5 Quick Tricks to Up-Level Your Zoom Meetings

Now that we're all meeting via Zoom (or some other video conferencing tool), it's time that we up-level our virtual meeting game. Here are a few of my favorite Zoom tricks.

Change Your Background

Would you like to avoid showing your messy home "office"? Then go into your Zoom settings and change your background image!

My favorite source of free stock photos is Unsplash. Try out an office background to fake people out, send yourself to outer space, or pick a funny photo. Some people are even using memes!

Touch Up Your Appearance

Pretty straightforward and very useful for those of us who prefer not to wear makeup during quarantine (or anytime, really).

Learn the Shortcuts

Excerpted from a HuffPost article:

• I is for invite. Press Cmd+I (macOS) or Alt+I (Windows) to jump to the Invite window, where you can grab the link to the meeting or send invitations to others via email.
• M is for mute. Press Cmd+Ctrl+M (macOS) or Alt+M (Windows) when you are the meeting host and want to mute everyone else on the line.
• S is for share. Press Cmd+Shift+S (macOS) or Alt+Shift+S (Windows) to share your screen.
• R is for record. Press Cmd+Shift+R (macOS) or Alt+R (Windows) to start recording any meeting.
• P is for pause. Press Cmd+Shift+P (macOS) or Alt+P (Windows) to pause/resume recording.

Get the Google Calendar Add-on

I cannot believe how long it took me to find this quick fix!

Quit toggling between Zoom and Google Calendar. By installing this add-on, you can instantly create Zoom details within the calendar invitation you're creating.

Start & End Off of the Hour

This little trick is SUPER helpful for those of us "running" (had to put that in quotes since none of us are actually physically running anywhere these days) from meeting to meeting.

Schedule your meetings to begin at 9:05am instead of 9:00am, and use your agenda wisely to end them slightly before the end of the hour, say 11:55am instead of noon.

It's a little annoying to do in your calendar settings because the defaults are typically in 15-minute increments, but this tiny change makes a huge impact on the beginning and end of your meetings.

Give these tips a try and let me know how they work!

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