What is Screen Sharing? Definition, Benefits & FAQs

Here are examples of how you can use screen sharing to hold productive meetings with your team, prospects, and clients.

1. Virtual Meetings and Updates:

When you use screen sharing in online meetings, it helps ensure everyone is on the same page. Without visual aid, discussion can often become abstract and difficult to follow. Pull up dashboards, slide decks, reports and any other materials to support your conversation.

Screen sharing can add much-needed visual reference during:

• Morning scrums

• Team huddles

• Performance reviews

• 1:1 meetings

• OKR reviews

• Project updates

2. Remote Team Collaboration

Team collaboration is essential for greater innovation, decision making and project implementation. But, collaboration with dispersed team members can often lead to confusion and miscommunication.

In person, you can distribute physical documents, use a whiteboard, or show someone your computer screen. But in-person meetings are not always feasible for dispersed or global teams. Luckily, screen sharing can replicate the in-person experience.

For example, if you’re hosting a brainstorming with your team, you can share your screen with a blank document open or a whiteboard platform. During the discussion, you can add notes and comments in real-time.

3. Virtual Presentations, Training and Webinars

Presentations, educational training and webinars are a part of regular business activities. But did you know that screen sharing during these virtual events can create a more effective learning experience? This is because visual aids can help the audience better understand and recall the topic.

A study on learning and presentations found that three days after an event, people recalled only 10% of what they heard from an oral presentation. They recalled 35% from a visual-only presentation. With a visual and oral presentation, they recalled 65%.


Related: Remote Collaboration: How to Host a Productive Team-Wide Q&A

4. Remote Support

An IT professional or customer service representative is often more effective if they can see the issue. When agents cannot visually see the problem, it can take time to resolve the issue. Alternatively, it can also be helpful for the agent to show their screen to help the caller.

Imagine an employee calling their IT support line because they don’t know how to restore their Wifi connection. Or maybe they need help resetting a password. The agent can share their screen and show the user exactly what to do.

5. Remote Job Interviews

With everyone working remotely during the pandemic, video conferencing became the go-to tool for job interviews. And hiring trends show that 93% of employers will continue to conduct virtual interviews.

While conducting virtual interviews, screen sharing can be used to help evaluate candidates more effectively.

For example, you can ask a designer to present their portfolio. A training specialist can showcase their presentation skills with a slide deck. You can also have candidates perform a test showing their ability to use specific tools.

Related: The Secret to Nailing Your Next Virtual Presentation

6. Product Demo and Sales Pitches

When you're doing a demo or sales pitch, screen sharing makes it easier to engage the prospect. If your prospects are more visual (as most people are), they will need to see the product in action to understand its value.

You can prove to your prospective customers what your product can do. They can view the product in action and ask questions, all without leaving their office.

Screen Sharing Improves Focus And Understanding

• Because 65% of people are visual learners, simply describing what you mean often isn't enough. It opens the door for confusion and time-wasting.
  
  You could say, ‘Remember the stats we talked about last quarter?” and have everyone try to remember what you’re talking about. Or, you could pull up the document with last quarter's stats and share it.
  
  Visual aids will help your team get on the same page instead of making them imagine what you're talking about.

Screen Sharing Gives You Greater Control Over Meetings

• You could share documents ahead of a call and have everyone go through them while you talk. The problem is that everyone might not be on the same page, literally.
  
  Instead, by sharing the content on screen, you can guide meeting participants so everyone is looking at the same information. This will give you greater control over collaborative meetings.

Meetings Are More Engaging With Screen Sharing

• By sharing data and slides, you can highlight the key points of your presentation or meeting to keep people interested.
  
  Video conferencing software also often has other features that can help boost engagement.
  
  For example, net2phone’s video conferencing software Huddle lets you chat and use emojis to react or take a poll. When you combine these features with screen sharing, you can host fully interactive meetings without interrupting or wasting time.

While most video conferencing software today includes screen sharing, you may be hesitant to add another tool and vendor. Because, of course, screen sharing and video conferencing are only pieces of the puzzle when it comes to business communication.

Like most other businesses, you’re likely also using phone calls, chat, SMS and more.

It's for this reason that more businesses are choosing uCaaS (unified communication as a service). UCaaS allows you to have VoIP voice calls, video conferencing (with screen sharing), SMS, chat, integrations, and fax in one platform with one vendor.

uCaaS has powerful capabilities for large and small businesses alike.

Is screen sharing safe?

Different providers will have different levels of security built in. With net2phone’s Huddle, for example, many security features are in place.

• The media traffic is encrypted, and no data gets sent to third parties.

• Every meeting created has a randomly generated password

• Meetings cannot be created without a password.

• Guests can only join a meeting if they belong to the same business account as the meeting creator, have the meeting password, or have the randomly generated dial-in PIN (6 digits, numeric).

• All the conference data will be deleted when the conference ends.

How do I use screen share?

Again, it will depend on the video conferencing or screen-sharing tool you use. In most cases, you will be able to share by clicking a button, and then you will have options on what to share.

With net2phone’s Huddle video conferencing tool, you will press the whiteboard icon at the bottom right, and then you will be prompted to choose whether you want to share an entire screen, window or Chrome tab.

What will show when I share my screen?

It depends on what you choose to share. Net2phone’s Huddle tool will let you share your entire screen, a Chrome tab or a specific window.

What software do I need to download for screen sharing?

There is software available that offers only screen-sharing capabilities.

However, most video conferencing tools include free screen sharing, including net2phone Canada’s video conferencing tool, Huddle. Using a browser-based tool like Huddle, you can join the meeting straight from your web browser without having to download anything or deal with troubleshooting.