Effective Meeting Strategies and 28 Best Tools for Remote Meetings
Effective meeting strategies will surely go a long way in ensuring successful remote meetings and minimizing time wastage while making sure you get the max out of time you commit to a meeting. To help you, we have put together some of the things we feel are utterly important.
Top 10 Effective Meeting Strategies and Tips for Remote Meetings
-
Choose the right video conferencing tool
Here’s a list for you to choose from. -
Rotate the times of your meetings
When the team is distributed and working in different time zones, it's a fair deal to rotate the meeting time every day/ week. -
Be on time. Always.
This is a general rule for any meeting, in-person or remote, but is particularly critical for remote meetings since rescheduling or extending the same would be a big hassle. -
Always video on, if possible
You will miss out on important video cues if it’s an audio-only call. Also, helps a tad bit towards better team bonding. -
Address everyone in the group, have a small chat/ icebreaker
A small chat and an ice breaker just before the actual discussion will brighten the mood and help everyone focus better. -
Avoid rescheduling/ canceling the meeting last-minute
In a remote setting, each team member might follow a different routine, partly by choice and also due to timezone constraints. Rescheduling/ canceling the meeting would be a big hassle. However if it’s unavoidable and you end up doing so, send the attendees a personal note/ message. -
Ensure minimising surrounding disturbance when taking a meeting
It is ideal if you have a home office and take every meeting from that silent corner or separate room in your house. However, if that’s not possible, at least make sure to have minimum distractions or disruptions. -
Advisable to have your mobile hotspot ready
If your wifi fails due to any unfortunate circumstances like a power cut, your mobile hotspot will act as a savior. -
Record all meetings, if possible
Get into the habit of recording your meetings just so that you can reference it later if needed. It can also be used to share it with people who couldn’t make it to the call. Bonus tip: It's worth remembering that sometimes a meeting is not warranted. In these cases, you might want to record your presentation and share it for remote employees to watch on their own time. This can easily be achieved by creating a presentation in Google Slides and adding an audio track for workers to follow along. -
Keep the agenda ready before the call and wrap up with clear next steps
Keep track of what you need to talk about, invest time in structuring the content and most importantly, wrap up the meeting with what the next steps are.
We hope these tips prove to be effective meeting strategies for you, too. Do write to us and let us know if we missed something or if you have anything to add to our list of effective meeting strategies.
- Free version available
- Complete Pricing
Ideal for all remote teams, especially when team size increases beyond 10
- Very well funded
- Robust app
- Sleek & robust app, including desktop apps for both Mac and Windows
- Wide array of app integrations available
- Affordable for startups
- $10 - $15 per user per month
- Complete Pricing
Our target audience are teams that love being visual and social with one another and crave for the face to face interactions but cannot have them often due to the remote nature of their company. Whether you are a new company starting on your remote journey or a medium sized company that is getting harder to connect with your colleagues, Remo.co tackles the following challenges:
-challenges in collaboration with remote teams
-loneliness and lack of quality social interaction
-want to feel the presence of others
-hard to team build and build company culture
- Free basic version with time limit on group meetings.
- Complete Pricing
For one-to-one meetings, and quick catch-ups the free version works sufficiently well. Great for big teams who want a safe and secure video conferencing software.
- Easy to get started.
- User friendly interface.
- Unlimited free version with most premium features.
- N/A
- 14-day free trial, then $10 / active user / month (or FREE if you join our beta feedback program!)
Some details on how ⚡️instant calls⚡️ work:
- You can click on someone and talk immediately, but they will be on mute until they accept.
- All calls start as voice, but can be upgraded to video and screenshare.
- Customizable rooms are a nice way to invite teammates to talk when they're free.
Some details on app presence:
- Your teammates will be able to see which work app you're currently in (only for a select set of integrated apps) - this gives everyone a sense of being together, and helps you know when a teammate is interruptible.
