Hey Channels folks, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the PDF today!
Especially for those of us communicators working in social impact, PDFs are huge. End-of-year reports, grant applications, data sheets, and more. But is the PDF really the most useful format for these assets?
Let us know:
Do you still download PDFs and read through them? Where do you save them?
In an increasingly mobile-first world, are PDFs the best format for users on multiple devices?
What are some alternatives we could use? Medium and Substack for longer text? Interactive webpages for maintaining beautiful designs?
I don't work with PDFs as often in my current job. Most of comms I do is limited is short-form, but whenever there's a pdf involved, I get cautious and start thinking of ways to dissecting the content into smaller pieces. I've found carousels are great at generating interests about the longer content, pdf or otherwise. I'm also testing a micro-learning email campaign to share a curriculum (long but very important pdf) next month. Let's see how that turns out. + I download a lot of PDFs and read them on the browser for a quick scan. If I want to revisit them later, I save them on my Zotero account, that I mostly use for my academic research and writing.
I don't really read PDFs online but if I find one I like, I print it and take notes! I definitely think there needs to be more work to explain the content of a PDF rather than just leaving it all in a PDF. Maybe a "layered" approach to communicating complex subjects by using the PDF as a "landing page" of sorts, but having things like infographics, carousels, or explainer videos that are much shorter and more succinct to explain the content/highlights of the PDFs.
I think alternatively, interactive webpages are a great choice depending on the purpose of the PDF. I don't view newsletters as an alternative to PDFs since PDFs are basically the digital version of "official files".
I don't think PDFs need to be fancy of creatively designed per se. Maybe it's my government background, but boring can be good, and save the creative design for the things that explain the content of the PDF.
I've done many different alternatives to avoid using pdf in our comms, specially regarding social impact reports. Infographics usually work quite well, simple landing pages with most important info, Linkedin carrousels and good social media content calendars splashing relevant info during several weeks. Hope it helps!
Download them: never read them 😂 Im trying to use instagram carousels to get the message out instead
I don't work with PDFs as often in my current job. Most of comms I do is limited is short-form, but whenever there's a pdf involved, I get cautious and start thinking of ways to dissecting the content into smaller pieces. I've found carousels are great at generating interests about the longer content, pdf or otherwise. I'm also testing a micro-learning email campaign to share a curriculum (long but very important pdf) next month. Let's see how that turns out. + I download a lot of PDFs and read them on the browser for a quick scan. If I want to revisit them later, I save them on my Zotero account, that I mostly use for my academic research and writing.
I don't really read PDFs online but if I find one I like, I print it and take notes! I definitely think there needs to be more work to explain the content of a PDF rather than just leaving it all in a PDF. Maybe a "layered" approach to communicating complex subjects by using the PDF as a "landing page" of sorts, but having things like infographics, carousels, or explainer videos that are much shorter and more succinct to explain the content/highlights of the PDFs.
I think alternatively, interactive webpages are a great choice depending on the purpose of the PDF. I don't view newsletters as an alternative to PDFs since PDFs are basically the digital version of "official files".
I don't think PDFs need to be fancy of creatively designed per se. Maybe it's my government background, but boring can be good, and save the creative design for the things that explain the content of the PDF.
I've done many different alternatives to avoid using pdf in our comms, specially regarding social impact reports. Infographics usually work quite well, simple landing pages with most important info, Linkedin carrousels and good social media content calendars splashing relevant info during several weeks. Hope it helps!
I still use it for working proposed, like letters, contracts, or other. But when there are reading documents I save them to my drive.
I use canva template for IG to put message out or also short articles on my blog.