PDFs are starting to go away

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The UK has updated their content design guidelines in major way, and I suspect similar guidelines will find their way to the US before too long.

Specifically, they now say:

If you publish a PDF or other non-HTML document without an accessible version, you may be breaking the law.

The reason for this is pretty simple — they can be very difficult for some users to manage, as they tend not to be mobile responsive, may not work with screen readers, and difficult to increase font size as an end user.

I first mentioned this more than 15 years ago, that PDFs are only ideal for documents that are intended to be printed. Using PDFs as a quick way to add content to your site was a bad idea back then, and it’s a worse idea now.

Changing your website to accommodate that could be a very big deal if you have a lot of documents, so you’d be wise to start attacking this problem before any legal legs get behind it, as they likely will in the coming years.

You don’t have to trash them all

This isn’t to say that you need to get rid of all PDFs from your site. They can serve a purpose, particularly for items that need to be printed in a precise fashion, such as legal forms. Just be sure that any PDF has an open format alternative (usually just HTML, like this text) so that all visitors on your site can see what you have to say.

If you need further help, check out this post for more quick accessibility tips.

Write of Passage, Start your Blog

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I recently listened to David Perell’s full Write of Passage podcast. It’s 21 episodes, but each one is only a minute or two so you can knock out the whole thing in under an hour. He has some great insights and inspiration to get you going.

He has a full “school” you can join that he runs a few times a year, with a cost of $4,000 – $6,000. It seems well-received, but it’s not something I’ve personally taken.

As I’ve mentioned before, regular writing can create huge benefits and I strong suggest you give it a try. You can start now for free using something like WordPress.com, or get a more professional setup for very little cost. Either way, taking just a bit of time each day to think and write can be awesome, and if you have a blog that you post regularly on please share your link in the comments below.

How does interstitial journaling work?

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A few months ago I said that I think blogging beats journaling, for a number of reasons. I still stand by that, but that’s certainly not to say that journaling is a bad thing.

I recently read an article from Anne-Laure Le Cuff about the idea of interstitial journaling, and it seems to work well with my daily flow.

The basic idea is that you combine your note-taking, tasks and time tracking in one workflow, and using Roam Research is perfect for that. In my case, I already have my daily calendar in Roam, along with note-taking and tasks, so I was somewhat doing this already.

Here’s a quick video to show you more of what I’m doing with this:

Don’t fake it if you don’t have to

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One of the iconic scenes in movie history is Michael J. Fox playing “Johnny B. Goode” in Back to the Future. If you’ve not seen it before, here’s the clip:

Beyond the obvious reasons why it’s great, there’s a small treasure near the beginning. Around the 20 second mark, you see some hands play the opening riff of the song. The shot is framed tight on the hands so that they can have someone else play that part, then cut to Michael J. Fox pretending to play the rest. Except, they don’t.

The slow pan up to his face at the 28 second mark is something you rarely see in movies, and helps to showcase just how amazing Fox is. While you didn’t actually hear his audio in the movie (he was just playing along), his ability to mimic the song that closely was a thing of beauty.

Fake it when you need to, but make it as real as you can at every possible chance.

Monologue vs Dialogue

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Is your marketing more monologue or an actual dialogue?

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of monologue — buy a TV or radio ad, spread the message, and see what happens. Increasingly, though, customers are wanting more of a dialogue with the companies they do business with, and it’s important not to confuse the two.

The latest bullhorn

Nearly a decade ago, I did some tests with churches and car dealers to see how they were using Twitter. They all advertised their use of Twitter on their home pages, but how did they really use it? In most cases, it was simply a new bullhorn — they tweeted out news and info, but did absolutely no listening or replying. Many companies are still doing the same thing today.

Most of the current technology allows you to interact with those you wish to serve, and it’s up to you to choose to engage with them or not.

Use #CamelCaseHashtags

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I’ve talked about tips for accessible websites before, to make sure that every user can understand and appreciate your content no matter how they access it, but there is a simple tip that can help make your social media posts more accessible as well — use #CamelCaseHashtags

CamelCase?

“CamelCase” is when you put a capital letter in the middle of a word. A good example would be “WordPress”, which should always be written with a capital “P” in the middle.

In talking about social media hashtags, though, the point of CamelCase is to make separate words more clear, particularly for impaired users.

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Put another way, instead of using the hashtag #homeimprovement, simply use #HomeImprovement instead. Screen reading software will try to read “homeimprovement” as a single weird word, but most can understand that “HomeImprovement” is really two separate words and it will typically be read to them correctly.

