Categories
Operations

The benefits of an efficient meeting room booking system

Meetings are an important component in business management; they enable communication, information exchange, problem solving and teamwork. There are, however, reasons why meetings can fail to be productive and instead be problematic for business operations. These reasons range from having the wrong participants present at the meeting to having no clear purpose for the meeting. Furthermore, there tend to be inefficiencies with regard to the meeting room booking systems being used by the business or there is no clear system in use to begin with.

The right software can streamline the booking process and save the business valuable time and money. A modern meeting room booking system, such as Add-On’s Resource Central, allows employees to select and book rooms, invite participants, use Meeting Labels to describe the types of meetings being held and even order catering. Businesses that are using technology correctly to their advantage are using software, which is secure, accessible, and scalable. Add-On is a reliable option that is trusted by customers, from commercial giants to legal services, globally.

Meeting room booking software also provides managers with insight into how and how often rooms are being used by employees. Office planning can consequently be a more informed and organized process as there is increased space management transparency. Facilities can be renovated to adjust for specific needs. With the most optimized spaces, workforce productivity can also be optimized. 

Resource Central can eradicate conflicts over double-booked rooms and other such miscommunications. All employees can have some level of access to the software, so all meeting participants are updated on any changes. When a meeting starts off on the right foot it is more likely to succeed than a haphazardly organized session that had to be re-located at the last minute; employees can arrive on time and well prepared. This reduces the risk of meetings lowering employee morale and generating dysfunction in the workplace; accurate information exchange means lowered stress and increased productivity. 

Misallocation of resources and time is costly to businesses. Meetings can take up a large portion of an employees workday, so it is important for any unnecessary steps to be removed. Well-designed software interfaces can save businesses a great deal of time. 

Nonetheless, if the meeting itself is redundant in terms of content, the efficiency with which it was scheduled holds less relevance. While strategic scheduling provides the groundwork for a meeting to be smoothly run and the ripple effects that can be traced back to a meeting room booking system are greatly beneficial, it is still the responsibility of the employees to cooperate well. Meetings must have an objective that is measurable and specific to keep discussion and brainstorming on track. 

An efficient meeting room booking system eliminates booking conflicts, facilitates filtered searches for appropriate booking options and coordinates with catering and services as an easy-to-use software option. In turn, the booking system will benefit the productivity of employees and be the profitable choice for an organization.

Categories
Communication Skills

Making Zoom Meetings Enjoyable

I think it’s fair to say that we are all sick and tired of zoom meetings.

Meetings, in general, are mostly a waste of time but at least you get to interact with other humans in person.

Covid-19 has turned meetings on their head and they have become a drudgery of time.

Tips for Enjoyable Zoom Calls

Here is how to make zoom meetings actually enjoyable.

Email It Over Zoom It

We’ve all been in those zoom meetings where you sit there thinking “this all could have been sent in an email.” This is the fastest way to lose attention and turn it into drudgery. The key to success is to email ahead of an agenda and keep the meeting succinct.

As Andrew Roderick states

“Make the focus around teamwork, and give each person a section to present a project/issue/anything they are working on for 5 minutes, and allow a 5-minute discussion afterward where everyone can help, offer support, feedback on what’s being done. Hosting your team meetings in this way allows you to ensure each team member is actively engaged and involved, while also making sure priorities from each team member are discussed.”

As an additional note make sure to set a hard out. A time that the meeting ends and you don’t go over. Respecting peoples time is a great way to keep people engaged.

Practice Your On-Camera Speaking Skills

Nothing is worse than having a boring presenter be it in person or on camera. Just like public speaking, presenting on camera is a learned skill anyone can achieve if they have the right guidance. Here are 10 tips to speaking on camera

Dress to Impress

Even though no one can see what you are wearing below the computer desk, you want to suit up.

Know what makes you look good too. As Dagmar Spichale says “Patterned tops make me look more awake and refreshed, and patterned button-downs are especially flattering because they create an elongated neckline that doubles to showcase subtle jewelry to its best advantage. My secret hack is wearing perfume and/or my favorite heels — no-one notices but I KNOW!”

