Don't look like a fool on Zoom
Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. You don't wanna look like a fool on your next video conference.
So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven common Zoom mistakes that you can easily avoid, so you can look so much more professional in your next Zoom meeting.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen in here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
How to test your Zoom audio & video in advance
And let's start off with tip number one, and that is do a quick test in advance.
I'm just gonna stop sharing my screen here so we can go back into the menu.
And even if you started, you can still do this, but I would recommend you do this in advance.
On your desktop or laptop computer, you wanna open up the Zoom interface.
Now, if you're joining a Zoom meeting on your mobile device, you're probably going to get a prompt anyhow to test your video and to test your audio.
But here, what we wanna do is open up our Zoom meeting interface and click on the gear icon, click on settings.
And we're gonna look at two settings very quickly. No joke, I actually do this every single time.
Number one, I click on video. Hey, am I in frame? Is the lighting proper? Am I using the correct camera?
Because for many of us, we actually have more than one webcam. Your monitor or your laptop probably already has a webcam built in, but perhaps you're using a better or higher quality webcam that you attach via USB.
So make sure you come down here, make sure that you're viewing the correct webcam. Now that's a pretty quick and easy one.
We also wanna click on the Audio tab and take a look at two quick things here as well.
The first one is test speaker, making sure that you are hearing the meeting the way that you want to.
In this case, you may have a variety of different options as to how you can listen to that meeting.
For example, I typically take my Zoom calls using my Bluetooth earbuds, and because it's Bluetooth, these are often connected to a variety of other devices in my home.
So I wanna make sure they're connected properly. What I can also do is select the Test Speaker icon, and make sure that I can hear what is going on, making sure that I'm hearing that in the device that I want to.
I also want to come down to microphone and make sure I've got the correct microphone selected and I can test that mic as well.
Especially if you've invested some money in a better quality microphone, make sure you're using that microphone.
By default, it may just be choosing your system's microphone, so yeah, your audience can hear you, but perhaps they're not hearing you in the best of quality.
So make sure you do a quick test in advance.
How to use the spacebar to unmute yourself
Now let's jump back into our Zoom meeting, and tip number two has to do with muting yourself when you don't need to be heard.
Now you're probably already familiar with where the mute button is, and I can come down here and mute myself so that no one else in this meeting can hear me.
It even gives me a bit of a warning because it can hear that I'm talking at the moment.
But the tip I want to give you is that if you're involved in a Zoom meeting where you only need to interject or contribute once in a while, right? You're not the host, you're not the main presenter, I want you to make use of your Space bar.
The Space bar actually acts as a trigger. You can almost think of it like a walkie-talkie where you hold it down and you can speak.
So if I press down on my Space bar, I am temporarily unmuted, you can hear me, everyone else can hear me, but as soon as I release that Space bar, I automatically become muted.
Take a look here on the lower left-hand corner, you can see the red slash, I'm muted, but if I press down on the Space bar, now I can ask my question or I can give my comment and then release that Space bar and I am immediately muted again.
So no more worrying if people can hear me. Am I muted, am I unmuted? You can use that Space bar so you know when you're pressing it down, you can contribute to that meeting.
How to share sound when Zoom screen sharing
Tip number three, we're gonna stick with sound, and this has to do with sharing your screen, particularly sharing music or sharing video.
How often have you been in a Zoom call and someone has tried to share a YouTube video or something else with sound?
And everyone has to start pointing at the screen or using private messaging and saying, "We can't hear it. We can't hear it. None of us can hear it."
And the host looks a little puzzled because they can hear it. They can hear it just perfectly. Why can't everyone else hear it?
Well, when you share audio or share video, when you select share screen, before you select that file or before you select your browser, you wanna come down here and make sure you check, share sound.
That is the only way that the audio that you hear on your machine, what you're sharing is going to be shared with others.
And if you are sharing video, you may also want to select this other option here, optimize for video clip.
Meaning it's gonna try and smooth things over a bit, so it is a better video experience for those who are watching the video through Zoom.
But if you are sharing audio, make sure that you select share sound.
Now note, this is also gonna share other sounds on your machine. So if there is going to be an alert or a notification or other things that come up, people are going to hear that as well.
But this is in particular if you are sharing that content with other individuals.
All right, I'm just gonna select my browser here. And let's go into share mode and talk about something which again can really make a lot of us look foolish,
How to move or hide the Zoom control menu
but there's an easy fix for this mistake. Many times we are sharing our web browser or a web page.
So here I am on the Zoom website and let's say, I want to browse around to a bunch of different tabs, but by default, the Zoom floating bar, which has all of my controls, is anchored at the top of the screen.
And you know what, that makes it really difficult, because if I wanna get to... Oh, I'm trying to get to that tab. And if I wanna get to this tab, as soon as my cursor goes over there, it comes down.
And how many times have you stopped sharing or maybe hit something up here when you actually meant to select that tab?
Well, the good news is that you can move that floating bar.
If you come up here and hover over the green, "You are screen sharing" area, click and hold, you can actually drag this floating bar to wherever you want.
