Top 6 Tips for Hosting a Large Zoom Meeting

Large Zoom meetings unite a company or team across long distances. However, these meetings can be difficult to manage. A few unmuted microphones, and your large Zoom meeting is heading for disaster. Luckily, free zoom office backgrounds and other helpful tools can make you the Zoom meeting master of your workplace. Here are six tips for hosting an effective large zoom meeting.

Recruiting a Hosting Helper

Whether your large Zoom meeting has a dozen people or hundreds, you’ll likely want a co-host to help with various hosting tasks. A co-host can perform these tasks for you:

• Select participants to speak
• Help you stick to a time agenda
• Let participants in from the waiting room and mute their microphones
• Keep an eye on the chat log

Starting With an Ice Breaker

Ice breakers set the tone for a more productive and engaging Zoom meeting. Ask a fun question or riddle that doesn’t require knowledge of the topic at hand. You can also ask participants for cute pictures of their pets to share before shifting over to business. For a professional look, customize virtual office backgrounds to display ice breaker activities as a welcome slide.

Obviously, in meetings with dozens of people, it’s not prudent for everyone to contribute to the ice breaker. Even if you only feature a few participants, everyone in the meeting will feel more engaged and recognize that the Zoom meeting is an interactive space.

Establishing Who Is Talking

Don’t let your large Zoom meeting devolve into chaos. Have a clear time for guest presenters to speak, for the host to speak and for questions. Have your helper keep microphones muted to avoid  noise and distractions.

Making Sure Everyone Is Included

Include interactive modules on your meeting agenda to make participants feel like part of the meeting, rather than a passive audience. Open the floor for questions one or two times over the course of the meeting to be sure everyone is on the same page.

Be sure you have someone keeping an eye on the Zoom chat on the side of the meeting as well. People in a large Zoom meeting may feel more comfortable placing a question in the chat than speaking up in front of a group.

Using Signs and Visual Cues

Listening to a presenter’s voice alone doesn’t make for the best large Zoom meeting. Engage more of your audience’s senses and structure your meeting with visual aids.

Use Zoom to place the meeting’s agenda with timestamps on the side of your screen. Refer to bullet point slides for complex topics. You can also use a Zoom background with company logo to give a professional air to you and your co-hosts’ webcam portraits.

Budgeting Time and Attention Wisely

Try to keep a large Zoom meeting under an hour for maximum audience engagement. Place the most important topics towards the beginning of the meeting and stay on schedule. In a large Zoom meeting, your audience’s attention is naturally a finite resource. Like all resources, be sure to use it wisely.

Large Zoom meetings can be extremely productive if you keep them organized and on track. Follow these tips for a large meeting no one will want to skip.

Also Read: 5 Reasons To Have a Weekly Team Meeting