Make a Dazzling First Impression Online

Studies reveal it only takes people between 7 to 17 seconds to form a first impression of someone they’ve just met. 55% of that opinion is based on physical appearance.

You meet and get to know an incalculable number of people in your lifetime—friends, coworkers, managers, business partners, acquaintances, and so on—but for each of them there’s only one first meeting. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

With statistics like these, it’s no surprise that countless articles and guides have been put together for making a favorable first impression in person. Dress professionally, look groomed, smile, stand up straight, be friendly and confident, ask them about themselves—the advice goes on for quite some time.

But what about if you’re meeting someone online for the first time, when they don’t see your face or your body language?

One solution is to use branding.

Branding means you can add your company logo, color scheme, and more when you work with others online! With YouDazzle, you can customize your web meetings and data rooms with your brand of choice.

Branded data rooms, with your logo at the top!

How can brands help you make a great first impression?

• It’s the first thing your audience sees. Thus, it’s part of their first impression of you!
• It reinforces your image as a professional. Using the same logo consistently lets people see right away the company or image you represent.
• It’s effortless! After you set a custom brand for your data room, you’re set—no more work required on your part!

Upload as many brands as you need, all customized to your liking!

You can upload an unlimited number of brands with a name, logo, and background color. Any data rooms you have, you can then customize with any brand you have.

You might use your company logo, product name, or any image or title you want to represent yourself.

Your brand also appears in all your web meetings.

Now, whenever you share content, collaborate, or meet with clients, customers, and more for the first time online, they’re sure to be impressed. Make dazzling first impressions, all through your data rooms and web meetings.

What You Need to Know About Presenting Online Effectively

Do you know what people rate as the #1 trait for a successful online presentation or webinar? How about how often you should have a visual change in your presentation to maintain your audience’s attention?

Nowadays, business people and professionals are increasingly busy, and their time correspondingly valuable. With a long list of tasks to accomplish, contacts to reach out to, deals to close, even while participating in an online meeting they’re preoccupied with checking their phones, their email, and occasionally, their watches.

How can you make sure you’re getting your message across?

In a virtual presentation, you have the power to add a dynamic level of personal engagement and interaction to successfully win over clients and customers, but the trick is getting there.

Think about your own past webinars or online presentations. Ask yourself, “If I had emailed my presentations to my audience instead of presenting them, would they have still had the same value?”

If you answered yes, that’s a clear indication that your technique could use work.

Hold Viewers’ Attention

It’s not as hard as it sounds. Once you begin presenting and a viewer’s eyes are focused on you, they typically will not look away for fear of missing something. If all your slides look the same, however, they start to assume they can look away or multitask without missing anything.

To maintain their attention, studies report you should have a visual change every 2–3 seconds. While this may seem high, remember that a visual change can be something as simple as adding to what you already have, in the form of graphics, animations, and so on.

Switch from Powerpoints, demos, movies, downloads, and more to engage audiences.

Fine-Tune Your Voice

With these tips in mind for what is in your presentation, now think about how you’re presenting. Listeners rate ease of use in web conferencing platform as first in importance for successful sessions, but the presenter’s voice comes at a close second.

Some steps you can take to achieve an engaging voice:

• Rehearse your dialogue so that you achieve an optimal speed, tone, and volume
• Record yourself to weed out overused phrases, like “basically” or “um”
• Experiment with how you speak by pretending to be a radio announcer or soap opera star

Highlight Beginnings and Ends

Now, for the actual presentation itself. At the very start, you should have some way to immediately capture your audience’s attention and induce anticipation for what’s to come.

This can be accomplished by using attention-grabbing words, introducing a conflict, or posing a statement that goes against viewer’s preconceptions.

‘Finally’ and ‘save’ are great words to catch audience attention.

Viewers tend to remember beginnings and endings best, so take care to ensure your ending is succinct, memorable, and leaves them wanting more.

But wait, there’s more

For more valuable advice on creating effective, engaging presentations, such as the best way to phrase questions so that you get answers and how to determine the optimal amount of information to include in a presentation, sign up for a free module of our “How to be a Dazzling Virtual Presenter” skills training program at our website, www.youdazzle.com/home.

Have any other great tricks for making dazzling presentations or wowing audiences? Did the videos help you stand out when you presented to next client? Let us know your thoughts, leave a comment or send an email!

See for Yourself

Let’s talk about you. You’ve got a number of titles—the customer, the consumer, the user— and you’re looking for something to better your business and streamline your online presence. You’ve also got quite a few options to choose from; it’s no surprise that you might be feeling overwhelmed and unsure of which one matches your needs. So why choose YouDazzle?

With combined online file sharing, web meetings, and audio conferencing, YouDazzle lets you effortlessly connect with clients and audiences to save valuable time and money—and that’s only a fraction of all the ways YouDazzle’s services can benefit you. Companies using YouDazzle call it a “transformative technology” and an “all-in-one solution” that has revolutionized how they do business.

