Once you’ve finished preparing for your remote collaboration—picking the right meeting space, attire, conferencing platform, and time—you can click “join meeting” and get to work.

Now, years of practice have taught you how to hold a successful meeting. Most of what you already know applies equally to a video conference, but you’ll still want to check out the following tips to make sure you’re truly ready to welcome in your virtual guest.

Use High-Quality Video Conferencing Equipment

Invest in high-quality video conferencing cameras and speakerphones. You wouldn’t mumble or turn the lights down too low during a face-to-face meeting, so why risk using subpar speakerphones and cameras that detract from your message with audiovisual distortions? If a video call is continually interrupted by technical failures, you or your conferencing partner are likely to miscommunicate, switch to a less-engaging voice-only call, or give up entirely.

A wide range of premium-quality remote collaboration solutions is readily available for every situation. Whether you’re working from home, a huddle room, or a large conference room, you can maximize your effectiveness with cameras, speakerphones, and all-in-one devices that are optimized for such spaces.

Make Remote Participants Feel Like They’re in the Room

Go the extra mile to make far-side participants feel as if they are in the room with you. The farther away they feel, the easier it will be for them to tune you out or reject your business proposals. Try these tricks:

• Position your camera at eye level. That lets you maintain natural eye contact while looking at the screen. Otherwise, the far-side participants will feel like you’re looking over their heads or down at the table in front of them.
• Use a device with speaker tracking that automatically focuses the FOV on whoever is speaking. This successfully mimics an in-person meeting, in which the presenter might move to the front of the room next to the display
• Deploy a conferencing camera with a high-powered zoom that lets virtual meeting participants closely examine details on prototypes or images you didn’t have time to add to your presentation file. We recommend this option with an incredible 18X total zoom!
• Us a camera with automatic FOV adjustment. When someone walks in late and sits down outside the viewing area, you won’t make your distant attendees nauseous as you manually pan/tilt/zoom to get the right frame. The camera will adjust itself, quickly and naturally.
• Use software that allows far-end meeting attendees to present files and do real-time annotation.

Take Full Advantage of Off-Screen Aids

While you want to make remote participants feel like they’re in the room, the reality is that they are not. There’s space outside the camera’s FOV that they cannot see, and you can use this fact to your advantage.

Keep notes and cheat sheets at eye level with your camera. Then you can focus on your customer or coworker on the other end and adapt on the fly without appearing lost. For a last-minute presentation, you could even have an intern stand outside the FOV with cue cards. The resulting effortless communication increases the level of professionalism you can project to both internal and external clients, which makes your operations more productive and efficient.