Ideas are powerful, but as you seek to bring them to life and make an impact, how do you tackle the inevitable roadblocks that will arise? How do you surmount the moments of uncertainty and doubt that can derail your goals?

In this on-demand webinar, Amy Shever, who is both a business woman and non-profit leader, tackles the big challenges you’ll face as you launch your big idea:

• How do you identify those who can help you?
• How do you craft an engaging initial message?
• With limited resources, how can you market like a pro?
• Which tools help you quickly build compelling content?
• What methods help you stay focused and efficient?

Amy has successfully navigated her professional career as a marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies while pursuing her passion to create a thriving nonprofit, Second Chance For Pets. Amy’s webinar is ideal for marketers, entrepreneurs, other non-profit leaders, and anyone who wants to bring their big idea to life.

SlideRocket is excited to announce the 2012 SlideRocket “Make an Impact” Non-profit Presentation Contest! $20,000 in donations will be awarded! The four (4) non-profits whose presentations get the most views and have the best story, composition and impact will each receive $5,000.

The contest begins today and ends March 19th. Winners will be announced on March 28. Presentation views can be collected all the way through March 28.

To enter, simply create a SlideRocket presentation about the 501(c)(3) non-profit of your choice and share it with as many people as possible. The four (4) presentations with the most unique presentation views and judged to have the best storyline, composition and compelling cause will each win a $5,000 donation to their non-profit.

The contest is open to staff at 501(c)(3) non-profits as well as people who would like to support their favorite non-profit by winning the contest on their behalf. You can enter any time between January 17 and March 19. We will publish the leaders with the most presentation views on a daily basis, and you can always check your SlideRocket presentation analytics to see how you’re doing. It’s a fun way to compete and do some good in the world!

If you have any questions please contact us at contest@sliderocket.com.

How to Participate

1. Register for your free SlideRocket Pro account here
2. Create your SlideRocket presentation
3. Collaborate your presentation with contest@sliderocket.com
4. Share the presentation link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, newsletters, etc.
5. The 25 presentations with the most views will be finalists
6. Our panel of judges review the finalists and choose the 4 best presentations

Not only can you win a great donation for your non-profit, but in your SlideRocket presentation you can include a link to your non-profit’s donation page to raise funds while you compete.

Donation Prizes

The following donation prizes will be made to the winning 501(c)(3) non-profits:

• 1st Place = $5,000
• 2nd Place = $5,000
• 3rd Place = $5,000
• 4th Place = $5,000

Throughout the contest SlideRocket will share presentations with the 300,000+ members of the SlideRocket community via our Twitter, Facebook, blog and newsletter to help you build even greater awareness.

8 Ideas to Help You Win

1. Keep your presentation below 25 slides
2. Limit the text on each slide to 15 words
3. Use music to add emotion
4. For a quick start, upload your existing PowerPoint slides
5. Set your presentation to play automatically for a “video-like” experience
6. Add a “Tweet” button to the last slide so people will share it
7. Share your presentation often on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
8. Send your presentation to your newsletter or email list

If you have any questions please contact us at contest@sliderocket.com.

As always, we like to highlight presentations from a diverse set of authors, from professional designers to non-designers, and from big budget shops to boot-strappers. Sometimes the entire presentation will rock, other times we’ll pick out noteworthy elements such as the imagery, storyline, transitions/effects, music or use of video. And we always invite you to provide comments and share links to your own presentation samples.

Présumé Presentation: Hire Me eh

This Marketing Director’s resume presentation (‘Présumé’) demonstrates his business development, design, and product branding skills better than any black and white 8.5” X 11” ever could, not to mention his great sense of humor. With multiple graphic elements in gear as well as music, voice clips, and builds on each slide, he’s achieved a complex design without treading into the realm of over-busy. To that end, he’s made a great decision to forgo auto-advancing of the slides and allow the viewer to absorb and click onward at their own pace, and his consistency in design from slide to slide is key.