But we don’t expect you to just take our word for it. You’ll want to try it for yourself, which you can easily do in three simple steps.

1. Try it for free.

On our homepage, you’ll see this option right away. Try any plan for 14 days, free of charge!

2. Pick your plan.

With YouDazzle, you can choose a starter, premier, or free plan, based on your needs. Whether you’re looking to host meetings of up to 500 people or only need a data room, there’s something for everyone.

3. Submit.

Depending on which option you choose, the exact form will vary, but all retain the same straightforward approach. Say you choose the free plan, which you can upgrade at any point. Fill in a few fields, and you’re done!

What’s stopping you? Change how you do business and sign up today at YouDazzle!

Recording Meetings and Webinars

Let’s say you have a web meeting coming up soon, and let’s say that due to a series of unfortunate circumstances you miss it. What can you do to make sure you’re still on top of your work?

Or maybe you want to create a webinar combining screen sharing and file sharing elements and distribute it to prospective clients. What’s the best and easiest way to do this?

The solution to these problems is simple, and one YouDazzle now offers: meeting and webinar recording.

As an efficient, cost-saving, and multipurpose function, recording is a necessity for web conferencing programs and allows you to:

• Share your meetings and webinars. As mentioned in the examples above, it’s the perfect way to ensure anyone from absent attendees to interested individuals have access to meetings and webinars.
• Give your full attention. Without a recording feature, meeting participants usually have to take notes if they want to remember what happened. As a result, they’re so busy writing they can’t keep up with or give their full attention to the discussion. With YouDazzle, you don’t have to worry about catching every little detail and can instead focus on actively participating in the conversation.
• Review what happened. Even if you take the most diligent of notes and listen attentively, it’s only too easy for some crucial piece of information to slip by or get written down incorrectly. With the record meeting feature, you can easily double-check what someone said and make sure you have all your facts straight.

However you use it, it’s evident this latest feature makes YouDazzle an even better product for you, your business, company, clients, and customers.

On top of that, using it is a simple two-step process. No need to download anything or navigate through dozens of menus to try and find it—all you need to do is click the icon on the left toolbar that says ‘Settings,’ and you’ll see that the first option provided is to Record Meeting. Simply click that button, and the rest of your meeting will be recorded until you end the session, stop recording, or close the window. It’s as easy as that!

Even better, YouDazzle automatically creates a new data room called Meeting Recordings and saves each recording in it, easily distinguishing them by date and time. These can then be renamed, reordered, downloaded for you to review, or shared with any number of people.

Try YouDazzle today for free and see for yourself how it helps make web meetings easier and more effective!

Why Webinars Work

Sometimes, when you are home, cozy on your couch with your bunny slippers on, don’t you feel a bit sorry for the traveling salesman of yore? Imagine how tough his life was, donning a soft hat, moseying from town to town to show his wares in hopes of a new customer. No wonder his life was the subject of one of the greatest American theatrical tragedies.

Well, it’s not the 1950s anymore, and, to use another cliché, you—and the sales business—have come a long way, baby! And one of the greatest inventions of the last few decades is, without doubt, the webinar.

The webinar is basically the most powerful sales tool you could ever imagine. Just think, with it you can:

• Share data in a rich, immediate way, gathering a quorum of interested people no matter where they or you are. No dusty hat or plane trips needed for you. No travel approvals needed for your prospective client.
• Record your pitch, meaning that even if someone can’t meet with you, they can absorb your story later and even share it with their co-workers and other decision-makers.
• Enjoy webinars (if you have the right solution…hint,hint!) from any device out there, making it easier than ever to reach that prospect no matter where they might be.

The most important part of the webinar is, of course, you. And that is the one thing you and that traveling salesman have in common—you need to dazzle your prospects no matter where they might be.

But don’t worry, we have you covered. Visit our homepage and sign up for our free training module on how to be a dazzling virtual presenter. And then settle back down on the couch and get ready to wow the world, no hat—or, hey, even shoes—required.

Celebrating Our Digital Independence, One Meeting At A Time

Ah, the 4^th of July! Barbeques, fireworks, family fun…freedom. Yes, freedom. It’s at the core of what we value and celebrate as Americans. And, although we may not be fighting Red Coats or throwing tea in Boston Harbor anymore, we are still expressing our freedom every day. Here are some of our favorite acts of rebellion in our digital age:

