While this is not to advertise Zoom, the platform does bear its weight in gold especially in the real estate industry.
In this age of the coronavirus, social distancing and quarantine measures pose challenges in a real estate agent’s ability to maximise exposure and performance of their service to their clients.
This is why now is the best time to take advantage of Zoom’s remote capabilities to ensure business as usual for the real estate industry.
Why ZOOM?
It’s a known fact that Zoom is the most widely-used video conference software in the world for client calls, board meetings, webinars, and training classes, as well as helping keep families and friends connected during these trying times.
One of the best features of the app is how it can connect two or more people as if they are interacting from within the same location and in real-time- even some claiming that its features are better than an in-person meeting.
Setting up a Zoom conference
To be able to use Zoom, a user needs to download and install the Zoom app in their mobile or desktop device.
Once installed, setting up a conference is easy.
- Sign in and register as a host.
- Invite attendees to your meeting event using a link provided by the app to share with the people you want to join the meeting.
- Start your Zoom meeting.
Who can use Zoom?
Zoom is used for a variety of reasons other than a meeting or conference. It can be used for online tutorials, client calls, virtual learning classrooms, health and fitness classes, social gatherings, chat sessions with family or friends, product demonstrations, and a whole lot more.
In the real estate industry, it can be used for real estate auctions, open homes, and property inspections.
Unlike other apps such as Google Meet, Facetime, and Skype where participants need to create an account to use its video conferencing features, Zoom participants do not need to have an account to join a Zoom meeting, they just need to download and install a Zoom executable file on their device once.
Ideal Zoom plans for your business
While you can get started with a Zoom Basic plan for free, which can be used for personal use and small group meetings, there are plans with premium features that can fit your business needs.
A Zoom Basic account is free and can be used for client calls, personal use, family chats, or meetings with small groups. While there’s no time limit for one-on-one meetings, any session with three or more attendees has a 40-minute time limit.
The Basic account can accommodate up to 100 persons per session.
A Zoom Pro account is suited for small and medium-sized businesses that often use video conferencing. For a fee, the account has a 24-hour time limit and can accommodate up to 100 participants, plus with an add-on feature that allows you to add up to 900 more for large meetings.
It can also allow you to record your meetings on your computer or cloud storage.
A Zoom Business account is similar to the Pro account, except that it can accommodate 300 participants plus another 700 for the large meeting add-on. Added features include company branding, record transcripts, and a customised URL with the Zoom extension (i.e. companame.zoom.au).
For heavy users that require a large number of participants, there’s the Zoom Enterprise account which can accommodate 500 participants and another 1,000 with the Enterprise Plus add-on. Additional features include unlimited cloud storage for meeting recordings, dedicated customer service and support manager, and discounts on advanced Zoom features.
Zoom Rooms is an advanced feature that can connect remote employees to on-site conference rooms, while video webinars and live events can handle 100 participating attendees and a maximum of 10,000 view-only attendees.
Scheduling and holding a Zoom meeting
To create an account, go to the Zoom website to download and install the app.
It will only take a few minutes to register and schedule a meeting using the following steps;
Register as host
It will ask you to fill out information fields such as birth date, email address, registration confirmation, username and password, and invite attendees. You can skip the invitation part for later and will allow you to start a meeting.
A window prompts with a URL that represents the personal meeting ID, which can be copied and shared with your desired attendees via email, chat rooms, or phone text message. All the invited persons will simply click on the link or paste it on to their browser address bar.
The final step in the registration process is a test meeting to guide you on how to navigate through Zoom before you start your first meeting.
Inviting attendees
It’s fairly simple. All the host needs to do is send the personal meeting ID to those invited and all they do is click the link or copy/paste the URL on their browser’s address bar. First-time users will be required to download and install the Zoom app to join a meeting without the need to create an account.
Running a meeting
Once a Zoom meeting is started, it opens a screen with usable icons to manage settings and features such as audio, video, gallery view options, security, screen sharing, chat, managing participants, recording, and ending the meeting.
Security controls
You can keep your Zoom meetings private by navigating through the meeting settings.
- Once your meeting is started and all your invited attendees have joined, you can select ‘lock meeting’ to limit your participants.
- You can select who can share their screens when making a presentation.
- You have the option to prevent attendees from entering the meeting unless you have started it by disabling ‘join before host’ option.
- You can opt to create a unique password to join the meeting which you can send to each of your desired attendees.
- You also have the option to remove a participant by choosing the ‘remove’ option in the ‘manage participants’ menu.
Integrating Zoom with productivity tools
You can take advantage of quick access and resource capability of Zoom to improve your team’s efficiency. For instance, you can integrate Zoom in your shared calendar and collaboration software to schedule and invite team members to meetings.
Zoom is compatible with most browsers, so you may download executable files from the Zoom website to install Zoom Client for Meetings and Zoom Extension for Browsers.
It is a user-friendly and dynamic tool that can help you stay on top of your game and allow you to virtually replicate what you do on-site at the comfort of your own home or from a remote location.