In the last two years, many workplaces have started using more virtual meetings in their daily operations. Virtual meetings allow a large group of people to interact without leaving their living rooms. It can be much harder to really connect to participants in a virtual setting, so the presenter needs to be creative and try different strategies to keep everyone interested in the content. Here are five ways to bring excitement to your next virtual meeting.

Keep Participants Engaged

The most important thing to keep in mind before planning your next virtual meeting is engagement. You want your meeting to be a rewarding experience for those involved, and that means keeping participants engaged and doing things. Avoid opening a meeting that is a one-sided slideshow presentation without any feedback from the audience.

1. Create Custom Zoom Backgrounds

One easy way to instantly increase the excitement factor in your Zoom meeting is with a custom background. You can add a custom office background for Zoom so your participants aren’t seeing the same old boring space in your presentation. Meeting participants can also add their own backgrounds so they can show off their team spirit or personality.

2. Get To Know Your Employees

Another idea to help make your virtual meetings more fun and engaging is to use icebreakers or getting to know you activities. When you first start a meeting, have a question showing up to help get the conversation going. Use a “Would You Rather” type of question that isn’t work-related so you can see each person’s personality, such as “Vanilla or Chocolate Ice Cream?” You can make it more fun with unique and random questions that help engage the audience.

3. Hold Contests and Drawings

Next, add some fun competition to your virtual meetings with some contests and drawings during your Zoom. If you have a long meeting coming up, break up the content and have periodic drawings for things like gift cards or time off from work to keep everyone going and motivated. Use a Zoom backgrounds Mac contest to see which employee comes up with the funniest background.

4. Use Breakout Rooms

It can be hard for people to have meaningful interactions in a virtual meeting when there are hundreds of people. During your presentation, you can get more participation and better conversations if you break up the large group into smaller numbers. With most virtual meeting platforms, the presenter can opt to open smaller, mini-meetings with breakout rooms. During the meeting, you can set up breakout rooms and give each group some engaging activities to make it more fun.

5. Play Games

Finally, consider adding exciting games to your virtual meeting to get more people interested in participating. You can use the chat feature to engage with a large number of people and incorporate text-based question games. Use the Zoom immersive view background feature to get even more creative with your game ideas for your meetings.

Don’t let your participants suffer through another long, boring Zoom meeting. Make your meetings better with these fun ideas.