• No more downloads: There is nothing more exhilarating than joining a meeting without having to download yet another piece of software onto your already messy desktop. Meetings from everywhere and anywhere with no delays. That must be what our forefathers had in mind.
• No more email clogs: Breaking PowerPoints into chunks to share them with co-workers or, worst yet, prospects is about as good an idea as making the turkey our national bird. With online data rooms, we can soar overhead and avoid the mess that email file “sharing” brings.
• No more dial codes: Is there anything worse than having to fumble around with dial codes to join a meeting? Imagine what would have happened if Paul Revere had had to rely on many of today’s conferencing solutions to let his countrymen know the British were coming.
• No more unnecessary expenses: Online conferencing and data sharing don’t have to break the bank. There is no reason that there can’t be reliable, affordable and secure choices out there, choices that don’t involve an IT department as crowded as the Mayflower. Thankfully, the cloud has delivered just that for us—simple, easily deployable solutions that make our lives easier without pinching our purse strings.
• No more traffic:  This has got to be our favorite. Today, with powerful web conferencing and online data sharing options, you can work from anywhere anytime. So don’t battle the 4^th of July traffic this week; work from home—or better yet, a vacation home—and miss that terrible commute.

And that, my friends, is the greatest freedom technology has brought us so far. So enjoy the 4^th, cherish our freedom, and don’t forget to save a hot dog for us!

Ready, Set, Dazzle: YouDazzle in Action

In this week’s blog, we are featuring a success story of YouDazzle at work. Be sure to share yours with us so we can spotlight you as well 

Broncus: A Commitment to Medical Breakthroughs, An Overload of Documentation

Broncus Technologies was founded in 1997 with the goal of developing and commercializing minimally-invasive medical devices for lung diseases. The private, venture-backed company has already brought two product lines to market and has raised more than $100 million from leading venture firms. However, for a fast-growing company in a difficult fundraising environment, raising funds for their latest advancements is always mission-critical—and incredibly time and document intensive.

For Broncus Chief Operating Officer Gary Kaplan, pursuing funding requires the management of a large number of documents which often need to be customized for each investor involved in due diligence. For example, the recent request from just one potential investor included 120 items, many of which were unique to that company’s needs. With requests coming in constantly, Kaplan found himself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of documents he needed to keep track of on a daily basis

“It was becoming increasingly difficult to manage multiple companies’ due diligence processes via email not only because it was unwieldy but because I also needed to keep a record of every single email,” said Kaplan. “I tried a simple FTP server solution but that was too unorganized and didn’t offer an easy way to manage files. I knew I needed a cloud-based solution that could let me not only keep all my files in one place but would let me manage them and interact with my potential investors.”

The Solution: Personalized Information, Instantly Shared

Kaplan discovered YouDazzle, the first company to combine simple online file sharing with web meetings for professionals of all shapes and sizes. He was attracted by YouDazzle’s unique data rooms, which allowed him to move file sharing out of email and into the cloud. The data rooms, which can be custom branded and offer the highest levels of data encryption and security, gave Kaplan a place to store all the due diligence items that a specific investor might need, allowing him to easily add documents, be they Word documents, large videos, or web links, as soon as a suitor requested them, a responsiveness which is key when working with potential investors’ often short timelines.

“I love the fact that I can create an endless number of data rooms, customized for each specific party with our branding,” Kaplan said. “The ability to copy and rename folders has also meant that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time we start a new data room. Reordering files is simple and elegant, as is the overall branded room experience. I really appreciate the fact that I can see exactly what the room looks like to my visitors as it helps me optimize the experience.”

The YouDazzle notification system has also brought Broncus an unexpected competitive edge in that they are able to see who views each file and when it was viewed, giving Kaplan a great sense of where companies are in their due diligence process and what they might need to move them along. With YouDazzle notifications, users can choose to get real-time, daily, or no notifications whenever a file is viewed or downloaded.

Kaplan plans on expanding Broncus’ use of YouDazzle, including its instant web meetings, which are 100 percent browser-based, require no downloads, and work with the full array of computers and devices.

“There are many ways that YouDazzle can help our overall business,” Kaplan said. “For example, one of our products utilizes CT scans, which are very large files. To be able to post these files to a data room and then hold instant web meetings to discuss findings would be really helpful. The basic fact is that there is no other way as practical as YouDazzle to share information. We look forward to expanding our use of YouDazzle in the years to come.”

File Under Fabulous

There are so many reasons why paper filing systems just don’t work anymore. They kill trees. They crowd your drawers. They ultimately get thrown out on accident. Yes, I know, I am preaching to the choir.

But there are just as many reasons why emailed files don’t work anymore. They kill memory. They crowd your disk space. And yes, they too ultimately get thrown out on accident. Thankfully there is a solution out there. Clear your drawers, clear your mind of worry, and bring all of your data to the cloud.

Secure data rooms offer so many more benefits from sharing information the old-fashioned (by which I mean email) way. When you create a secure data room, you can:

• never worry about chunking up important documents into a million pieces just to get through Internet pipes;
• never forget where you stuck that important document;
• finally be able to update and upload documents in real-time, meaning your data is finally alive and not buried in some crazy email archive somewhere on some long-lost drive; and
• finally know who is actually viewing your documents by using powerful analytic tools to see who is reading what when. This information is priceless for sales organizations—see what materials you have carry the most punch. Better yet, see who is really interested (and ready to buy) and act before they change their minds.