Use Interactive Whiteboard Tools

As Mollie Suggests “To make things interesting in our collaboration sessions, we use Mural in Zoom for whiteboarding. It’s an interactive software where everyone could help in mapping out and bouncing off ideas about a project. We use photos, sticky notes, and doodling tools in brainstorming and getting things together.

Kevin builds on this idea “Sometimes, you just have to draw something out on a whiteboard to help everyone else understand what you mean. Using a tablet for your Zoom calls makes it much easier to sketch out diagrams and flowcharts to engage the other meeting participants.“

Start With A Common Interest

With the plethora of various TV shows, Netflix movies, and online entertainment. Its good to engage people in a common interest. As Jason VanDevere states “I discuss with my team a TV show we all agree on that’s worth watching. After a new episode, we spend the first five minutes of the meeting openly discussing the show. Did the episode ending surprise you? Were you shocked a particular character got killed off? How would you rate the episode?

This can be any television show, sports game, Netflix series, or YouTube show. With all the content out there, surely there’s has to be something out there your team can agree on. Participation is also optional. Employees that prefer not to participate may simply log in five minutes later.

I find that everyone appears to be more engaged in the meeting after coming off a discussion of a common interest.”

Use the 8% Rule

As Michael, the CEO of Teambuilding explains “Any Zoom meeting should have at least 8% of its time dedicated to non-meetings activities. This time could include icebreakers, trivia questions, dance breaks or any other light activity. This “off-time” can quickly reenergize attendees to participate in the more dense content of the meeting

Engage with Outside Interest

Willie Greer states “I always make time for stories. Zoom fatigue is real and can take a toll on a person’s mental and emotional aspect, so relaxing time is a must during meetings. Personally, I ask my employees how they are, is there anything they want to share, like their new hobbies during the lockdown, or online businesses they want to promote. It refreshes their minds after work and before leaving the meeting.”

A lot of people who are working from home are also starting side projects, and side businesses.  You never know what interesting hobbies people have or side business they create. Some of the most used Google Tools have started as side projects of employees. What is your side project? For example, I’ve created an entire side project focused on Unicorns.

Rotate The Hot Seat

Getting everyone to talk can be a bit of a challenge, but an easy way to do that is to call on participants throughout the meeting. Call on the first person and let that person choose the next person to speak. It keeps everyone alert and focused because they could be next!

Use Visual Cue Cards

We’ve all experienced an interruption during a meeting. Your speaker is presenting when someone pipes in with their 2 cents. This can be fine when you are in person because we can naturally slip in with perfect timing but due to the delay of zoom, it throws everyone off.

That’s where visual cue cards can come in and keep the rhythm of the zoom meeting flowing. I use visual cue cards made by DigiCards.

They seamlessly integrate with my digital team and keep meetings running smoothly. I especially love the timing cards to let me know there are a few minutes left in the presentation.

These are just some of the best tips when it comes to making your zoom call more enjoyable. Let me know what I missed or if there are any other suggestions to make zoom meetings actually enjoyable.

How To Make Zoom Meetings Actually Enjoyable [Smallbiztrends]

About Our GE Network Expert - Min Tang

Categories
Starting Up

What Drives Your Entrepreneurial Spirit?

Are you trying to find the inner drive and inspiration to be become an entrepreneur? We surveyed over 1,200 American adults from diverse backgrounds all over the country, seeking to understand the factors that lead people to pursue their entrepreneurial goals.

Our big takeaway? It isn’t all about money, or success, or even business.

It’s this: If someone feels that their life has meaning, they’re more likely to become an entrepreneur.

And it goes even deeper than that. When we looked at the people who said they want to start a business, we saw a pattern: The most energized, confident, and goal-focused of them all also believe they have the ability to live meaningful lives. In fact, regardless of whether or not they have plans to start a business, survey respondents who believe strongly in their ability to live meaningful lives also had the most positive views about entrepreneurs.

