- Hey everyone, welcome to another Monday Marketing Minute,
my name is Kori Ashton.
Today's tip is going to be
how to stop using PDF files,
static PDF files, on your WordPress website,
if you're consistently having to change and update,
maybe weekly or monthly, that PDF file.
It's very laborious for you to go in, into your Word doc,
or whatever file you're using to make this PDF file,
and make all the changes, save it as a PDF,
download it, go to your WordPress website,
up load it, grab the link,
go to where it's linked throughout your website,
change the links.
That is way too complex.
I have a cheater way of doing it,
and it's all in the budget of free right now,
using Google Drive.
I'm gonna show you how it's done.
I'm gonna give you a quick example
of what I've seen used as a PDF file
that you're constantly having to update.
On Landshark fitness, they've got their classes,
and their group schedule.
When you click on here, it opens up a PDF file,
that everybody who is a member of this club
can download and save, print out
and put on their refrigerator, whatever they'd like to do.
The problem is, while that might be convenient
for the member, it is not convenient
for the admin side of this.
Having to update this darn thing consistently,
then send it over, get it updated.
It's too much, so I want to challenge you
to use something like Google Sheets to do this.
You can come into Google Sheets easily and quickly,
make this same layout for your members,
or whoever needs to be seeing this,
and then you're gonna use this share option over here.
You'll click share, and all you want to do
is come up here and get a shareable link.
We're gonna click that little button,
and this says anybody can view it,
you don't want editing rights to go out there in the world,
so that's correct.
We're gonna leave this setting,
we're gonna copy that onto your clipboard, right?
Right mouse click, copy it onto your clipboard,
and save that link right now.
Here's what's gonna happen.
We're gonna put that link on your website,
then anytime you ever need to update that PDF file,
all you have to do as an admin,
is come back to this Google Sheet,
make your changes, that's it.
Seriously, there is no uploading, downloading,
changing links, there's nothing.
It's in real time this takes effect.
That's what's cool about this,
is you can easily and quickly
make all the changes you need to make,
and all of a sudden, they're able to see it in real time,
you never had to change anything on you website.
So once you have that link copied,
you just go into your WordPress dashboard,
and go to wherever you had that PDF linked.
So for this particular example,
their inside of their menu's up in that top navigation,
and it's inside of their classic group schedule,
so we would open up that little drawer,
and this is where that PDF file lives.
You see this right here?
That little PDF file?
We don't want it to link to a static PDF file anymore,
we want it to go away,
and paste in that really cool Google link that they gave us,
this Google Sheets link, that's it.
Click save menu, and now,
whenever you go back to your website, and click refresh,
you go over to classes and click class schedule,
you'll now land on this Google Sheet.
Now here's the thing, don't get frustrated and say,
"Well, people need to be able to print it out."
They can still print it out!
They can still download it as a PDF even,
if they want to save it as a PDF.
So you can go to file, download as,
and easily save it as a PDF file.
So your customers or your members,
are still gonna have that really great experience,
but you're admin is going to fly now,
because there's no complexities
of saving, downloading, uploading, relinking,
ugh, it's too much.
You can also do this with anything
having to do with Google Docs.
So if you need to have something
that looks more like an actual worksheet,
or something like this,
you can still ave this same type of layout.
You just need to use this share button up here.
Click share, and be certain that the settings are view only.
Kinda cool, right?
I hope this is a huge time saver for you,
and that it becomes a more efficient way
of you updating all of your consistent files
that have to have that weekly, daily, monthly,
whatever it might be, update.
I hope you're having a great one.
Be sure to subscribe if you like content like this,
because every week I'm creating videos
on Mondays and Wednesdays for you,
to improve your online marketing
inside the world of WordPress.
Have a great one, y'all, bye everyone.
(chiming electronic music)