Screen share 101: Everything you need to know

If you’ve been conference calling for a while now and feel it’s time to up your remote meeting game, then introducing screen share to your meetings is the obvious choice. It will bring a little bit of extra panache to your meetings and will lead to more collaborative and productive meetings. Here’s our screen share 101.

What is screen share?

If you were to take a wild, albeit logical guess you’d probably figure the clues in the name. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, it involves sharing what you have on you screen. Specifically, the people in your meeting will see whatever is appearing on your computer screen. You’ll most likely have the option to share your entire screen, an application window, or a browser tab.

How to initiate a screen share?

You’ll be pleased to know it’s as simple as it gets when it comes to initiating a screen share. You don’t need to be a tech titan to get going. When you’re all dialled in and in your meeting room, you’ll see a button in your left hand nav bar, conveniently named ‘Share screen’. Click this button and you’ll be asked what you’d like to share, your entire screen, an application window, or a browser tab. Choose which one you want to share, click share and hey presto you’re sharing your screen.

Anyone in your meeting can use this tool, so you can SHARE it amongst everyone (see what we did there?) Awful, we know.

The perky perks

Enough chatter about the what and how, let’s get to the meatier why. Conference calls are brilliant and all but when you really need to visualise something, they fall short, that’s where screen share comes in and saves the day. Giving people in your meeting something to focus on means more engagement. With a phone call it’s easier to get distracted and give the occasional ‘uh huh’, whilst also sending copious emails and any other menial task not necessarily associated with that call.

Adding this visual element to your meetings makes it much easier for everyone in the meeting to work together and collaborate. You can all provide real time feedback, which saves you waiting and chasing on an email you sent two weeks ago. It also helps you really control and steer your meeting, using screen share to bring your agenda to life, resulting in more productive meetings.

When to share your screen?

There are way too many use cases for us to cover in this post, but we’ll consider a few stand out cases. You ever found yourself in a situation where you’re battling tech and tech is winning? You can’t for the life of you figure out how to solve the issue. That’s right, it’s fantastic for solving tricky tech issues. If you’re working remotely, contact your IT department and they can run through exactly how to solve the issue.

Another case that isn’t immediately obvious is product demonstrations. It’s a handy tool to run through your product with customers and really highlight the benefits your business has to offer. The same can be said for client meetings. If you want to make the best possible impression, then adding visual elements to the meeting will make you stand out much more than a simple telephone call.

Last but certainly not least, it’s a brilliant tool when you just want more effective internal communications. We get that one of the issues with remote working is an over reliance on emails, instant messaging and telephone calls that can sometimes lead to miscommunication. Sharing your screen means it`s much easier to explain exactly what you’re referring to, as you’ve got visual evidence to back up your points.

That’s it for our screen share 101. Try it for free today and decide if you agree with the benefits we’ve outlined!

MEETINGS LOOK BETTER WITH SCREEN SHARE

Your Guests see what you see, how handy is that!?