How to make your video meetings more productive, more fun, and better for everyone.

I’ve been working from home exclusively for the last 3 years. This means I’ve participated in and hosted hundreds of Zoom meetings.

More than half the time the participants look and sound terrible. You owe it to yourself and colleagues to be a better Zoomie.

Use these Ten commandments as a guide to help you and your colleagues be more attractive, productive, and present.

1. Thou Shalt Not Look Like Crap

Wrinkles, bags, uneven skin tone… vs. Zoom’s clean-up tools!

- Touch-up mode & HD video are two big secrets not many people know about

- Takes 5 seconds to change the settings and makes you look 5 years younger

- Here’s how to do it:

2. Thou Shalt Use Proper Lighting

- Lighting is really important
- Move to a place where natural light is abundant, and make sure it’s in front of you
- If you don’t have much natural light use a lamp
- Even better if you can use ring light/selfie light. This one is ~$7 on wish.com

3. Thou Shalt Use Good Angles

Good angles can get rid of double chins and make you appear more professional.

- As a life rule, taking pictures from unflattering angles is generally a bad idea. Zoom is no different
- People should be able to see your whole face
- Camera should be as close to eye level as possible
- Posture is important. You wouldn’t slouch in an in-person meeting, so you shouldn’t do it on Zoom either

4. Thou Shalt Stay on Mute

- Everyone knows how annoying it is to have someone ‘Reply all’ to an e-mail
- Not muting yourself in a Zoom meeting is the new ‘Reply all’.
- Always stay on mute unless speaking, use your space bar to do it quickly
- If hosting, mute everyone automatically:

5. Thou Shalt Have Good Audio

- Few things are worse than not being able to hear someone well
- You might be blocking the microphone with your hands, lap, or stuff on your desk
- Use a headset, tabletop mic, or earbuds if possible
- Test your computer microphone to hear the audio quality:

6. Thou Shalt Not Have Background Noise

- Sometimes it’s inevitable to have background noise… BUT, when possible
- Find a quiet place in your home
- See commandment number 4 and stay muted

7. Thou Shalt Embrace Thine Home

Please subscribe To our Channel HERE http://bit.ly/1rbfUog There was an unexpected distraction for Professor Robert Kelly when he was being interviewed live ...

- Don’t be that guy. Embrace being at home
- Pets and kids might be crawling all over you but it’s a new work environment for almost everyone
- Be understanding about the challenges working from home
- Re-frame the situation: sometimes it’s nice to see people’s pets/kids/spouses as it brings a more human side of them to work

8. Thou Shalt Not Use Backgrounds

- Backgrounds can be funny but are generally dumb or inappropriate
- Do not add background or blur unless you need to or have ‘funny’ culture at work
- It can be tough to have a good natural background at home. The best rule is to make sure there’s nothing distracting in the background like a TV
- Don’t be embarrassed by your room or background, we’re all in this together

9. Thou Shalt Change Your Display Name

- Make sure your display name represents you
- Full name best, great way to make sure you don’t forget names of people in the meeting
- If you right click anywhere on your video, you will open up the option to change your name:

10. Thou Shalt Encourage Others to Read These Commandments and Keep Them Holy

- Zoom and other video conferencing applications are here to stay
- With the right prep these meetings can be effective and fun
- Doesn’t take much effort to look and sound better
- The productivity of your teams will increase significantly with better video conferences

If you enjoyed this article you might also want to read about how to give better presentations. Most are PowerPointless, but you can get the tips that General Electric spent $5,000 teaching me for free.