The world of meetings has changed, and in my opinion, it has changed for good. You don’t need to get up early, take a bath, get ready and then struggle in traffic jams for hours to attend one meeting, which is probably just your boss blabbering about sales. Now you can simply wake up from your beauty sleep, and while still in your Pj’s, just click on the zoom call link, attend your meeting, and go back to sleep.
Amazing, isn’t it? Well, if you want to increase the awesomeness in your zoom meetings, we have covered you with the top 7 zoom meeting tips to enhance your zoom call experience. We did a survey and asked our friends and family what problems do they face while in a zoom meeting. We collected the questions, went online to search for solutions, and then compiled everything into a single article you are reading right now. So without wasting any more time, let’s get started.
1. Turn off the camera whenever possible
You see, privacy is tricky, and in this digital world, the distance between your private space and the outside world has been reduced to the thin screens of our laptops. You must have seen multiple memes of people forgetting to turn off their cameras and make a joke out of themselves.
While it is healthy to laugh, you certainly don’t want to be embarrassed in front of your colleagues just because your wife wanted to kiss you during a zoom call.
Zoom has got you covered, you can simply turn off your camera by clicking on the camera button present on the bottom bar of a zoom call. You should also change the settings to turn the camera off by default when you join a meeting. To do this, follow the given steps:
Step 1: Click on your photo on a zoom page to access a dropdown menu, and from that menu, select settings
Step 2: In the settings menu, on the left panel, in my video section, make sure that “turn off my video when joining a meeting” is ticked.
Now, you can join meetings while in bed, and no one would know. You can turn on your camera momentarily by clicking on the camera icon in the same bottom panel that says “start video.”
2. Don’t struggle to create a new meeting every time
Zoom has been widely used as the primary medium of education for the past 2 years, and the students are agitated to wake up to a “join the meeting with this link” message. While it is impossible to get rid of daily classes, it is possible to get rid of this annoying message every day.
If you are a teacher or a working professional who frequently hosts meetings for the same group of people, then you can simply create the meeting link and ask your colleagues to join the zoom call with the same link every day.
The thing is, a zoom meeting, once created, is valid forever until you make a new meeting. This means once you have sent the call link to your employees or students, they can use the same link every day or week to join your meeting as long as you don’t create a separate one.
You can use a short URL generator like pretty links to create a shortened version of your link with a custom URL that will redirect back to your meeting. You can send this link to everyone instead of a new one every day.
Ask your participants to keep hold of the link by either adding it to their internet favorites or keeping it safe in a WhatsApp chat they don’t delete and are backed up.
3. Be realistic
If you want to impress your office crush or college crush, the medium has been shifted to online. It does not matter how much skincare you do or the make-up you put on. You are going to look ugly in a zoom meeting because webcams generally have very poor resolution, and on top of it, your internet speeds are nullified.
Zoom has got you covered yet again, follow the given steps to make yourself look presentable in your next zoom call.
Step 1: Click on your photo on a zoom page to access a dropdown menu, and from that menu, select settings
Step 2: In the settings menu, on the left panel, in my video section, make sure that “touch up my appearance” is ticked.
This is an automatic feature of zoom that reverses the ghost effect. The ghost effect is the phenomenon by which your webcam compensates for low lighting by boosting the white balance on your video. This makes your skin look brilliantly white, and as a result, your face looks pale, as if all your blood was drained out.
Using “touch my appearances” solves this problem by making adjustments in the exposure and white balance values. This makes you look more realistic and life-like. It is like a filter, just better.
4. Be aesthetic
Let me tell you more about how to impress your E-crush. We already mentioned how to look more realistic on zoom calls, but it is not enough to impress your crush. You need to look aesthetic, how you ask? If you know anything about photography, you know that lightning is the key. Brighter and diffused lighting conditions produce amazing pictures.
You can simply enhance your skin tone on camera by improving the lighting conditions in your room or at least at your desk. Remember, the light must be directed on your face, not the camera.
Avoid having a light source behind you as it may shine on the camera and spoil the image. Instead, have as much lighting as possible in front of your face and behind the camera. You want to have diffused lights at a short distance so bulbs and tube lights won’t make a huge difference.
Then what will make a huge difference? Ring lights, light panels, or any other source of diffused light. The best option, in my opinion, is a ring light as it is affordable and spreads the light on your face equally from all directions. On the other hand, a light panel is expensive, and you will need at least two of them as a light panel illuminates only the side on which it is kept, and the other side of your face will remain in shadow.
There’s more to it because even white light has shades. A cooler shade of white (somewhat bluish) will make whites on your face glow and will be suitable during nighttime. A warmer, slightly yellow shade of white light will make brownish areas glow, creating a sunshine effect.
You do not want to be in extremes of any shade, and therefore the best pick for you should be a ring light whose warmth can be adjusted. Find the perfect blend of warm and cool tones to suit your skin color and face cut to impress your crush finally.
5. Share your screen
You probably already know that you can share your screen, meaning you can show your computer screens to the participants of a meeting by clicking on the share screen button in the bottom panel but did you know that you choose what part of your screen should be shown to others.
As I said earlier, privacy can be tricky. You may want to show your colleagues the presentation you made about the quarterly sales but sharing your entire screen means exposing that you are watching a YouTube video alongside.
Zoom has got you covered, when you will click on the share screen option, the zoom will ask you to select what part of your screen you want to share.
You can share your current screen while hiding the taskbar, or you can share only one chrome tab while hiding others, or you can share one application window while hiding everything else, and so on.
This can help save you from embarrassment and increase your productivity by letting you multitask without worrying about exposing private data or passwords.
You can also share your computer’s sound by ticking the box in the bottom left corner of the share screen menu. You can optimize the zoom call for sharing a video clip with the participants and reduce the audio-video lag for the viewers.
Also, turn off your camera while sharing your screen to avoid infinite mirroring.
6. Eliminate audio issues forever
Ever heard that annoying high-pitched echoing sound at the start of a meeting, and it automatically goes off after the host mutes everyone. That is because some participants did not use earphones while on a zoom call.
If you are not using an earphone, you must use your phone’s or laptop’s microphone and speaker. So when someone in the call speaks or makes a sound, it comes out of your speaker, then it is caught by your microphone, and if you are not on mute, it is heard again by everyone because of your microphone. This is called echoing. Also check out these cool microphones for zoom meetings.
If you don’t turn your mic off immediately, that sound is reproduced by your speakers, caught by the microphone, and heard by everyone again, and the process repeats with the frequency increasing every time. This is called infinite echoing.
To avoid this from happening and annoying everyone, you have 2 options, either use an earphone or mute yourself, but if you are in a meeting, you will probably speak at some point, so the only solution is an earphone.
I recommend using wireless earphones as they will allow you to move around freely and even lie down during long and tiring meetings.
7. Record your meetings
Especially useful for students who prioritize their early morning sleep over stupid academic lectures. You can simply hit the circular record button in the extreme right corner of the bottom panel. To stop recording, click the same button.
You can also change the destination location for storing this recorded zoom meeting by going to the settings menu. Navigate to the recordings option and in the left panel, select “choose a location for recorded files when the meeting ends.”
In the same panel, you can choose to add timestamps, optimize the clip for 3rd party editing apps, have separate audio and video streams, and record even while sharing the screen.