In short, meaning in life inspires the entrepreneurial spirit—as well as the public opinions needed to make our society supportive of entrepreneurship.

So, what exactly is meaning in life?

When we say “meaning in life,” we mean that you feel that you play a significant role in the world. It’s a sense that you have a purpose. To feel meaningful is to believe that you matter, that you can make important contributions to your family, friends, communities, and broader society.

It has powerful implications for physical and mental wellbeing, for confidence and motivation, and for optimism about the future. Decades of research in psychology has shown the importance of this feeling of meaning in making people resilient and focused in difficult times.

And here’s why this is so important to understand now: If we can take advantage of the power of meaning, then aspiring entrepreneurs can rise up, and provide the resiliency and focus necessary to help us all navigate these difficult times.

How entrepreneurs can harness this power

No matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, start by taking the time to focus on what currently gives your life meaning. Then, think about how your entrepreneurial ambitions build on that. For most of us, meaning is found in close relationships, by connecting with and serving the ones we love. Therefore, it may be helpful when developing a business plan to think about how it will not only help you pursue your own ambitions, but can also benefit those you care about most.

For example, are you building a business that can provide opportunities for family and friends? Will your business give you the ability to spend more time with loved ones? Or might it offer new ways for you to be better able to be there for them?

More broadly, think about how your future business can help make significant contributions to your community, and perhaps even the broader world. Focusing on the meaningful role you can play may not only help give you inspiration, it may also help you generate novel ideas and innovation solutions to challenges you and your community face. You may be the one that helps make important breakthroughs, the one who finds a way to help vulnerable populations in the community, or the one who finds a new way to deliver goods to meet people’s needs during social distancing.

Eventually, when our global challenges have passed, an economic recovery will depend on the entrepreneurial spirit and business innovations to help our society flourish. As people continue, at least in the short term, to reduce their travel, limit their retail shopping and dining out, avoid attending large events and meetings, and continue other social distancing behaviors, businesses will need to continue to explore new ways of delivering and producing goods and services.  New opportunities will arise for those that are able to innovate in this environment. In addition, individuals will need to support entrepreneurs and their businesses in order for them to rebuild and thrive.

Believing that your life is meaningful, that you have a significant role to play in the world, can help you cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit and innovate in ways that not only help you fulfill your need for meaning but also help shape a flourishing world where others can do the same.

Want to Be An Entrepreneur? Focus on What Gives Your Life Meaning [Entrepreneur]

About Our GE Network Expert - Min Tang

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Growing Sales On Youtube

One-third of internet users say they purchased a product because of YouTube.

You’d think brands would be YouTube experts. They’re not. Kids are doing a better job.

Literally.

There are 8-year-olds generating billions (with a B) of views with no paid advertising. There isn’t a single brand among the top 100 YouTube channels.

What is that brands are doing wrong? How can brands be successful on YouTube? There are three things to obsess over in order to grow a YouTube channel:

  1. Focus on a single topic and content series
  2. Optimize and refine your content
  3. Ask people to subscribe

Over 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every single minute.  With so much noise you need to find your niche and stick with it. Otherwise, people forget you. As a result, you’ll want to build your channel around what is called a ‘hub’ content series. This means you create episodic content with a consistent format, schedule, cast and topic.

The top creators all built their channels around hub content.

For example, Dude Perfect. The channel has over 50 million subscribers and 10.5 billion views. The content is entirely built around elaborate trick shots. Additionally, they upload, like clockwork, every other Monday.

Related: How to Create a YouTube Channel in 3 Simple Steps

The Try Guys consist of four friends documenting new experiences. The format is always the same. The foursome tries different things within each video, and experiences range from baking, to fire cupping, to nail extensions, and eating challenges. New videos are released on a set schedule. New videos go live every Wednesday and Saturday. As a result of their focused efforts, they’ve managed to grow to 7 million subscribers and over a billion views.

The commonality with these channels is a laser focus on a single topic, hub format, and upload schedule.

