How to Follow Up After an Online Meeting

Online meetings are useful not only for discussing important business subjects, but also for closing deals. This is why properly following up after setting up an online meeting is very important. The right follow-up will not only ensure that all the actions that were discussed on the meeting get done, but also set a professional tone for all online meetings going forward. Here's what you need to do to correctly follow up on your online meeting.

1. Check if there are any questions about the meeting’s online format - Online meetings are new to many people, who, after attending their first Internet-based meeting, could still have questions. Give them a chance to discuss whether they enjoyed this kind of meeting, or if there are any concerns regarding its format. Also ask if there is anything that can be done to improve this kind of meeting in the future. By keeping an open discussion with your colleagues regarding online meetings, you can ensure that the format will adapt to the needs of your team.

2. Send a recording of the meeting to the participants - There are a number of online meeting software available that allow the meeting to be recorded. If you choose to record the meeting, remember to tell your participants that they are being recorded, and let them know that a recording of the meeting will be made available after the meeting. If your online meeting software doesn’t do this automatically, upload the recording of your meeting online, and share the link with your participants no later than 24 hours after the meeting.

3. Make sure that your participants have detailed meeting notes - Whether you assigned a dedicated note-taker prior to the meeting or you took the notes yourself, send them to the participants, along with any presentations that were shared during the meeting. Since all of the meeting material is already online anyway, you could even make this task easier by putting all the documents in a collaboration tool such as Huddle.

4. Share a list of agreed actions - List all the actions discussed in chronological order, prioritizing what needs to be done the soonest. Also be sure to assign an owner who will see that the work is done by the deadline. If the deadline arrives and you have not seen the work, check up with the owner to see that it is still going to be done. As the meeting organizer, you need to make sure that participants see the online meeting just as important as a face-to-face meeting.

5. Schedule the next meeting - If the subject you discussed in the meeting needs follow-up, schedule the next meeting in a timely fashion. To make your next meeting even better than the previous one, take into consideration all of the feedback you received regarding the meeting format.

As you can see, the steps above are very similar to the ones you’d take when following-up on a face-to-face meeting. However, it is very important for you to ensure that your team does not think that just because the meeting happened online, it is any less important than a face-to-face meeting. This is why knowing how to follow up on an online meeting will not only bring your team closer together, regardless of how dispersed it may be, but will also ensure that online meetings are seen as efficient, ensuring that they are here to stay.