- You can go into Focus Mode if you don't want to be bothered, in which case your app will not be shown.
- Free account for up to 3 participants
- Starter plan ($35/month) for up to 7 participants
- Growing business plan ($99/month) for up to 20 participants
- Complete Pricing
Lito is a web-based voice collaboration tool that lets you better collaborate with your remote co-workers. A virtual office so you can feel like you're in the same room as your co-workers, even if they're remote. Start a conversation right from your browser with no registration or download, and claim your own customized link for your team or regular meetings.
- Lito lets you feel closer, communicate better and get more work done as a team.
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- Free version
- Complete Pricing
Kallu can be used whenever a conference call over the phone is needed, at the office, on the road, when wifi is weak...
It's designed for everyone who needs a quick and reliable collaboration tool: freelancers, entrepreneurs with large teams or small ones, independent workers as lawyers or consultants and obviously remote workers
- Free trial
- Starting plan at $99/month
- Complete Pricing
Scaling startups and larger size companies looking to expand using live video and VOD.
- Works on any device
- Available in limited beta trial - sign up to join the waitlist.
For internal meetings, brainstorms, and co-working sessions when you want seamless, instant collaboration. Taking meeting notes together, team retro, quick voice chats, and extended video+screenshare sessions.
- Your feedback will help us make this product awesome! Sign up and email us if you're willing to hop on a quick interview.
- Basic Plan -- Try for free -- Outklip watermark, 10 video limit, 10 minutes per video, 720p HD video quality, videos stored for one week
- Pro Plan -- $10/month or $100/year (20% discount) -- No Outklip watermark, 10 GB storage, unlimited video lengths, 1080p HD video quality, videos stored indefinitely
- Complete Pricing
Outklip lets you create screen video recordings that are great for three things primarily:
1. Customer training: Help customers learn your product quickly
2. Bug reports: A video bug report will help anyone reproduce the bug quickly
3. Feedback on docs: Give nuanced feedback without writing a long essay
- Outklip automatically hosts the videos you create so you can share the video link anywhere.
- Outklip has integrations to GitLab and GitHub.
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- Completely free today, pricing to come later.
- Complete Pricing
Teams that have remote workers who want to grow closer and overcome distance.
- Free account
Collabify is a perfect fit for remote workers and distributed teams that want to streamline their workflow. Collabify provides many features with a simple interface and has a communication-first approach. This means Collabify has many flexible communication tools that will help improve remote teams' workflow and presence.
- Free
- Complete Pricing
Roundee serves remote professionals and teams that have the need for a robust, easy to use video meeting platform at a freemium price tag.
- Free trial available.
- Complete Pricing
With Conduit, you can:
- Create features and tasks to align to releases
- Aggregate user feedback in one central location
- Tightly integrate product feedback with product planning
- A part of Office365 suite
- Complete Pricing
When Office365 is widely used within your organization and moving away from it does not make sense.
- Storage of contacts of all users within an organization.
- Supports 250 attendees in a meeting.
- All VoIP features are not available.
- Integrated dial-in audio conference features aren't available.
- Free for one personal menu. $25/year for teams.
Used by distributed teams of any size, schools with online classes, or in offices that need a conference room meeting menu.
.jpg)
- Free trial for 14 Days, $2 per month per active user
- Complete Pricing
Any team using Slack and Jira.
.png)
- 30 day unlimited free trial. Pricing from $7 per month.
- Complete Pricing
If you're a Slack team with any remote worker's, you'll find Slack Scheduler valuable. Large teams use it to schedule announcements across teams. Smaller teams use it to help that one remote employee communicate easier, or so that any late night announcements don't disrupt the team.
- $5.99
As it goes to the entry screen right after startup, it's perfect for jotting down ideas and memos.
- Free trial available.
- Complete Pricing
Easily create, manage and update OKRs across popular business tools, or connect data through our API for seamless connection across systems.
- Free trial available.
listshare.app is a social community platform for creating and sharing reusable lists and checklists.
