This article by Nancy Settle-Murphy and Rick Lent includes excellent tips for structuring virtual meetings to be successful.
Excerpt:
Structuring Successful Virtual Meetings:
A Counterintuitive Approach
Wouldn’t it be great if all we had to do to run a great virtual meeting is to use the exact same structures and techniques that we use for face-to-face (FTF) meetings? Great for the meeting leader, maybe, but not so great for the meeting participants who have to muster every ounce of energy to just pretend they’re engaged.
Sadly, many people run their virtual meetings pretty much the same way they run their face-to-face meetings, which truth be told, aren’t all that engaging to begin with. After all, it takes a lot less time to simply ignore the unique challenges and opportunities of virtual meetings–such the inability to read nonverbal cues, the tendency to multitask, and the imperative to keep virtual meetings exceptionally focused and brief–than it does to accommodate them.