How to Make Virtual Meetings Fun and Interactive: The Complete Guide

Remote work has long been a leading global trend in the labor market, but many companies have not dared to implement such a practice. Now organizations are forced to do this due to quarantine and recommendations for transferring employees to remote work. And there is every chance to appreciate the advantages of this format - flexibility and mobility without loss of business efficiency in order to keep it even after returning to the usual rhythm of life. Let's talk about how to hold virtual meetings in a company interactively.

What do virtual meetings for remote collaboration mean?

Online events are the same conferences, lectures and consultations in which participants interact via video. iMind is a free app to help you have efficient and fun business meetings

Personal meetings with the team are undoubtedly useful. In addition, they certainly produce more than virtual ones. However, don't dismiss online meetings as pointless garbage. For example, if you're working with a remote team, you must constantly communicate via calls and video conferences to stay connected and in sync.

This format helps companies keep in touch with regular customers and attract new ones. For example, you can hold trainings or conferences with invited speakers, where each participant will receive a certificate at the end, or hold fun virtual meetings for team building.

What are the challenges of virtual team meetings?

No matter how hard the lecturer tries, the same emotional connection as in live communication cannot be achieved on a webinar. And this is a fairly significant aspect on which the effectiveness of training depends.

Since the meeting is a new tool for conducting trainings and conferences, many lecturers who are used to working with a live audience simply get lost in front of the monitor. As a result, the rhythm and drive of the performance is lost.

Sometimes it happens that the participants and the lecturer are in different time zones. If for a lecturer a webinar starts at 14:00, then for some participants it may start at 23:00, which is not very convenient.

Networking in this case is hardly possible, but suddenly you are skillful with a webinar chat, and the organizers will not mind if you draw attention to yourself. The best networking at online events happens primarily with speakers and organizers - their contacts are duplicated on presentation slides.

Tips for making your virtual meeting more fun and interactive

A barking dog muting the speaker, a dark, indistinct figure against a pixelated background, and employees who don't answer their phones—if you know that, it's time to change your company's online meetings.

Add team building

Get to know all the members of your team. Ask them questions and invite them to talk in small groups. This will take your team to the next level of communication.

Use Icebreaking Questions

In order for the event not to be monotonous, it is important to involve the audience. Users want to feel like they are participating in an event or that their actions can affect its course. The easiest way is to ask questions. To do this, you can use special chats or forms.

It is also possible to use storytelling and periodically include humor in speeches. This defuses the situation and allows the audience to relax a bit.

Make your presentations crisp and colorful

Make them come alive: Don't be stingy with memes, gifs and videos you like. No one will be harmed by a few drops of humanity and humor that dilute the agenda and conclusions of the past week.

Attract real items and pets

You can definitely make the meeting less boring by showing the other attendees your dog or baby photo so they can laugh together for a minute. But don't have a real event instead of a meeting.

Keep meetings short

There is no need to talk for an hour and a half about what can be discussed in 20 minutes - then the attention of the participants is scattered.

Importance of an interactive meeting

An interactive meeting was originally a type of active communication that has grown into a separate method. Interaction occurs not only between participants, but also between groups or individual visitors. In another way, this is called "dialog communication."

This is really important to make your virtual meeting fun and interesting. How to do it? Light. Add games and questions, create an interactive online whiteboard, and engage your audience to use it.

In conclusion, you should remember that no matter what your virtual meeting is about, physical contact is always a big plus to make it interactive. It can be a symbolic gift, a branded T-shirt or even virtual reality glasses. But the main thing will always remain this moment of mutual connection - it will captivate no less than the most dynamic show.