BitShare

Keeping meetings painless with conference calls

You might not like the idea of meetings, but when you’re working on projects that need a lot of input or you need to keep track of what your overall business goals are, you’re going to need to suck it up and get everyone together. However, you don’t need to actually pull everyone away from their computers. Instead, you can use conference calls and web conferencing to make meetings as painless as possible.

Plus, you won’t be fighting over who eats the last donut if you’re all sequestered away in your own offices and cubicles. Advances in web, video and telephone conferencing have made it easier and easier for no one to have to interact in person.

Web Conferences

Web conferencing is appropriate for extensive meetings and training that requires the use of multimedia in the conference. OnConference has recently added a new video playback feature to their software that allows people in the meetings to play videos during the web conference. This is invaluable for sharing different types of marketing materials, training videos, and other information. This feature does not cost anything additional for current customers of OnConference, so it’s well worth checking out to see whether your business could benefit from it.

Another advantage of web conferences is the fact that everyone can join in and participate without having to worry about talking over each other. You can use text chat and voice chat in order to get your points across, which allows you to really get input from many different people at the same time. You can also go through the ideas and use the most helpful ones to keep yourself on track with everything that needs to be done.

VOIP Conferences

Telephone conferences are excellent if you don’t need to have any sort of multimedia or video in your meeting. This is also good for very quick meetings, confirming details with clients and other issues that don’t require a large degree of handholding. Telephone conferences might not be as convenient as web based conferences, but if you’re working with companies that aren’t as technically proficient as yours is, you may want to get them used to telephone conferences first. VOIP allows you to use Internet based services while providing the phone familiarity.

Video Conferences

Video conferencing is much easier than it used to be, thanks to web-based tools. These tools are going to get you everything that you need to have your video conferences, which gives you the impression of face to face meetings without the problems of getting everyone together in the same room. If your small business has a global workforce or a lot of mobilization, then you’re going to be able to get everyone together on a regular basis much more easily than you would with face-to-face meetings in this fashion.

No matter which type of conference call you want to use, you’re going to make your workday much easier when you can just go from your computer to the meeting. You don’t have to spend the money on a meeting room, the office furniture or the equipment, such as projectors or anything else. Instead, you can go ahead and get yourself the rapt attention of your team, or at least a bit of a window on their screen, while you show off your latest videos and other marketing material. It may take some time to get used to this type of conferencing, but once you have implemented it in place of meetings and worked out all of the problems you might run into, you’re going to have a more efficient workflow. Just take your time in trying out the different methods to figure out exactly what works best for your company.

This is a guest post by Lindsey Harper Mac who is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. She specializes in writing about business and technology. Currently, Lindsey is completing work on her master’s degree. You can follow her on Twitter @HarperMac11.