- Free trial available.
Get a team of world-class developers hired based on your custom requirements in under six weeks. All operations are taken care of: recruitment, office, HR, payroll. You keep complete ownership of your roadmap.
- Free.
Awakee helps you to build strong lasting habits and fit them into your daily schedule.
- Free trial available.
Remotedesk delivers remote worker management, while providing clear transparency, accountability & risk management for outsourcing initiatives.
- Free trial available.
The Chief app will help you break down your business goal into small tasks that you can start completing now.
- Free trial available.
pNotes is used to write notes and tasks for the day.
- Free to use.
Use Clockwise for Slack to get the power of the Clockwise calendar assistant, delivered right where you work.
- Free trial available.
Forget about juggling between calendars and chat services, jumping between tabs or resending invites - use Doodle Bot to create and manage meetings where you work.
- Lets you create polls directly from Slack
- Is fast
- Can be confusing for a beginner
- Limited features
- Free 14-day trial, Free account till August 15, 2020, for hospitals and non-profit organizations.
- Complete Pricing
GanttPRO is a Gantt chart planner used for project management and team collaboration, project scheduling, timelines creation, and resource management.
- Free version available
- Complete Pricing
Ideal for all remote teams, especially when team size increases beyond 10
- Very well funded
- Robust app
- Sleek & robust app, including desktop apps for both Mac and Windows
- Wide array of app integrations available
- Affordable for startups
- $10 - $15 per user per month
- Complete Pricing
Our target audience are teams that love being visual and social with one another and crave for the face to face interactions but cannot have them often due to the remote nature of their company. Whether you are a new company starting on your remote journey or a medium sized company that is getting harder to connect with your colleagues, Remo.co tackles the following challenges:
-challenges in collaboration with remote teams
-loneliness and lack of quality social interaction
-want to feel the presence of others
-hard to team build and build company culture
- Free basic version with time limit on group meetings.
- Complete Pricing
For one-to-one meetings, and quick catch-ups the free version works sufficiently well. Great for big teams who want a safe and secure video conferencing software.
- Easy to get started.
- User friendly interface.
- Unlimited free version with most premium features.
- N/A
- 14-day free trial, then $10 / active user / month (or FREE if you join our beta feedback program!)
Some details on how ⚡️instant calls⚡️ work:
- You can click on someone and talk immediately, but they will be on mute until they accept.
- All calls start as voice, but can be upgraded to video and screenshare.
- Customizable rooms are a nice way to invite teammates to talk when they're free.
Some details on app presence:
- Your teammates will be able to see which work app you're currently in (only for a select set of integrated apps) - this gives everyone a sense of being together, and helps you know when a teammate is interruptible.
- You can go into Focus Mode if you don't want to be bothered, in which case your app will not be shown.
- Free account for up to 3 participants
- Starter plan ($35/month) for up to 7 participants
- Growing business plan ($99/month) for up to 20 participants
- Complete Pricing
Lito is a web-based voice collaboration tool that lets you better collaborate with your remote co-workers. A virtual office so you can feel like you're in the same room as your co-workers, even if they're remote. Start a conversation right from your browser with no registration or download, and claim your own customized link for your team or regular meetings.
- Lito lets you feel closer, communicate better and get more work done as a team.
- Free version
- Complete Pricing
Kallu can be used whenever a conference call over the phone is needed, at the office, on the road, when wifi is weak...
It's designed for everyone who needs a quick and reliable collaboration tool: freelancers, entrepreneurs with large teams or small ones, independent workers as lawyers or consultants and obviously remote workers
- Free trial
- Starting plan at $99/month
- Complete Pricing
Scaling startups and larger size companies looking to expand using live video and VOD.
- Works on any device
- Available in limited beta trial - sign up to join the waitlist.
For internal meetings, brainstorms, and co-working sessions when you want seamless, instant collaboration. Taking meeting notes together, team retro, quick voice chats, and extended video+screenshare sessions.
