Working from home can be challenging. The temptation of the comfy couch, the allure of daytime TV, and the overwhelming urge to not change out of your pajamas can be daunting. However, I’m not here to discuss these issues. More often, working from home or from a remote location may cause you to feel out of the loop from your colleagues. I’ve compiled 5 quick tips to make your remote collaboration sessions more effective.

• Utilize collaboration tools and communication techniques to be a more active remote participant. 

Often times remote collaborators listen in on team meetings while the rest of their colleagues are sitting in a conference room. This can cause a whole slew of communication issues resigning the remote collaborator to be frustrated or, worse yet, tuning out the entire meeting. Luckily, there are plenty of tools available to you to be come a more engaged member of the meeting.  Use an instant messaging application to stay engaged with others in the meeting. Utilize web conferencing tools, like ReadyTalk, to share your screen and view the slideshow of others while meeting. Politely ask your colleagues to speak clearly and be more verbose instead of exchanging non-verbal cues. Be a more deliberate communicator from your end of the meeting and don’t be afraid to interrupt so that you are heard.

• Establish ground rules at the beginning of your remote collaboration session.

At the beginning of any remote collaboration session, whether your colleagues are all remote or you are the only remote participant, establish ground rules for communication  to set yourself up for a successful meeting. It’s easy for only the loudest or most opinionated people to be heard; by setting simple ground rules and being a little more patient, all members of the meeting will be heard even if they can’t be seen. When getting buy-in on a topic or when asking for feedback, individually call out all members of meeting to get their specific feedback. 

• Make sure you are speaking on a headset and have a solid internet connection. 

The easiest way to ruin a remote meeting session is to have a poor audio or web conference connection. Do yourself and your colleagues a favor and invest in a headset or headphones with a mic if you’re on a cell phone. If you’re working from home set up a simple workstation with a wired internet connection so that your web conference has less of a chance of failing or being so slow it’s unworkable. This simple tip will go the farthest in setting yourself up for success while in a remote collaboration session. 

• Don’t multi-task.

Download the AMA and ReadyTalk's guide to planning successful webinars.

Chances are, you are very familiar with the many moving parts that go into setting up a webinar. With assistance from the American Marketing Association, we created a best practices document to offer help sorting through those details.

As a supplement to this document, the members of our Events team came up with the following additional points to consider while setting up a webinar.

• Be sure to schedule your webinar as far in advance of the actual date as possible – ideally, at least 6 to 8 weeks prior – in order to allow enough time for proper marketing of your webinar.
• If you have a custom script, be sure to send it your Event Manager at least 24 hours in advance of your webinar.
• If your participants will be listening to the audio via their phone lines, you might consider adding something similar to the text below to your invitation or confirmation email.

To ensure you are able to join this event successfully, please dial in 10-15 minutes prior to scheduled start time. You will be greeted by an operator. Please be prepared to give them your full name and company name. You will be placed on hold until the call begins.

If you are using the broadcast audio function (allowing your participants to listen to the audio via their computer speakers, you might consider something similar to the text below.

When you log into the web portion, you will automatically be connected to broadcast audio which will allow you to hear the presentation through your computer speakers. Please make sure the volume on your speakers is set appropriately to your location and is respectful to those around you.

• Prepare an introduction slide to show prior to the beginning of the webinar. This slide can include the login information and is very helpful, especially if the dial-in number is listed. Also, if the webinar uses broadcast audio, you can also use this location to remind participants to make sure the volume on their speakers is set appropriately.
• Prior to the live webinar, you might consider sending an email to all speakers with their dial-in and log-in information.
• Prepare a few “canned questions” just in case you need them to fill time during the Q&A session.
• Think about audience engagement!!! Come up with a few ways of interacting with your audience!
• Be aware of your platform’s limitations before the live webinar (participant limit, desktop sharing, video, etc.)
• Find out what type of support you have from your platform provider before, during and after your webinar.

If you use any setup best practices that are not listed here, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to share your thoughts as others may find it helpful in their webinar setup.

Social media is here to stay.

And it keeps. On. Growing.