Now, I often like to drag it to the very bottom of the screen because I don't have any tabs down there.
It's not in the way of anything else. And I can still access it, right? If I come down here, I can hover over and access these controls down below, but now I have full access to all of my tabs in my browser.
Or if I'm opening a file and I wanna access all the menu and options up above, nothing is distracting me in that case.
I can always come back and drag it back to the top or drag it to wherever I want.
Now, another option that you have with the floating menu bar is if you come over here to More, you can actually hide these meeting controls altogether.
Now you can see they are completely gone. I can't see them at all. And if I press Escape, it will return to the screen.
Now, a bit of a warning because they're completely hidden, I may end up forgetting if I'm sharing my screen.
And maybe after my portion of the presentation, I believe I've handed it off to someone else and I'm not sharing my screen. And then I go to social media or maybe try to do something else off the side of my desk.
Meanwhile, I'm sharing to everyone else. I might forget it. So if I hit Escape again, that floating bar is going to return.
But I think one of the nice things of having this visible at least somewhere on your screen, is you're gonna see this green, "You are sharing," and this stop share. The green and the red makes it pretty apparent that you are sharing in that moment.
How to chat with everyone vs direct messaging
All right, so the next one on this list is something really, really important and it's actually changed in the past year.
I've had so many questions about this one. I wanted to make sure I included it in today's video.
What we're gonna do is come up here and open up the chat window.
In fact, why don't I just stop sharing for a moment? I'm gonna have the chat window here on the right-hand side.
Now, one common mistake that you want to try and avoid is make sure that you know the difference between messaging everyone and messaging someone privately or sending them a direct message.
How often have you, or have you seen someone else, send a message when they thought it was directly to an individual, but really it was stuck on everyone and everyone in the meeting saw that message?
So take a quick look at this dropdown menu. Make sure that you know the difference as to who you're sending that message to.
But here's the question that I got asked last year, when it comes to a direct message, and Zoom has changed the label of this. This used to say private, now they use the term direct message. Is it truly private? Can the host truly not see this?
Well, it's true in the meeting, the host cannot see this. The host cannot see any of these messages, but what also used to be true is that if the meeting host was recording that meeting, they would get a log of the full chat, including those private messages.
So they weren't private afterwards. The host actually could have access to them.
I wanna tell you that that has changed and private really does mean private. The host does not have access to those messages even if they are recording the meeting. So something that you should be aware of there.
The other thing I wanna point out when it comes to chat is that if you are the host, you have a lot more options available to you here.
So for example, by default, most Zoom meetings are set to everyone publicly and directly, meaning that everyone can message the entire group or they can pick and choose individuals at a time.
But you can disable the directly option and you can choose just everyone publicly.
Meaning that every single comment is gonna be to everyone. No one can reach out to someone on a one-to-one basis.
There's two other choices you should be aware of. Host only, meaning that participants can only contact you.
You can contact everyone else, but only they can ask you questions or send you comments directly.
Now, this might be an interesting one to use if you are a teacher or a trainer and maybe you want to ensure your participants that they don't need to be embarrassed about their questions or to ask for help.
So in this mode, all of their questions or their comments go directly to you and no one else sees them.
And of course last but not least, you can just disable chat altogether.
You don't always have to have chat on, but I mean that sort of defeats the purpose of engagement and allowing people to interact in another way. Just wanna make sure that you're aware of those options there.
Speaking with participants
How to mute all participants
and speaking with having a little more control as the host, I also wanna make sure that you're familiar with muting everyone in your Zoom meeting.
How embarrassing is it that when you are trying to speak or give a presentation and then you hear someone's dog barking in the background or perhaps you hear someone speaking to a spouse off camera?
Well, don't forget as the host, you have control, that power to mute everyone.
If we come down here to the bottom, you can select Mute All. You're gonna get this pop-up window.
And just before you say Yes, I want you to look at this option as well, Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves.
If you're having a meeting with a fairly large audience or perhaps a group of people that you don't know very well, you may want to uncheck this option, meaning that they cannot unmute themselves unless you give them access to do so.
How to stop participants from doing things
You get to pick and choose. Now my seventh tip for you has to do with having full control, especially if you want to prevent your participants from annotating on your screen, prevent them from sharing their screen, unless you say so and other options.
If you're the host, you can come down here to Security and there is a section titled Allow participants too.
So by having share screen unchecked, no one else can share their screen right now, until I check this, no one else can do so without my permission.
I have chat turned on, but I could turn it off at this level as well.
I can choose to prevent them from renaming themselves. If I don't want them to rename themselves something that is already looking good or I can identify them, I can prevent that as well.
I can also, as we just saw another location where you can prevent them from unmuting themselves and if you don't want them to start their video, maybe there's no need depending on the type of meeting or what you're trying to host, you can also prevent that option as well.
Now, if you're looking for an even better way to engage your audience, you may be interested in learning how to use Zoom breakout rooms.
If so, I invite you to watch my video down here in the left-hand corner.
Thank you so much for watching today's video.
I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