- Your feedback will help us make this product awesome! Sign up and email us if you're willing to hop on a quick interview.
- Basic Plan -- Try for free -- Outklip watermark, 10 video limit, 10 minutes per video, 720p HD video quality, videos stored for one week
- Pro Plan -- $10/month or $100/year (20% discount) -- No Outklip watermark, 10 GB storage, unlimited video lengths, 1080p HD video quality, videos stored indefinitely
- Complete Pricing
Outklip lets you create screen video recordings that are great for three things primarily:
1. Customer training: Help customers learn your product quickly
2. Bug reports: A video bug report will help anyone reproduce the bug quickly
3. Feedback on docs: Give nuanced feedback without writing a long essay
- Outklip automatically hosts the videos you create so you can share the video link anywhere.
- Outklip has integrations to GitLab and GitHub.
- Completely free today, pricing to come later.
- Complete Pricing
Teams that have remote workers who want to grow closer and overcome distance.
- Free account
Collabify is a perfect fit for remote workers and distributed teams that want to streamline their workflow. Collabify provides many features with a simple interface and has a communication-first approach. This means Collabify has many flexible communication tools that will help improve remote teams' workflow and presence.
- Free
- Complete Pricing
Roundee serves remote professionals and teams that have the need for a robust, easy to use video meeting platform at a freemium price tag.
- Free trial available.
- Complete Pricing
With Conduit, you can:
- Create features and tasks to align to releases
- Aggregate user feedback in one central location
- Tightly integrate product feedback with product planning
- A part of Office365 suite
- Complete Pricing
When Office365 is widely used within your organization and moving away from it does not make sense.
- Storage of contacts of all users within an organization.
- Supports 250 attendees in a meeting.
- All VoIP features are not available.
- Integrated dial-in audio conference features aren't available.
- Free for one personal menu. $25/year for teams.
Used by distributed teams of any size, schools with online classes, or in offices that need a conference room meeting menu.
- Free trial for 14 Days, $2 per month per active user
- Complete Pricing
Any team using Slack and Jira.
- 30 day unlimited free trial. Pricing from $7 per month.
- Complete Pricing
If you're a Slack team with any remote worker's, you'll find Slack Scheduler valuable. Large teams use it to schedule announcements across teams. Smaller teams use it to help that one remote employee communicate easier, or so that any late night announcements don't disrupt the team.
- $5.99
As it goes to the entry screen right after startup, it's perfect for jotting down ideas and memos.
- Free trial available.
- Complete Pricing
Easily create, manage and update OKRs across popular business tools, or connect data through our API for seamless connection across systems.
- Free trial available.
listshare.app is a social community platform for creating and sharing reusable lists and checklists.
- Free trial available.
Get a team of world-class developers hired based on your custom requirements in under six weeks. All operations are taken care of: recruitment, office, HR, payroll. You keep complete ownership of your roadmap.
- Free.
Awakee helps you to build strong lasting habits and fit them into your daily schedule.
- Free trial available.
Remotedesk delivers remote worker management, while providing clear transparency, accountability & risk management for outsourcing initiatives.
- Free trial available.
The Chief app will help you break down your business goal into small tasks that you can start completing now.
- Free trial available.
pNotes is used to write notes and tasks for the day.
- Free to use.
Use Clockwise for Slack to get the power of the Clockwise calendar assistant, delivered right where you work.
- Free trial available.
Forget about juggling between calendars and chat services, jumping between tabs or resending invites - use Doodle Bot to create and manage meetings where you work.
- Lets you create polls directly from Slack
- Is fast
- Can be confusing for a beginner
- Limited features
- Free 14-day trial, Free account till August 15, 2020, for hospitals and non-profit organizations.
- Complete Pricing
GanttPRO is a Gantt chart planner used for project management and team collaboration, project scheduling, timelines creation, and resource management.