meeting.
Assign everyone a task. Put someone in charge of keeping track of ideas presented during the meeting. Ask someone else to keep notes on agenda items to be followed up on later. Make another participant responsible for recapping each team member's assignments and distributing them after the meeting.
Extroverts are always willing to participate in meetings, but how do you get the introverts to join in? Interactive meeting ideas that involve behind-the-scenes activities are great ways to engage those less likely to contribute vocally. These tasks include formatting the agenda, sending out reminders, recording attendance, and compiling highlights from the meeting to send to non-attendees.
Get Them to Lighten Up
One Want to know how to make meetings fun? Start with a few virtual icebreakers. Invite attendees to share the funniest or most embarrassing thing that happened to them this week, or ask members to share what animal they would choose to be and why. Have each member offer a fun name for your current project and let everyone vote on the best one. These exercises only take a few minutes, but they kick the meeting off on a high note.
Make time for casual conversation, but remember to maintain control. Once everyone's had a chance to get comfortable, it's time to get down to business. Follow the set agenda, taking short breaks to ask if participants have anything they'd like to add.
Get Them to Listen Up
What do you do when members are not paying attention in meetings? It can be hard to keep people on track during a lengthy meeting, so get them interested right from the start and keep them engaged throughout. Follow these helpful tips:
Get Them to the Finish Line
There are many fun ways to close a meeting. As the session is wrapping up, ask participants what plans they have for their downtime. This is a good way for team members to get to know one another, and a reminder to make time for themselves.
Remember, your meeting is only productive when it's engaging. When you encourage participation in the planning and execution of your meetings, you're likely to keep online meeting attendees engaged. Incorporate some of these interactive meeting ideas into your next session and watch the enthusiasm and productivity speak for themselves.
With GoToMeeting, you can deliver presentations, perform product demonstrations, brainstorm with colleagues and securely share confidential information online from anywhere at any time. Your meetings can be one-to-one, or you can meet with multiple people at once.
Presentations: Give a slideshow to your online audience and reduce travel costs.
Demonstrations: Show prospects how your product works by inviting them to view a demo in real time, whether they are across town or a thousand miles away.
Work together: Meet with others online to share, discuss and edit any document. Transfer presentation controls to other attendees.
On a PC
To schedule a meeting in advance, right-click the GoToMeeting system tray icon on the bottom-right corner of your screen, select Schedule a Meeting... and log in by entering your account information and clicking the Log In button. Then, on the Schedule Meeting dialog box, enter your meeting information and click the Schedule button.
You will be notified that your meeting has been scheduled. If you are using Microsoft Outlook, a meeting reminder will be generated and give you the option of inviting attendees via an Outlook Calendar appointment.
On a Mac
To schedule a meeting in advance, click the GoToMeeting icon in the dock, select Schedule Meeting and log in by entering your account information and clicking the Log In button. Then, on the Schedule Meeting dialog box, enter your meeting information and click the Schedule button. You will be notified that your meeting has been scheduled.
On a PC
To set up a recurring meeting, right-click the GoToMeeting system tray icon on the bottom-right corner of your screen, select Schedule a Meeting... and log in by entering your account information and clicking the Log In button. Then, on the Schedule Meeting dialog box, click the check box next to Recurring meeting. This will disable the scheduling settings, keeping the meeting open and available in My Meetings until you delete it. Click the Schedule button.
You will be notified that your meeting has been scheduled. If you are using Microsoft Outlook, a meeting reminder will be generated and give you the option of inviting attendees via an Outlook Calendar appointment.
On a Mac
To set up a recurring meeting, click the GoToMeeting icon in the dock, select Schedule Meeting and log in by entering your account information and clicking the Log In button. Then, on the Schedule Meeting dialog box, click the check box next to Recurring meeting. This will disable the scheduling settings, keeping the meeting open and available in My Meetings until you delete it. Click the Schedule button. You will be notified that your meeting has been scheduled.
Screen sharing needs to be turned on after starting a meeting – GoToMeeting starts with it turned off to prevent early attendees from viewing your preparation.
To enable screen sharing, click Show My Screen in the organizer control panel.
If attendees still can't see your screen, please contact Global Customer Support.