The three major players, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, continue to garner the most users in both the B2C and B2B arena. ReadyTalk customers often conduct large webinars on a regular basis for several purposes, such as online training, new product launches, and most often, lead generation and qualification.  This is where social media and webinars marry, since our customers are constantly looking for ways to easily engage with their audiences and increase registrations prior to their event, especially with tools they already use.

To continue our focus on the marketing user, ReadyTalk has added the following social media features to Conference Center to help our customers leverage their own social networks, as well as those of their audience) to expand their reach and drive more qualified leads:

• LinkedIn Integration for Scheduled Meetings (ReadyTalk already offers automated promotion through Facebook and Twitter)
• Enable your participants to easily share your upcoming webinar on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn through the registration page and event emails

As a chairperson, you have the option to turn the ability for your participants to share your event on their social networks at any time.

And that’s not all. We’ve also added the ability to add an upcoming meeting to Google Calendar, to help increase the efficiencies for both the chairperson and participants.

Remember to refer to last week’s blog post to learn about some of the user interface changes!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to event services and our conference center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of ReadyTalk Quick Launcher – a tool available on your desktop that makes it easier and faster to start, join, and invite others to meetings. This tool will be a favorite for people who would like a quicker, persistent way to connect to their ReadyTalk accounts. If you are tired of logging into ReadyTalk through the browser to gain access to your account then this is definitely the tool for you. Quick Launcher gives you the ability to:

• Start an On-Demand Meeting with a single click. The Quick Launcher stores your account credentials eliminating the need to type in any numbers or codes.

• View a list of Scheduled Meetings in Conference Center and choose the meeting you’d like to start.

• Skip all audio prompts with the Start Audio Meeting feature. The Quick Launcher will dial you and immediately connect you to your Audio Meeting. It remembers the last 10 numbers you dialed so you can quickly select connect to your cell phone, desk phone or conference phone. Check the option to “Launch web controls on connect” to open up the web meeting controls for managing your audio meeting or for running an On-Demand Web and Audio Meeting.

• Instantly create an email invite with Invite Others. All the login information is included giving your participants a quick and easy way to join your ReadyTalk meetings.

• Join a Web Meeting faster when you’re colleague hosts a ReadyTalk meeting. Simply enter the 7 digit access code of the On-Demand meeting you’d like to join and the Quick Launcher will drop you right into the meeting, bypassing the registration process.

The Quick Launcher can be opened by double clicking on the optional desktop icon, left or right clicking on the tray ico. The goal of this tool is to be available for you anytime you need it, but to not be in the way when you don’t.

The ReadyTalk Quick Launcher is available today free of charge and can be downloaded for Mac or Windows here: http://www.readytalk.com/support-training/downloads. If you have any questions about the Quick Launcher or are having any issues downloading please contact ReadyTalk Customer Care at 800.843.9166. As always, if you have feedback, feature enhancements, or questions give us a call at any time or leave them in the comments below.

Paul was formerly an Account Executive at ReadyTalk gaining valuable experience with competitors and the state of the web and audio conferencing industry. Currently in his role as Product Marketing Manager, he is in charge of the competitive landscape, on-demand audio products, and the web meeting interface. Paul loves the outdoors, his pup Huck, his wife Jess, and getting to the ski slopes as much as possible.

Have you been looking for a quick and streamlined way to send a ReadyTalk On-Demand meeting email invite? With the ReadyTalk Scheduler for Outlook you can quickly and easily send a customized email invite through Outlook. Your ReadyTalk account credentials are stored in the scheduler giving you a one click experience to email and invite your participants. With the ReadyTalk Scheduler for Outlook you can:

• Send a custom email invite for a ReadyTalk Audio, Web, or Audio/Web meeting
• Start an On-Demand meeting with 1 click
• Store your ReadyTalk Account credentials

To download the ReadyTalk Scheduler for Outlook please visit: http://www.readytalk.com/support-training/downloads. As always, if you have a question or support issue, please call ReadyTalk Customer Care at 800.843.9166.

Paul was formerly an Account Executive at ReadyTalk gaining valuable experience with competitors and the state of the web and audio conferencing industry. Currently in his role as Product Marketing Manager, he is in charge of the competitive landscape, on-demand audio products, and the web meeting interface. Paul loves the outdoors, his pup Huck, his wife Jess, and getting to the ski slopes as much as possible.