Do you have a problem with keeping people engaged while on a video conference or phone call?
People on the phone or in a video call have distractions that they wouldn’t have in the office — but that doesn’t mean that you have to bring everyone back in to get work done at the same level.7 Tools to Make Remote Meetings More Engaging
By the time you finish this article, you should have a good idea which tools you need to help you engage a remote audience.
#1. Mentimeter
Mentimeter is a tool that lets you create interactive presentations and meetings. It enables you to collect real-time input using polls, quizzes, word clouds, Q&As, and more.
What are the benefits of Mentimeter?
- Works on any Platform: It’s a platform-independent way to make your meetings more engaging. I was able to experience it first-hand during our webinar interview with Kevin Monroe.
- Viewer Contribution: Kevin shared his expert advice: “People DO NOT feel a part of a meeting UNTIL they have had a chance to contribute.”
- Template Gallery: Mentimeter has a helpful template gallery that shows examples of use cases for speakers, business, education, private events, and competitions.
#2. Zoom
Zoom is a cloud-based video call service you can use to meet with other people virtually. You can call using either video, audio, or both, while also conducting live chats. It also lets you record these conference calls to view later.
Why should you use Zoom?
- Video Calls: When you use video, people are less likely to be distracted. They likely won’t check their email, fidget with their cell phone, or play with a pet when they know everyone can see them.
- Recordings: The meeting is recorded so you can send the recordings to people after the meeting to review things that were said for clarification.
- Screen Sharing: You can do screen sharing and video at the same time. This enables you to use a slide deck like Google Slides or Powerpoint to guide the agenda during the meeting.
- Roundtable: You can let other people take over and speak or share their screens to make it roundtable style and keep everyone more engaged.
#3. Wooclap
Wooclap (pronounced “woo-clap”) is similar to Mentimeter, but it has quite a few more options for engagement. Instead of competing with viewer’s cell phones for attention, Wooclap turns their phones into a tool that engages your audience in real-time.
Some of Wooclaps features include:
- Multiple Choice Questions: Participants can choose one or several answers to your question. The results are tabulated and presented to the group.
- Ratings: This is a quick way to get opinions from your audience. Ratings allow them to submit a score on a sliding scale. Then, it adds up the answers and shows you which choices are the most popular.
- Poll: Allows you to ask your participants about their opinions on a subject. It works similarly to the multiple-choice questions, but there are no right or wrong answers.
- Find on image: You can ask your participants to locate an area on an image
- Word Cloud: You can build a collaborative word cloud in real-time from your audience’s answers.
- Open Questions: Let your participants type in answers freely and get their full insights on your questions.
- Guess a Number: Your audience can answer a problem with a numerical value, and the average, maximum, and minimum will be displayed on your screen.
- Prioritization: Participants are given 100 points to assign to a variety of questions. You can see which ones they deem more relevant based on which answers received more of their points.
- Sorting: You can ask your participants to sort elements into a specific order.
- Matching: Your audience can match elements from two columns.
- Fill in the Blank: Ask your audience to fill in the blanks in a sentence.
- Quick Slide: You can quickly insert useful text and images into your presentation to help your audience relate to the material.
- Brainstorming: Participants can share their opinions on a topic and sort their ideas by category.
- Video: You can embed YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, or mp4 videos into your presentation.
- Gamification: You can turn on competition mode to boost engagement.
- Live Messages: You can display a wall of live messages during the presentation, let participants react to other messages, structure your Q&A sessions into different categories, and moderate responses.
#4. Google Jamboard
Google Jamboard is a virtual whiteboard with features that allow it to be shared with multiple people. There is also a physical board that’s got all the same sharing features.
What are some reasons to use Google Jamboard?
- Collaboration: Great collaborative option to brainstorm and share ideas
- Physical Jamboard: The physical Jamboard has a built-in camera that can live stream
- Writing options: It allows multiple people to write, draw, post sticky notes, and add pictures at the same time
- Multiple boards: You can have various boards open at the same time. They automatically save and upload to the cloud
#5. Unhangout
Unhangout is a free platform for running participant-driven events online.
What makes Unhangout special?
- Lobby: Each event has a lobby where you can find a chat room, breakout rooms, and the live stream.
- Breakout rooms: Unhangout allows participants to propose their own breakout rooms and add a limit to the number of people in the room and give a brief description of what the room is there for.
- Multiple tabs: Upon opening a breakout room, another tab with the live stream opens, allowing participants to switch between the lobby and the breakout room.
#6. Qiqo Chat
Qiqo (pronounced “Kee-Ko”) is an add-on to Zoom that allows participants to move between multiple Zoom meetings.
What does Qiqo Chat do?
- Individual movement: Qiqo Chat allows people to move themselves to different zoom breakout spaces.
- Conferences: It’s good for online conferences where there are multiple presentations.
- Choosing spaces: Participants can see everything that is happening and decide where to go.
#7. Badgecraft
Badgecraft allows you to set up a digital recognition of achievements. It allows you to visually set up achievements and rewards where others can see them and motivate them to earn those achievements.
Why use Badgecraft to motivate people?
- Visible awards: Badgecraft allows you to set a visible digital award for an achievement.
- How badges are earned: You get to decide how badges get awarded to your team.
- Individual set up: Badgecraft also offers services to help set up a badge system tailored to your individual needs.
Build a Strategy for Engaging Meetings
Are you having problems keeping participants engaged during meetings? Now that you have finished this article, you have the tools you need to help engage a remote audience.
Tools are great, but not if you randomly implement them during meetings. You need to have a strategy for how and when to use specific tools and run a meeting with a clear purpose in mind.
Let us help you train your team to run better meetings that are productive and not draining.
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