Making the most of online networking

The question we’re all asking ourselves: is something better than nothing?

Our answer is yes.

Zoom/Teams/Skype fatigue is real, there’s no denying it. However, this makes it easy to brush off the positives online networking and collaboration can bring – and how it will be continued in the future.

Speaking about “back to normal” and “when this is over” is not uncommon, and hopefully some balance will be regained, but embracing this new reality can reap benefits.

Many platforms are increasing their scope to improve customer experience and, although this can be daunting, they are created with a user-friendly mentality. Spending a small amount of time familiarising yourself with all aspects of the platform of your choice could save you a lot of the “where’s unmute!”, “why is my video not working”, and “I’m not a cat!!” hiccups down the line…

You get out what you put in.

If you’re sat in a dark room, using your phone camera, whilst having it on speaker, it’s unlikely that you’re going to have a successful call. People will struggle to engage with you, and it won’t give the professional image you’re going for.

Use natural light to your advantage, and if you don’t have a room with big windows be sure to have a lamp nearby to light your face. Investing in a small webcam and making sure your camera is at a high angle so your face can clearly be seen, makes a huge difference to how you can captivate others on your call.

Using quality headphones with a microphone will cut out a lot of background noise, make yourself clearly heard, and avoid the “sorry, could you repeat that please?” monotony.

So, that’s how to improve the quality of your calls, but are they effective?

Really, that’s down to you. Do you concentrate fully on your virtual meetings? How many people do you have in attendance? What length of time do they go on for?

Keeping your calls to stricter timelines means that you’re more likely to stay focussed and give that call your full attention. Turn off distracting apps, loud phone notifications, maybe put your pet outside of the door for that 40 minutes, and make the most of the call at hand.

Finally, allow yourself time to process your meetings. In person you would rarely finish a meeting and immediately jump out of the room and run! You would have some informal chat, and have time to mull over what you have just discussed. It is too easy in this new virtual era to book back to back calls all day, jumping from one meeting to the next, without any time to process and follow up with those interactions.

Quality over quantity comes to mind…

We hope this has been useful, and if you’re interested in fully engaging in one of our upcoming IR Global virtual calls, we have plenty for you to get involved in. Get in touch at [email protected].