So, save a tree, save your disk memory, save your own mind and move your files to your secure data room today. And, while you are at it, make sure to put your own branding to work for you by personalizing your data room with custom logos. Voila, you not only have a great way to organize your files, you have a powerful online presence.

This, my friends, you can indeed file under fabulous!

Present with Confidence

There are many advantages to today’s virtual business world. You get to work from home and eat pizza at your desk in your PJs while jamming away on your documents. You don’t get stuck at the water cooler with that same guy—you know the one—every day. And you don’t have to do nearly as much business travel, meaning you can make all those critical sales presentations right from your desk, eating that pizza in your PJs. Awesome, right? Well, if we’re honest, not really.

Any great salesperson will tell you that to make a sale you have to win hearts and minds. And it isn’t easy to do that from thousands of miles away. Also, presenting without a room full of people offering you reassuring nods can be a bit daunting. How do you present with confidence in web meetings when you don’t even know what the person on the other end is doing while you present, never mind what they are wearing!

At YouDazzle, we’ve worked hard to give you the tools you need to present with confidence and get the results you need no matter where you might be. Here’s just a few ways how:

• Make your data room your new conference room: YouDazzle’s professional, secure data rooms mean you can easily send your audience to get the documents you are referring to, making information sharing effortless and effective.
• Provide that missing “personal touch” with co-browsing: Make your sales interactions more interactive and convert more leads by viewing your website and other sales materials in real-time with your prospects, recruits and customers. No more hoping folks visit your website and buy. Be there live to answer questions, solve problems and build stronger relationships. Shop together, fill out forms together, and grow your business.
• Meetings can be spontaneous again—no matter where you are: Simply share your personalized web address for real-time meetings. Instantly share your files and screen from any computer or device, including iPads, iPhones and Androids. Much simpler and faster than 1st generation web meeting products like GoToMeeting and WebEx, YouDazzle is the only way to share files live from tablets and mobile phones.

So, relax, take a deep breath. Have another slice of pizza even. And get ready to dazzle your prospects. And don’t forget to reward yourself for your success with a new pair of pajamas! (Seriously, we think you might need some.)

Who Can Use YouDazzle?

The answer to that question is simple enough: YOU. And everyone else you know!

YouDazzle helps consultants, professionals, salespeople and organizations of all sizes harness the power of the Cloud to interact and share information, organize projects and deals, save time and be more productive! You’ll likely customize YouDazzle to meet your own target audience, or your own personal needs but here, just to whet your appetite, are some sample industries where YouDazzle is already being used to wow prospects, dazzle customers and impress co-workers.

• Accounting: Share tax documents with clients safely, easily and professionally.

• Advertising/Design: Manage timelines, approvals and project plans seamlessly.

• Architecture: Capture, present and disseminate meaningful project, financial and marketing information to clients and contractors.

• Construction: Disseminate CAD drawings, bid proposals, and other large files without requiring subcontractors, vendors, or partners to install additional software.

• Consulting: Work with and manage your clients’ confidential information, with security, ease and even custom branding all in your own private data room.

• Education: Easily present teaching materials while tutoring individual students.

• Training : Easily present materials and conduct training for groups no matter where they are.

• Engineering: Exchange and collaborate on very large files (such as 3D building design models) with clients quickly and easily.

• Event Planning: Streamline your next event including site inspections, scheduling, artist coordination and vendor management.

• Insurance: Streamline communications and cut on shipping costs by leveraging the cloud to communicate to clients, vendors and carriers.

• Interior Design: Professional, easy and simple way to communicate with clients.

• Legal: Easily create folders for specific cases or clients.

• Non-Profit: :Manage vendor relationships, donors, volunteers or field employees using secure data rooms to share, manage and exchange information. Plus, you can set up ad-hoc web meetings with anyone at anytime. No need to find a separate solution!

• Photography: Store and share high-quality photos, images, or videos with clients in secure, branded data rooms.

• Real Estate: Create customized transaction rooms for clients and prospects and include relevant materials. Set-up a weekly web meetings, for example, to discuss a specific property development and expansion plans for one of the managed sites.

• Retail: Grow your business while saving on communications costs.

• Sales/Services: Make an impression that will seal the deal. YouDazzle is a simple way to have guests join your meeting without installing any software.

• Small Business: Share files, edit documents, conduct team meetings, review a presentation together – perfect for teams who are spread out geographically or work from a home office.

Are you tired yet? Well, we aren’t! YouDazzle is so easy to use that all of these industries have accomplished all of these great things without even breaking a sweat. And just wait to see what we have up our sleeve next!