Internet sleuth’s uncovered the ideal length and watch time for content. They found that YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes, “10+ minute videos with 45%+ viewer retention per video.” As a result, once you have a hub format you have to work to extend your watch time with each video. YouTube provides audience retention data to help with this.

Within YouTube analytics, you can see, on a second by second basis where the peaks and troughs are in a video. This enables you to know what aspects of a video causes people to lose interest and where they’re rewatching.

With each new video, you’ll want to ditch the stuff that is losing viewers and do more of what people rewatch. The ultimate goal is to gradually make changes based on insights to increase watch time with each new video. The marginal gains will add up.

Imagine your first video has an average watch time of two minutes. Now let’s say you apply learnings and can increase watch time 2%. If you can keep that up with each additional video, then after 100 videos you’ll have watch time of well over 5 minutes. After 200 videos you’d have an average watch time of over 14 minutes.

In applying this methodology you can methodically increase watch time and create high ranking content.

Brands often make the assumption that if their content is great people will subscribe. The reality is you have to ask people to subscribe. Ask, early, often and make it incredibly simple.

YouTube provides numerous levers for channels to convert viewers to subscribers. If you look at successful YouTube creators, they use all of them.

End screens, a tool that allows you to add clickable overlays at the end of a video, is a great way to convert a viewer to a subscriber. If someone made it to the end of your video, they likely enjoyed the content. As a result, they’d be predisposed to hearing more from you. Verbally ask viewers to subscribe and point to the placement of the subscribe button. Remind the viewer it’s a great way to get more videos like the one they just watched.

There are a number of additional tactics.

YouTube allows you to add a ‘watermark’ in the right-hand corner of videos. Watermarks are ‘click to subscribe’ buttons. Brands often use their logo as the watermark. A logo doesn’t communicate the desired action. When you upload an image that says ‘subscribe’, the rate of clicks to subscribe (with that functionality) double on average.

Additionally, don’t be shy about promoting your channel. If you have an email list or large social following cross-promote those audiences. Create a one-click to subscribe feature. You can create a subscribe link for your channel by adding the channel name to this url: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=CHANNELNAME.

YouTube is well worth the investment in time and resources for virtually every brand. It can’t be ignored. It drives one-third of internet users to make a purchase and is the second largest search engine.

While YouTube is a difficult platform to grow an audience, it doesn’t need to be complicated. Focus on growing your overall channel’s watch time. Accomplish this by staying focused on your hub format. Use YouTube’s watch time analytics to inform small adjustments with each upcoming video. Encourage viewers to subscribe.

It may take time, but you will grow an audience.

3 Keys to Growing Sales and Views on YouTube [Entrepreneurial]

About Our GE Network Expert - Min Tang

Categories
Technology

The Next Big Thing in AV Control Systems

Discover how AV control systems will improve the overall user experience.

The user experience and behavior are dynamic and changes at any time, depending on several factors. The big question is, can the AV control system do its part to ensure a perfect experience during usability? For every high user, technology incline will expect seamless and uncomplicated experience because they want to have total control over their devices. With the right AV control systems, the user’s control level is automatic; tap or click leads to the desired feature. No matter how an AV control system may be, the bottom line is that its unique feature must meet the user’s needs. The generic interface must ensure a custom-made solution during listening, presentation, or meetings.

AV control system is the central collection unit of pieces of information, and the information is being controlled, managed, and utilized using software and hardware technology. Every AV system comprises different specifications of hardware, and several organizations and corporate bodies are beginning to realize the value once incorporated in their technology setting and routine. The use of AV control systems can make a difficult task easier to fix using simple automation.

For commercial and residential purposes, AV control systems can manipulate various projects, and it just needs the attention of someone with the experience and operational knowledge to handle the equipment. Another big thing in AV control systems is that it is intuitive and only consists of the necessary features for users; that’s why many users consider it a top priority technological tool. The satisfaction of all these big things lies therein, by choosing the right AV control systems suitable for your specific need, and should be installed by an AV expert or installer, not the regular TV installer.