Holiday Presentation: The Installer Who Stole Christmas

In this self-confessed ripoff of the Dr. Seuss’ celebrated Grinch tale, Moore Solutions, an independent office furniture rep firm, taps into the child in each of us, interweaving well-known superheroes and Star Wars characters among the sophisticated product lines they market. The well-paced slides feature engaging photos that hold the audience’s attention fully through text and audio content that, albeit comical, might otherwise have felt lengthy. The page turn transitions really add to the storytelling feel. After all the standard holidays cards have been sent to the recycling bin, this one stays in mind.

Outreach Presentation: Hoshyar Foundation

The power of this compelling outreach presentation by the non-profit Hoshyar Foundation lies not only in its inspirational message, but also in its technical design. The images selected are nothing short of stunning and add a degree of realism that truly immerses the viewer in the presentation visually and emotionally, and the effective use of ‘builds’ and varying font size give the concise text a greater impact. The videos and music selected add just the right sobering, yet hopeful touch.

We’re looking forward to seeing more of your presentation samples on Twitter! Share yours and you may see it featured here!

More Presentation Samples to Explore

Presentation Examples – Data and Fundraising

Must See Google Plus Presentation from Zenslide

Marketing Presentation – 6 Outstanding Examples

With the New Year comes reflection and resolutions. Looking back on 2011, a year with natural disasters to political upheavals, I wanted to find inspiration for 2012 in uplifting stories. The ones that engaged and truly inspired me were the ones touched with realism, that took place during the course of the every day lives of “real people”.

With that as our guiding principle, we’ve compiled SlideRocket’s picks for 11 stories of acts of heroism and compassion. From jumping into gunfire to save their boss, to opening their home to gang members, we hope these stories have as big an impact on you as they did us:

1. This one’s on me: A gentleman took his own mugger to dinner – “I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

2. Home sweet home: Fulton County sheriff’s deputies who refused to evict 103 year old woman – then the bank trying to evict backed down.

3. Someone in your corner: Newly minted intern rushed into gun fire to help shot congresswoman – “It was probably not the best idea to run toward the gunshots, but people needed help.”

4. Woman’s best friend: Dog saves 83 year old from Japan’s Tsunami by insisting they go for a an unusual walk up hill.

5. The Door’s open: Grandmother opens her door to gang members and kids in need.

6. I’m no Jane Doe: Woman who was sexually attacked and gave up anonymity to speak out and let others know it’s ok to cry – “I felt that if I didn’t come out and put my name out there that it would be just another case of someone almost murdered, almost raped, and that it would just kind of be another story that passes by.’’

7. Not all heroes wear tights: Risking life and limb by-standers of all ages and backgrounds find super human strength to lift a burning car off a trapped motorcyclist

8. “A” for effort: Woman who started non-profit Turnaround for Children to turn around failing schools by addressing unique needs of impoverished kids

9. A bird in the home (is worth two in the bush): Pet macaw saves his owner from being robbed & beaten in his home

10. Tempting fate: Sgt. Dakota Meyer, the first living Marine to receive the Medal of Honor since Vietnam, fought his way back into an ambush five times saving the lives of 36 Marines and soldiers.

11. Pay it forward: Anonymous donors pay off strangers’ layaway accounts at Kmart, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents. Now many of those families are putting a few dollars towards other people’s layaways.

Let us know what you think! Did we miss one that caught your eye, made you smile or is inspiring your 2012? Share it below or tweet it to us with #MakeanImpact – we’ll share our favorites.

A PNR is something we use at SlideRocket to great effect. It’s a slide presentation that delivers on the message and emotion of our announcements with an emphasis on visuals and music. It’s brief, it’s bold, and it’s the initial 1-2 punch that dramatically enhances our announcements.

7 examples of PNRs recently launched by SlideRocket:

PNR: Android and iPad presentations keep holiday work fires burning

PNR: SlideRocket Unveils the Présumé™ Presentation Résumé for Job Seekers

PNR: For Students & Educators – SlideRocket EDU Launches on Google Apps

PNR: Presentations a go-go! Introducing the New SlideRocket iPad App

PNR: Death by PowerPoint? SlideRocket Saves Presentations!