For single words lowercase is certainly fine, but the next time you use hashtags on social media try to write them using CamelCase to make sure everyone can understand what you’re trying to say.

Writing like you’re on a photo walk

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If you’ve ever taken a “photo walk” with a photographer, they’re constantly noticing things to take pictures of. The same is true with some folks and their smartphones, but it’s particularly noticeable with a professional photographer and a powerful camera. They’re always on the lookout for things that might be worth capturing, and will notice things that 99% of people just walk right past.

The same is true if you develop a consistent writing habit — you’ll start to notice things during the day to write about. In my case, it started mostly as a necessity in order to write daily, but it’s slowly becoming a natural habit.

It’s not about the topics

Being able to have topics to write about is great, but the increase in noticing the world around you is the real benefit. We all could stand to be more observant and be a part of our world, and writing is a small way to steer a bit more in that direction.

A quick look at 2020

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Our team at GreenMellen did a great job with a recap of fun stats from our business in 2020, so I thought I’d do the same with a few from this blog.

Content

I wrote a total 80 posts last year, with much of that coming after I started writing daily on October 29. All told, I’ve published 924 posts on here, going back to early 2004.

In addition, I published 23 more videos on my YouTube channel with engagement going way up — a total of 185,087 views this with 6,343 hours watched.

Analytics

For the year, users viewed 21,668 pages on the site. It’s not a huge number (less than 100 views per day) but as I’ve mentioned on here, big traffic isn’t my goal. I appreciate you being here, would appreciate you sharing any content with your friends that might be helpful, but for now gaining huge numbers isn’t the main goal.

That said, consistent writing tends to lead to increased traffic (and indeed traffic in 2020 was nearly double what the site saw in 2019), so there’s always that.

Popular Posts

When viewing popular posts over the course of a year, the top ones are frequently from previous years, as they’ve had a chance to gain some steam. Of my top five most-viewed posts, three are indeed from earlier but the top two are from 2020:

1 – Getting started with Roam Research
May 4, 2020 — 3,504 views
This is my far my most popular post, and I still refer back to it frequently. I’m a big fan of Roam Research, and that post seems to helpful for folks just getting started with it.

2 – Highlights from “How to Take Smart Notes” by Sonke Ahrens
January 25, 2020 — 2,678 views
This was a great book, and many folks have dug into the various highlights that I pulled from it.

3 – Anki vs Brainscape
July 23, 2017 — 1,209 views
Back in 2017, I was considering switching away from the Anki memorization tool, but ultimately stuck with it. A big competitor of theirs is Brainscape, so this post still does pretty well in Google searches.

4 – The hearing impaired scam
November 27, 2017 — 989 views
This was another from 2017, where I simply shared a scam that I came across in the hopes of helping others to avoid it. It also does well in Google searches, and hopefully has saved other people from some major headaches.

5 – A timeline of Louis Zamperini’s journey
January 8, 2011 — 846 views
This one goes back nearly a decade and still is one of my most popular posts. In reading Laura Hillenbrand’s excellent “Unbroken” book, I worked through and created a timeline of the places that Louis traveled throughout his life. The 846 views this year pale in comparison to the 8,322 views the post saw back in 2011 when the book was hot, but it still seems to be useful for a good number of people.

2021

We’ll see what this year brings. I still intend on publishing something every day, and already have a good plan for the next few weeks. I also have some big non-blogging goals for the year that may hamper things, so we’ll see what happens.

Either way, best wishes to you for 2021!

Get writing in 2021

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If one of your goals is to starting writing/blogging more in 2021, I wholeheartedly encourage it. If you’re not sure if that’s something you want to do, this quick video from Seth Godin (which I’ve shared before) may help encourage you.

Along those lines, though, I suggest that you avoid using a free blogging service. While places like Blogger and WordPress.com can be great, they can leave you in a precarious place. For about $25, you can get your own domain name and your own hosting and have a much more robust and professional setup with relatively little expense or time.

To help with that, I’ve set up a simple course to help you get started. This will walk you through the tricky parts of domain names and hosting (which really aren’t too tricky once you walk through it), choosing a theme, and getting everything set up and ready for you to start writing and sharing.

The course is $79 for lifetime access, but as a blog reader use the coupon code “mickblog” to save $30.

The course is less than hour long, and I’ve broken it into 20 separate segments so you can dig into (and even replay) the specific areas where you need help.

You can see the full list of topics and get more information here. I hope you find it helpful!