Reinvigorate Your Video Conferences With 3CX

Picture this: It’s a year into lockdown and you’re holding your AGM over video conference with your global team. You’re enthusiastically delivering your presentation when... 

Someone leaves the room… And another. 

Suddenly you’re thinking about your participants, rather than your content. You’ve lost focus.

We’ve all been there. After a year of non-stop video conferences, motivating teams virtually is getting harder. But perhaps we’ve not been doing it right? 

Virtual Presentations: The Challenge

Being a virtual presenter is a tough gig. In face-to-face meetings, there’s an unspoken contract: you can’t start answering emails, playing snake on your phone, or leave whenever you’ve had enough. You’re there to listen until the end. 

In contrast, a virtual audience can do all of the above! The average meeting participant now has an attention span of just 10 minutes and this is down to 3 factors:
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1. Sameness: Most video conferences follow the same format and that means there’s often no reason for participants to pay special attention. Especially if you’re hopping from one meeting to the other. 
2. The Environment: The second problem is the screen itself. It’s much easier to engage with someone standing in front of you than to stare at a screen, which dilutes the power of your content. 
3. Multitasking: Recent studies have found that despite most of us believing we can multitask, only 2% of us actually can. But that doesn’t stop us from reaching for our devices when we think no-one is watching.

To counteract these challenges you need to be deliberate in how you design and deliver your virtual meeting. And that’s where 3CX can help. Use these techniques to plan interactive online meetings guaranteed to get your audience hooked: ​

Interactive Polling and Gamification
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Let your audience know that their thoughts matter with 3CX’s interactive polling feature. Running quick polls, quizzes and games give your audience an active role to play in your virtual events. They’ll tune into the conversation, ready to answer the next question that comes up. Polls are also a great way to test your audience’s understanding at the beginning of your virtual conference so that you can tailor your content accordingly.

Pass the Mic
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Mix things up by passing the mic between participants. 3CX lets you nominate speakers from the WebMeeting dashboard so that you bring colleagues into the action. Get feedback in the moment, brainstorm ideas and split the workload between multiple presenters. As soon as you’re selected to present, you’ll have full control of the screen, so the meeting can proceed seamlessly.

Switching speakers is a great way to mix up the tone and pace of your presentation. Each presenter will bring their own personal style to the meeting, which keeps participants interested until the end. Splitting a 40-minute presentation into 4 sections, with different presenters (or shared between two of you), will help you overcome the attention span challenge. ​

Integrated Collaboration Tools
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Why stick to presentations when you can weave interactive activities into your meetings? Ideal for online classes or virtual conferences, activities encourage attendees to reflect on the content of the presentation so far and embeds their learnings. Take advantage of group whiteboards and integrated chat features to share ideas as a group. Or divide attendees into their own breakout rooms and run mini-workshops online. 

Mix Up Your Mediums
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If you’re planning a live event for your team, you don’t just stand and talk at them for an hour solid. You have entrance music, video’s, powerpoints and maybe even the odd meme thrown in for good measure! Do the same with your video conferences by mixing up the mediums you use to captivate your audience. Then flick back to full-screen video to really drive home your key message. 

3CX users can share images, video’s and more using the handy file sharing tool, whilst screen sharing lets you take participants by the hand as you demo your product or service offerings.

Build Excitement Early
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Your audience starts to evaluate your meeting from the minute they receive their invite. So if you want your event to be a hit, make sure you make a stellar first impression. 

​Be creative and think of ways you can build hype through your invites. Can you embed Gifs/ Video’s or other content that brings your agenda to life and lets participants know to expect something different from your video conference? 

Then consider access. Faffing around with pin codes and login details can discourage participants before they’ve even got in the room. So make joining as easy as possible! 3CX WebMeetings are accessible via unique, encrypted URLs so participants can join in a single click from a compatible web browser. There’s even the option to join from the 3CX mobile apps if you’re on the move- so there’s no excuse for missing out!

Energise Your Video Conferences With 3CX

Ready to reinvigorate your video conferences? Take the first step with the Technology Group. 
Our 3CX solutions include video conferencing for unlimited users, so there’s no need to purchase any additional software or install a plugin! 

Whether it’s a webinar, business meeting or online class, we’ve got the tools you need to hook your audience and keep them with you until the very end. Get in touch with our sales team to set up your free 3CX Webmeeting trial.