PNR: SlideRocket Launches in VMware Cloud

PNR: Introducing HTML5 Player for iPad and iPhone

Press releases are great, but they’re black and white. And by the time you and your PR team get done molding the language it’s likely your creative press release will have lost much of its soul. By that I mean press releases can often sound over-engineered and thick with marketing speak. Not many people are going to pay attention beyond the first paragraph.

So, spice it up! Pull the leading messages out of your release and punch them up with big imagery and catchy music. This is your chance to be creative, more familiar with your audience, and more engaging.

8 PNR best practices

1. Big imagery
2. Music
3. Keep it brief (fewer than 10 slides)
4. Limit text (fewer than 15 words per slide)
5. Link to it from the first paragraph of your announcement
6. Create a blog post to accompany your announcement and embed the PNR
7. Set slides to advance automatically
8. Share the presentation link broadly on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

A PNR is your chance to craft content that will have legs well beyond your press release. It can be the difference between a standard announcement and a truly creative press release that piques the interest of your audience.

During the two weeks before the holidays the work pace slackens, you catch up on projects, and even find moments of guilt-free banter with coworkers. But how do you keep that easy feeling going through the holidays?

We released new data today that shows the go-to strategy for over 50%¹ of Americans will be to work over the holidays. It’s certainly calming to know you’ll still be ahead of the game when you return to work. But the real story is that most (57%) will tap mobile devices to stay connected. They’re not at the office. Or even the home office. Christmas party? Airport? Ski slopes? The mobile nature of work has freed us from the confines of the office AND enabled us to trade Uncle Frank’s dinner table for a brief work (i.e., sanity) break.

From Presents to Presentations

The end of the year ushers in analysis of what worked (and what didn’t) in the prior year, and the unveiling of new initiatives for the New Year. As presentations are one of the most common forms of business communication (second only to email), and lend themselves quite nicely to pitching your big ideas, many professionals will be transitioning from presents to presentations during the holiday break. The latest data from SlideRocket underscores skyrocketing demand for mobile presentation viewing and creation. In fact, 32% of professionals currently use a smartphone or tablet as their primary computing device, expected to grow to 57% by 2012. Since the launch of the SlideRocket iPad presentation app in September, iPad presentation views have taken a commanding lead as the device of choice for presenting on-the-go.

Data highlights include:

• It’s a Mobile World—Since January 2011, mobile presentation views have skyrocketed 963% Year over Year.
• iOS vs. Android—iPad leads the mobile device pack with the highest number of total presentation views over the last 90 days, followed closely by iPhone and then Android.
• Android Growth—While Android brings up the rear in total presentation views, it’s at the forefront in rate of growth for presentation viewing, clocking in 113% growth over the last 3 months.

SlideRocket’s Mobile Presentation Revolution

With more than 90% of presentations delivered outside the office, SlideRocket presentation software provides everything you need to engage audiences, anytime, anywhere. With interactive capabilities like audio, video and instant feedback, it’s easy to capture and maintain an audience’s attention. In fact, our data shows presentations with video are viewed nearly 20% longer than those without. The SlideRocket HTML5 mobile player powers stunning presentations anywhere, from any device, enabling you to deliver the perfect pitch regardless of your location this holiday season.

¹ SlideRocket commissioned survey conducted by IBOPEZogby International of more than 1,000 adults using office software on a daily basis.

The SlideRocket Presentation Index data is gathered from more than 500,000 SlideRocket users over the course of the last year.

Fundraising Presentation

This is an excellent fundraising presentation created by the Friends of the Ottawa Public Library. Good work using multiple hyperlinks to external sources, keeping the slides uncluttered, selecting good imagery and embedding video. One suggestion is to remove the builds off your first slide so that your first slide will be visible prior to playing it.

