I have led over 500 interactive webinars, zoom meetings, etc. I exist on the planet and I work with some of the top companies and universities in the world to help them make virtual engagement really easy.
In this video, I’m going to share one very basic way to change your background in zoom in less than 60 seconds. And if you want to stick around, I’m going to share 2 really cool tips and strategies to use the ability to change your background and zoom to actually increase the engagement and connection and fun that you can have in this pixelated weird virtual world.
Blog Note: The following is an adapted and edited transcript of one of our daily YouTube tutorials. We know sometimes it is easier to scroll through written content which is why we are publishing here. Because of that, there may be typos or phrases that seem out of context. You’ll definitely be able to get the main idea. To get the full context, visit our YouTube channel here. And if you want to watch the video on this topic specifically, you can scroll down to the bottom of this post to access it as well.
How to Change Your Virtual Background
Really quick in under 60 seconds, the tech tutorial of how to change your virtual background is when you’re in Zoom in this little box hover down to the stop video button and press the teeny little arrow that lives right beside it. Unlock this right video settings. That will open up a box with a whole bunch of video settings. You can navigate to changing your virtual background. I can be in San Francisco, I can have just returned from my last SpaceX flight. You can use video backgrounds. Whoa! Floating in the northern lights. It’s kind of weird unless you have a green screen. Even if you have a green screen, it’s not perfect. That creates a bit of an odd dynamic. You know, it kind of creates some wondering like, “What’s behind you?” There’s a certain level… There’s a balance on the spectrum of authenticity to privacy. Like cool, this virtual background gives you some privacy but it doesn’t come across as very authentic. I would not say that using a virtual background all the time really builds trust very much.That’s just my take. One more time. Go and press this arrow button.
A shortcut even on most of your devices. You’ll probably actually just have the option right here to choose virtual background. Click that and it opens up straight to that. Boom! That’s it. If you came here for the basics of how to change your background. Now, it’s different on every device, I’m showing you on a Mac right now. There are several different interfaces. But it’s all happens in the same way. Look for edit background, tap around, look in the settings. You’ll find it. It’s not super, super hidden on any platform. Do know that it can mess things up? If you have a virtual background and let’s get that up.
If you have a virtual background like this and you hold something up to the screen… “Whoa! It totally doesn’t want to work.” I’ve seen it before too. Sometimes, if somebody wears green or something, it thinks that you’re not a person. It makes San Francisco in the shape of your shirt and then shows the rest of your background behind you.
Just test it out before hand experiment with it. Those were the basics. What I’d love to do now is share a couple techniques in ways that I use virtual backgrounds to spark remote engagement. One of the things I will often do in my meetings is invite people to wear different hats. I’ll say… You know, I’d love for everybody to put on this hat. It’s clearly not my own. It doesn’t fit me. Here is proof that it’s not my own.
Personal Connection to Yourself
This is my little guy, Otto. He was born on January 1st. And I might say something to the effect of the reason I’m inviting you to wear his hat in this moment is Otto has an ability as a little guy that most of us adults have lost. That ability is to love learning. That big gummy smile that he has, that’s the smile that he has when he learns anything. I could show him a plastic potato that he hasn’t seen before and he would light up like that. Oftentimes, if I’m leading a workshop or a training over zoom or I’m kicking off a keynote for a virtual conference. I will say, “I’m inviting you to wear Otto’s hat to have a blast. Have fun during this session while you’re also learning and soaking up everything that’s happening.”
Did you see how by doing that, implicitly, what I did was share with everybody a personal connection to myself. At scale, I just kind of used virtual backgrounds as a slide for a quick moment. Held it up and then took it off. It was a way way less clunky than screen sharing. I just have that setting up on my other screen so i can click into it really quickly. Just a really neat tool to be able to make connection at scale very briefly. The way you can use this in a group even as a connection before content or a meeting starter is to go ahead and invite everybody to upload a virtual background. You can add your own photos.
In this setting once you go into it, click here. You can add both images and videos. And I’ll share creative use in a moment of how to use videos that will definitely spark a smile and colleagues. You can add your own images. You can invite the entire team to add a virtual background just temporarily with a photo of something they did in the last week. They put that up. Now in Zoom gallery view, you can see all these photos. Zoom gallery view becomes a mosaic of virtual backgrounds with people’s heads in between them. It opens up for some cool connection.
Bonus points, you could jump into breakouts at that point too, split people out and then have people share the story of the photo that they chose to offer. If you’ve stuck around this long, I’m going to reward you with something I think is personally hilarious. If it only makes me laugh, I’m cool with that. But because I’m always looking to push the boundaries of what we can do virtually, I was experimenting and thinking about how could I do something really creative to use virtual backgrounds in a way that would spark some joy for people. I remembered a very not joyful experience that I had leading a workshop with 50 CEOs from around the world and we got zoom bombed. In the last 5 minutes of the call, this guy jumped on and was drawing inappropriate things all over the screen and cursing. It was very unpleasant. Blowing up the chat. Opening, very unpleasant. Being zoom bombed. So, I thought, “What if I turn that in a very unpleasant experience into a joyful experience and zoom bombed myself?”
Wouldn’t that be kind of a cool thing if I could actually you know jump in and zoom bomb my own meeting?” Is this.. Come on. Give me some like. It’s kind of awesome. If you feel so inspired and creative, all I did was record a video from my webcam which is a crazy camera. It’s not just a regular webcam. But either way, I just recorded a video from the background that I normally am. Then stepped out of the frame and walked on. Now, it’s just a pre-recording. It looks kind of like my background. When I change back to no background. It gets a little bit lighter. But same kind of feel. I want to end this with a little quote. You know, I think the moments that make life worth living are when things are at their worst and you find a way to laugh.
I’m recording this in the midst of covid and pandemic and everybody’s being affected by this very differently. Yet, I think when we ask how can we meet like we did in person on Zoom t hat’s a really frustrating question. I’m inviting everyone to And let go of that question and instead ask “What can we do virtually better than we can in person?”, I can’t put up a virtual background to just really quickly screen share a photo of something that I love to do or somebody that I really love to talk about or i would love to share with my group. But on zoom, we can do that.
Why don’t we go ahead and take advantage of the tools that we have to make connection and engagement easy. Super great hanging out in cyberspace. Because this is my job and this is all I think about every day. I have created a whole Connection Toolkit focused around helping you amplify connection belonging and trust in your own context.