Remember the days when school newsletters were crumpled relics that parents unearthed from their student’s backpack at the end of the week/month/year? Those days are over! Most school newsletters are delivered to parents via email and/or posting to the school blog, so you’re essentially competing with other websites for parents’ attention. The bar has been raised!

The layout of your newsletter is vital. We’ve all seen chaotic and distracting websites or online articles which you can’t navigate away from fast enough. Your school’s visually appealing, organized, and creative newsletter layout will simultaneously invite parents to learn about what’s going on while creating a positive impression of your school. (more…)

When it comes to presentation design we’re all just a bunch of pompous cheaters who talk too much. Well, that’s a tongue-in-cheek view of the findings from our recent survey on presentation design anyway. Check out the results captured in this animated infographic:

We had a ton of fun with this project. Starting first with a questionnaire template in presentation format to reach out to folks via our blog, Twitter and Facebook. Once we had collected enough data we rolled it into an animated infographic, also in presentation format. Each step was done in SlideRocket (insert sound of own horn tooting).  (more…)

Surveys assist you in determining buyer personas to help you target larger groups of consumers; however, the benefits of surveys go way beyond sales and marketing. Surveys can be used to solve a variety of problems and are an excellent research and development tool. They’ll help you design new products and services that are better aligned with consumer needs.

With online surveys, results can be gathered and analyzed quickly and allow you to make swift, effective decisions.

Here is an example customer survey we use to gather feedback on how people feel when presenting, what they do well, and how they can do better. If you have a free moment, please take the survey and then check back in a couple weeks for the results. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the slides we put together.

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Looking for a fun way to get your students more engaged in learning? Want to knock your professor’s socks off? Tens of thousands of students, teachers and professors have signed up for free SlideRocket accounts through our EDU program.

Whether you’re a student or staff member at a High School, College or Grad school SlideRocket is thrilled to offer you a free, full-featured account. This offer is available for any school located any where, whether in the U.S. or international.

Simply signup on this page using your school email address for instant access, or follow the links to sign-up through the Google Chrome Web Store or Google Apps EDU.

10 Reasons to Love SlideRocket EDU in 2013

1. SlideRocket is a fun, interactive way to create and share presentations
2. Access your account from any computer, anywhere
3. Post presentations on blogs and websites
4. Share presentations with the world on Facebook and Twitter
5. Groups and teams can work together on the same presentation
6. Add videos, music and voice-overs to your presentation
7. Create cool animations and transitions
8. Store your photos and presentations in our library so others can use them too
9. Add live Twitter feeds, polls and other interactive content to your slides
10. View presentations with any browser, iPhone and iPad

For a lot of people, one of the most difficult aspects of creating a presentation is finding the right flow with your content. And to make matters worse, it’s one of the very first things you must tackle in the process before moving on. There’s nothing like staring at a huge stack of information, or at a deck made up of 75 unorganized slides, to make your heart drop right into your stomach. Alas, here are three steps to steer you in the right direction. (more…)

Take a moment to watch this resume and tell us if you’re as inspired as we are! There’s music so be sure to turn it up.

We love the creativity that a resume like this demonstrates. Even though it likely took the candidate only an hour or so to create from our recently released resume template, this resume demonstrates both creativity and initiative. (more…)

Slide design matters. It can make your argument more persuasive, help others learn more quickly, build your brand, and even help you sell. But the majority of us are not designers and we don’t have the time to labor over slide colors, fonts, layouts and images. That’s why we’ve been working to create so many free presentation templates for you, and why we’re launching a series of “Slide Makeover” blog posts. (more…)

Oh the weather outside might be frightful, but with the perfect winter color palette your presentation will be oh so delightful! Color plays a vital role, in presentations and numerous other marketing materials, that goes beyond simple tastes and preferences. Selecting the right color palette can generate positive emotions that have a direct impact on your audience.

Check out this winter color palette presentation. It’s chock full of soul-warming colors along with an enticing soundtrack. Also, be sure to check out the recently released retro color palette.

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Need some fresh newsletter ideas? Check out the new Chicago Bears newsletter to get ideas on how you can give your audience the same first-class look and interactive feel. And when you’re ready, check out our easily customizable Newsletter Template for a head start on your own newsletter.

Email newsletters often get relegated to spam because they are flat, static and difficult to share. (more…)

Rarely do we think about the design of a questionnaire template. We simply accept the default, rudimentary, boring designs we’re given as a necessary evil. But think about the double-whammy we’re hitting our customers and followers with. We are not only using up their valuable time for our own benefit, but we’re making them slog through ugly questionnaires to do it. The “boomerang effect” is that it’s bad for your brand and bad for your relationship with your community and customers.

I admit I have been guilty of this terrible injustice. So to right a wrong we created a new questionnaire template. This one focused on, not surprisingly, presentation design. So check out the new template below and please take a moment to complete the questionnaire. We’re going to magically turn the results into a cool presentation infographic that we’ll share here soon:

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