Data Presentation

Unless you’re a “Big Data” head, this data presentation will be difficult to take in one big gulp, but what I love are the visualizations. So, if you’re big into Big Data, then by all means explore the whole data presentation, as it actually has a well-framed story for such a technical subject. Otherwise, go ahead and jump to slides 3-5, 21 and 23 to see the interesting ways they visualize their data.

Keep sharing great presentation examples on Twitter with @SlideRocket! Other presentation examples you can explore include marketing presentation, social media presentation, and a Google Plus presentation.

Looking for a job isn’t what it used to be. Companies are extra cautious in hiring, and the market is highly competitive. So, how can you stand out? How can you land a job with a présumé?

In this 45-minute on-demand webinar, I unveil the 5 killer presentation design techniques I employed to build the présumé (presentation resume) that enabled me to land my dream job at SlideRocket. These tips and tricks are intended not only to help you build a fantastic présumé, but can be applied to infuse any presentation with maximum impact.

In this on-demand webinar you will learn how to:

• Find inspiration when starting your présumé
• Generate maximum impact with your audience
• Create cool effects using SlideRocket
• Use SlideRocket analytics to improve your presentation
• Use social media to take your presentation viral

Additional Présumé Resources

To help you land your dream job, here are excellent, free présumé templates to get you started building your presentation résumé using SlideRocket, an amazing alternative to PowerPoint

And of course, here is my original présumé.

Be sure to come back here and share your présumé with everyone! Just drop the link in the comments below. Who knows, maybe your future employer is reading this blog too! Good luck, and please stay in touch for more great presentation and job hunting techniques.

Thanks to everyone who attended today’s webinar, “Top 3 Ways Marketers Can Turn Presentations Into Sales Machines”. We had a great showing with over 400 people who signed up. You can find the webinar recording above, which includes the voiceover so be sure to turn on your speakers.

We were excited to have such a lively audience for the Q&A. We will provide the full Q&A below as we compile all the questions later today.

Get started with SlideRocket’s new présumé templates which are available immediately in the “Get Inspiration” gallery tab located in your SlideRocket account. Here’s a quick rundown on the new templates:

Internet Professional Présumé

This clever Présumé is ideally suited for Internet/high-tech professionals. Get a copy and easily customize the content to make it your own. SlideRocket analytics will show when you’ve been noticed!

Professional/New Graduate/New MBA Présumé

Stand out from the job-hunting crowd with this easy to customize Présumé. Never again wonder if you’ve reached your target – SlideRocket analytics will show you’ve made a big impression!

Creative Professional Présumé

Paint a vibrant picture of your talents with this engaging Présumé. Easily replace text, images and audio to showcase your artistry. SlideRocket analytics will show when you’ve hit your creative mark.

By unveiling the Présumé and three outstanding ready-to-use presentation resume templates, SlideRocket presentation tools enable you to jump out of the resume pile. Why go the route of the présumé? Here are 5 reasons:

• Make a splash – traditional resumes are dry, black and white affairs with no life. But with images, transitions, animations and even video, your SlideRocket presentation resume will showcase your background and skills in a while new light.
• Present like a pro – the SlideRocket présumé templates enable you to quickly turn a stock resume into an engaging, interactive presentation.
• Reach executives directly – because your presentation resume is online, you can easily share it via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, which presents you with the opportunity to reach hiring managers directly, in a wholly unique way
• Monitor responses – SlideRocket comes equipped with presentation analytics. So you’ll know which employers are viewing your présumé, and how long they spend on each slide. This presents you not only with the opportunity to discover who’s interested, but also where you need to spruce up your presentation resume.
• Customize – the SlideRocket presentation resumes can be targeted to any number of job functions and industries by quickly and easily adjusting the message and imagery.

You deserve to get noticed, and the SlideRocket présumé is exactly the tool that can help make it happen for you.

Visit here to see the original présumé that has inspired so many job seekers and employers. And then be sure to catch the on-demand webinar to learn the simple steps on how to make an outstanding présumé using SlideRocket!