3 tips for making the most of video calls
Whether you’re juggling internet limitations with usage increases across the household, struggling to find space for a quiet video call with roommates in every direction, or even just trying to figure out where the ‘mute’ button is when the local wildlife decide to start up a choir mid-meeting, you’re not alone. Video call usage has increased in every direction (Zoom, alone, saw a 535% increase in daily traffic across the month of March 2020) as we look to fill gaps created by our inability to work together physically.
Technical hiccups aside, the integration of video calls into new daily workflows offers a great opportunity for engaging with audiences, clients, and teams in a variety of ways. Here’s three ways to take your video calls from accidental filter changes through to content creation treasure troves.
Embrace automated transcription
There’s nothing worse than trawling through an hour of audio recordings to look for key meeting points or having to manually turn content into a written format. Skip out on the heavy manual workload that comes with transcription and look to the world of automated transcription. Descript is a great tool that turns your audio into text, complete with an intuitive text editor that allows you to assign speakers, integrate timecode, and correct automated transcriptions across the board. This is a powerful tool for content creators, as Descript’s Podcast Studio also supports collaborative multitrack editing in a Google Docs-esque manner. Rev.com is another leading transcription service, giving you the option to place orders for 24-hour or expedited turnaround and request transcripts to be shaped into a multitude of formats, like closed captions, subtitles, podcast notes and more.
Use video calls to kick off a content repurposing machine
Video calls can quickly add up to a significant time commitment on a weekly basis once you’ve committed to meeting with your team, chatting with a client, and even jumping on a family chat to stay in touch with loved ones from afar.
If you’re finding your regular workflows are disrupted by the increase in video call engagement, look at how you can kill two birds with one stone by repurposing your video calls into other content forms. Think about how 30 minutes of a niche-focused discussion between you and your team could be repurposed into a blog post, a LinkedIn update, social media content, a podcast ep, a YouTube video, and an EDM series.
Keep meetings focused and specific
Good meeting principles apply to video calls in the same way they do to in-person conversations. Before jumping onto a call with your team, set the parameters: how long will you meet for, what’s on the agenda, and what are the specific outcomes each team member needs to walk away from the conversation with? By keeping video calls focused and strategic, you can avoid Zoom burn-out, keeping priorities in sight and encouraging thoughtful communication as an integrated part of an overall internal workflow management system.
PS — Whenever you’re ready, there are some extra steps you can take to make your business an automated powerhouse:
1. Join the Automation Hackers community
It’s our Facebook community for business owners who want to automate — Click Here.
2. Get your free Automation Checkup
In a free call, I can show you what you can [and should] be automating in your business — Book Here.
3. Work with me and my team privately
Using my Automation Deep Dive method, we’ll create an Automation Blueprint unique to your company. Just send me a message with the words ‘Deep Dive’ and some details about your business, with what you’d like to focus on, and we can take it from there!
