Five Quick Tips for Desktop Sharing – A Beginner’s Guide

Desktop sharing is nothing new. But what we are seeing in today’s busi­ness world is the rapid uptake of desktop sharing soft­ware by compa­nies of all shapes and sizes for a variety of use cases: sales presen­ta­tions by mortgage brokers, online trai­nings by soft­ware compa­nies, client calls by banking and finan­cial advi­sers, etc.

More indus­tries are quickly reali­zing the effi­ci­en­cies and savings to be gained via desktop sharing. If your company has recently disco­vered these bene­fits, equip­ping your­selves with a solid desktop sharing solu­tion is the next logical step. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to under­stand the basics of hosting desktop sharing meetings with your colleagues and clients – this is what we’ll cover below.

Your First Desktop Sharing Meeting

There is a lot to consider when you first start looking into desktop sharing soft­ware e.g. the soft­ware features, how much will it cost, who in your company will use it, for what use case, etc. These are important factors to take into account and will help you find the right solu­tion for your needs.

However these big decisions focus mainly on which soft­ware is right for you, and this often means that people forget and over­look the other big issue of how to best use desktop sharing soft­ware and host online meetings.

1. Send your invitations well in advance

Desktop sharing is quick and effort­less – start a meeting from anywhere with just a couple of mouse clicks and you’re good to go. Nevertheless, people are rarely ready to step into a meeting at the drop of a hat, and this goes for online meetings as well. With this in mind, you need to inform your parti­ci­pants of upco­ming online meetings in advance just like you would for a face-to-face meeting or presen­ta­tion. Take advan­tage of your desktop sharing software’s sche­duler feature to prepare and send meeting invites with clear inst­ruc­tions for how they can join.

2. Clean up your desktop

During a desktop sharing meeting, your meeting parti­ci­pants will be able to see most of your computer screen. Whatever you see on your screen, your parti­ci­pants can see too. The fact that you can quickly and easily share any screen content via desktop sharing is the basis of the software’s core bene­fits. However it also results in sharing your perso­na­lized wall­paper and ALL those desktop short­cuts and files. It’s best to simply cut/paste all those desktop icons into a new folder. You can simply restore them later after the meeting.

3. Turn off your phone. Close your IM apps

When you’re hosting a face-to-face meeting, you don’t check new messages or tweets every time you hear your phone buzz. So don’t do it in a desktop sharing meeting. Log out of your IM desktop programs, turn your phone off or put it out of sight, close your email appli­ca­tion, etc. – all these things can distract you on your screen or at your desk. If it seems suitable, it’s also recom­mended to kindly ask your meeting parti­ci­pants to do the same. As they are sitting in front of their computer watching your screen, it’s temp­ting for them to check their messages but this will obviously be distracting.

4. Introduce your meeting participants

In a regular face-to-face meeting, people might meet and greet each other at the door or around the table as people sit down. However in a desktop sharing meeting, your parti­ci­pants will join inde­pendently and are all suddenly in atten­dance viewing your desktop. It’s very easy to just get started once ever­yone has joined and over­look that there may be one or two parti­ci­pants who have not met. Wait until all expected parti­ci­pants have joined the meeting and then take just a minute to do a quick intro­duc­tion, parti­cu­larly for those who are new to the group. Asking them to intro­duce them­selves is even better because it gives ever­yone a chance to hear each other’s voices, which can help later during discussions.

5. Engage your participants with questions

In any meeting, face-to-face or over the Web, you want to ensure your parti­ci­pants are following the mate­rial and have a firm grasp on the lear­nings. Other­wise you risk wasting everyone’s time. Don’t fall into the trap of simply moving through your meeting content from start to end, without checking that the parti­ci­pants are engaged and following along. It will help greatly if you prepare some ques­tions befo­re­hand to elicit responses from your parti­ci­pants. You can ask for examples, input or for them to share their expe­ri­ences. This will ensure that the meeting is a two-way conver­sa­tion and not just you talking without the parti­ci­pants giving you their full attention.

Regar­ding accep­ting ques­tions from your parti­ci­pants, this is also an excel­lent way to get them to engage with the mate­rial. Depen­ding on the number of people in the meeting, you may want to decide on holding a Q&A at the end of the meeting. If you’re holding a desktop sharing meeting with just a couple of parti­ci­pants, then you’re encou­raged to accept ques­tions throughout the meeting. But if it’s a big group atten­ding, then it might be best to wait till the end to avoid constant ques­tions disrup­ting the meeting.

Desktop Sharing for Pros

If you’re expe­ri­enced in using desktop sharing soft­ware and looking to really take your online meetings to the next level, don’t stop here. Down­load our free guide on “How to Host Successful Online Meetings”, which will teach you the important actions to ensure success at all three online meeting stages: Prepa­ra­tion, Execu­tion and Follow Up.

Discus­sion: If you’ve recently started employing desktop sharing soft­ware at your company and you have some­thing to share from your expe­ri­ence, please leave a comment below to assist the next reader.