Amp Up Your Zoom Room! — Amp Strategy

1. Set yourself up for success: How do you look and sound on camera?

With this one, make sure you’re in a quiet space with natural lighting.
Have your face towards the window or set up lighting around your desk to illuminate your face.
While we love your face, we don’t want it to be too close. Move your computer up, up and away. Prop your computer up with books if your desk is too low, but make sure the camera is eye level to you. This just ensures your call cannot see up your nostrils.
If you cannot find a quiet spot, try headphones. Make sure to test all sound quality before you start your call.
Really want to impress your Zoom call? In your Zoom application, go to Settings, Video, and make sure the “Touch Up My Appearance” button is clicked.

2. Create a virtual background.

Need to hide your home clutter or your kid on his iPad? We want people focusing on your face, not what’s behind you! If you don’t have a clean, simple wall, the virtual background feature allows you to display an image or video as your background during a Zoom Meeting. Upload your own images with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a resolution of 1920 x 1080 px.

3. Give attendees a waiting room.

I always suggest not having your attendees jump in the room automatically. They could be early or you could have a kid run in, dogs barking—before it even begins.
From Zoom: “The Waiting Room feature allows the host to control when a participant joins the meeting. As the meeting host, you can admit attendees one by one or hold all attendees in the waiting room and admit them all at once. You can send all participants to the waiting room when joining your meeting or only guests, participants who are not on your Zoom account or are not signed in.”

4. Set your layout to see multiple participants.

Once you’re in your Zoom Room, you can choose the layout that works best for you.

Speaker View: You’ll see a large view of the person speaking, with a smaller view of the previous speaker. If you’re screen sharing, the shared screen is in the large display and the small video will the person who is sharing.
Gallery View: See up to 25 of your friends at one time—with the active speaker highlighted in green. For meetings with more than 25 guests, you’ll see an arrow displayed next to the icon. Simple push the arrow to see the next group of 25.
Thumbnail View: This lets you see the main speaker (like in Speaker View) but also shows 8 participants along the bottom of the screen.

5. Mute participants (and yourself!) when appropriate.

If you are in a large meeting, chances are, someone is going to forget to mute themselves. In the Schedule Meeting section of Zoom’s account settings, you can automatically mute all participants’ or if someone forgets to stay muted, simply hit the mic icon next to their face while on the call.
And you are not talking? Mute yourself. Background noise happens and we want to make sure you are not the distraction!

6. Share your screen (but not all of it).

At the bottom bar of your screen hit the green “Share Screen” button.
You’ll have the option to choose between the items you have open and choose what to share. Be sure to choose only the applications or files that you’d like the entire group to see.

Ready for more?

Here are some additional tools and ideas for optimizing your Zoom meeting engagement and success: