Our increasingly remote workforce needs a way to show their work. The screen sharing feature within a video conferencing service allows better collaboration between dispersed teams. Here’s how this important video conferencing feature works and how it can benefit your business.

How Does Video Conferencing Screen Sharing Work?

Screen sharing is a feature of many modern video conferencing solutions. When the meeting leader shares their screen, the rest of the group sees what is displayed on his or her device. The meeting leader can also designate a participant to be the screen sharer, often when they are presenting.

Basically, it’s like projecting what’s on your screen across the room so others can see it. It’s a great tool for sharing documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, pictures, videos, images, and more with anyone on your team.

Workplace Benefits of Screen Sharing

Today, we have very little time to waste. The popularity of video conferencing has proven to many of us that we don’t have to jump on a plane anymore to share information or ideas, close deals, or communicate with our teams. In many cases, traveling to an in-person meeting wastes money and time when all you really needed to do was set up a video conference.

However, there are times when business collaboration around a contract, some data, or a schematic requires that everyone sees the same document at the same time. How can you do that if you’re not all in the same place? Sometimes seeing a document or going through a presentation is the best way to explain a particular approach to a dispersed team.

This dilemma is what makes screen sharing a popular feature on most video conferencing platforms. Screen sharing can be used for:

• Collaboration and Communication
  Use these tools to foster team collaboration and inspiration. Seeing a graphic, an image, a document, or a video can get the creativity flowing and foster conversations that get things done. If you’re trying to edit a shared document and brainstorming your approach, video conference screen sharing makes it easy to keep things moving forward while still engaging everyone in the process.
• Improving Presentations
  Screen sharing lets you share slides or data analytics in a way that allows others to visualize the point you’re trying to make. Whether it’s a planned presentation or something more impromptu, this is a valuable tool for making your point.
• Sales Pitches
  Conducting a screen share on a conference call can help you close a deal. People think, make decisions, and learn both from listening and from seeing. A sales pitch that allows you to both use the audio and the visual element of the screen will help you bring all of your prospects to the same conclusion.
• Project Sharing
  Today’s teams are dispersed. If you’re working on a large, complicated project, the video conferencing screen sharing feature is critically important to ensure everyone is on the same page. This feature lets you show others engineering blueprints, sales projections, time and labor, quarterly reporting — or just about anything else that will fit on a screen. It’s a great tool to use throughout the lifecycle of a project.
• Orientation and Training
  With video conferencing screen sharing, HR and training teams now have a way to bring everyone together to learn about subjects that are important to your mission. In the past, dispersed teams would have to travel to the corporate office to receive important training on HR and workforce policies or job-related training. Not anymore. It is in this way that the video conferencing screen sharing feature on these modern tools have saved administrative teams big bucks in training costs.
• Important Status Updates
  Whether it’s a daily stand up, a quarterly activity report, a staffing/planning document, or something else, having a visual representation of the numbers helps teams visualize where you stand.

These are just a few examples of how these features help companies during video conferences. It’s likely you’ll think of many more ways to use this tool to help your business.

Best Practices for Sharing My Screen on a Video Conference Call

Like any tool in business, practice makes perfect. If you’ve never shared your screen, the first time may feel awkward or you may even make a beginner’s mistake. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Make sure you have everything you need to share before the conference call starts. It’s a good idea to clear off your desktop and place the slide deck or documents you need right in front of you. Test these items before the call to be sure they open easily and, of course, are the right version of the documents you’re trying to share. There’s nothing worse than having your audience waiting while you try to find the correct documents.
• Have someone else take notes. It will be distracting to you and your audience if you’re trying to take notes while you’re sharing your screen. See if you can get another team member to serve as a scribe or “moderator”. That way, you won’t slow down the presentation or team collaboration by doing it yourself.

If you use the tool wisely, there are few tools more effective for team collaboration than the screen sharing video conference feature. Video fosters greater connection and collaboration. Video also fosters innovation by showing others what you see and providing a means for getting their feedback.

MegaMeeting’s Screen Sharing Video Conferencing Feature

At MegaMeeting, we understand that seeing is believing. That’s why our easy-to-use, robust share screen feature on our video conference call platform is so popular. You can pass presenter controls to other members of your team, as well as provide a shared screen with or without your video image. You can also record the meeting, use the whiteboard feature, control who is talking when, and much more.

Our platform works well on any digital device and is web-enabled so there is no software to download. Your team can easily join from any computer, laptop or mobile device for a crystal-clear experience that will help them get the job done.

For a secure video conference that offers the highest quality performance on the market today, talk with MegaMeeting about how our video conferencing solution can help your business in so many ways.