We’re considering a “did you know?” series on PDFs. More and more people tell us that they’ve never really thought of what else they can do with PDF software other than read and publish documents. 
Which is really a shame. The PDF standard is powerful medicine, if you take a few minutes to really dive in and learn how many ways it can help your business.
We took a stab at listing ten of the most powerful, important features PDF files deliver for growing businesses. We were fortunate to have Smallbiztechnology.com cover these as well, but since you’re here we’ll list them below to save you the click. Plus, we like when you visit. If you don’t see your favorite feature below, we’d really like if if you added yours in the comments.
Ten Powerful Ways Growing Businesses can Use PDFs:
1) Save time recreating documents. Don’t waste time recreating MSFT documents when you already have paper of PDF docs. Instead, instantly convert these to fully formatted, edit able word processing docs, spreadsheets and presos. It’s a big time saver. Studies show it takes an average of 15 minutes to re-type a page.
2) Find information faster with text-searchable PDFs. Use text search capabilities to automatically find the keywords or text strings you are looking to review.
3) Improve collaboration by adding information. Exchange ideas and provide direction by adding notes, stamps, call-outs and graphics to PDF docs.
4) Pull together all your information. When working on a project, people often work with documents in multiple formats–Word, Excel, PPT and Outlook. PDFs let you combine different formats into an online project folder so you can more easily share information.
5) GO GREEN! Sign a PDF electronically. No more print, sign and scanning of PDFs for important documents. PDF software now lets you add an electronic signature stamp, which is the same as a digital signature but offers an even higher level of security.
6) Protect your brand, reputation and proprietary information. PDF documents can be locked down for general distribution, preventing anyone from changing, printing or copying content.
7) Deliver messages with more impact! Use multimedia to bring sales presos or data sheets to life. You can even embed video at the point of product in the document.
8: Create fillable forms to speed processing. No need to print and fill out the form. Instead, you can convert from a static document into a fillable PDF form that you can complete electronically, save on your computer, and e-mail for processing. Alternatively, if you have a paper form, you can also convert it into a fillable form by scanning and converting the document in the same way as a PDF form.
9) Safeguard who can read your PDF. You can password protect a PDF file to make sure only the appropriate person is allowed to open and read the document.
10) Drill down to details in complex documents. Diagrams, like office layouts are often built with graphics packages that use individual layers to allow people to drill down to specific aspects.
There are 10 useful, easy ways to use PDFs to help your small business grow and look pretty slick in the process.
How do you use PDF–do anything unique? If any of you have secrets to share, please feel free to list in the comments!
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
