Survey Says: 2011 Edition

Survey Says: 2011 Edition

Family FeudAt the end of 2011, I did a quick survey of both the DocumentSnap blog readers and readers of the weekly DocumentSnap newsletter.

I did this at the end of 2010 too, and I found it was an incredibly helpful way to find out how I can help you in the year ahead.

This year, I want to do something different and share the key results with you. I want to do this for two reasons:

  1. If you going to share information with me, it’s only fair that you get to see the results.
  2. Sometimes when you are stuck in the weeds of going paperless, or any life change, it can be helpful to know that you’re not alone.

In the surveys, I asked three key questions:

  1. What is the biggest problem that you have right now with going paperless?
  2. What would you like to see more of on the blog or newsletter?
  3. What would you like to see less of on the blog or newsletter?

Let’s go through the results.

The Blog

What Is The Biggest Problem?

Blog Biggest ProblemI have to admit, I found this result quite surprising.

By far I get the most questions about document organization (which is why I created the Paperless Document Organization Guide), so I was quite surprised that “finding the time to scan and process” was an equal concern.

Another common question I get, which is represented here, is convincing others that going paperless is a good idea. It can definitely be hard when everyone at home or in the office is not on the same page.

What Would You Like To See More Of?

Blog See More OfI hear you. You want to see more stories and examples of people who have gone paperless and how they did it.

In 2011 I started the popular DocumentSnap Reader Stories series, but in 2012 I will try to reach out more and get some more workflow examples for you.

What Would You Like To See Less Of?

Blog See Less OfFor the most part, I received comments like “some posts don’t apply to me, but I know they help other people so I just ignore them and move on to the next one.”

Not surprisingly, some Mac users would like to see less Windows posts and some Windows users would like to see less Mac posts. I do my best to keep it as balanced as possible, but if you think I sway too far one way or the other, just let me know.

The Newsletter

If you don’t know, I share an entirely different set of going-paperless tips each week in the Paper Cuts Newsletter. Also, when I have a new product or service coming out, I usually let readers there know about it first with some specials.

I asked a similar set of questions to the newsletter readers, and here is what they had to say.

What Is The Biggest Problem?

Newsletter Biggest ProblemThe results here are similar to the blog, but I found it interesting that general comfort-with-going-digital and tackling the backlog scored higher.

It’s pretty clear that in 2012, I need to focus more on some way to help with helping you find the time to do paperless processing.

What Would You Like To See More Of?

Newsletter See MoreCase studies and organization are the biggies here.

It looks like Mac users are highly represented in newsletter respondents, as they want to see more discussion of Mac software. I do try to keep it balanced, but another theme I have seen is that readers want more help with software selection. Maybe I can do more there.

What Would You Like To See Less Of?

Newsletter See Less

The usual suspects are here, but I did receive a few interesting comments that they’d like to see less of a North American focus.

Being from Canada, I know how annoying it can be when things are too United States-centric[1], so I will see what I can do to highlight more international tips, products, and services.

If you are from outside North America would like to help contribute in that regard, just let me know.

So there you go, you can see what I will try to focus on in the year ahead. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to leave a comment or hit me up any time. Have a great 2012!


  1. Though my bank account is happy we don;t have Amazon Prime up here.  ↩

About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 3 comments

Bob - December 12, 2012 Reply

What's Hazel and TextExpander?

Mary - January 20, 2012 Reply

Brooks, I'm not sure if I'm too late to ask for areas of interest, but I'm having such a great time catching up with the under retired age owners of ScanSnap that I am always amazed what I Could Be Doing! could I ask for a bit more in depth with Hazel and TextExpander? I'm sure I am supposed to learn by myself, but learning alone takes time out if getting rid of all of the old PAPER. I spend my free time streamlining my current Workflow, thanks to your smart friends in going Paperless. Evernote is having a hard time keeping up with the streamlining I'm doing but they do a wonderful job of helping, thanks to their new "live help" feature. I was even successful in a total redo of ENote with their support.. A word to the wise, if you use DropBox also, learn not to use lots of odd extras in file names. I seem to cause trouble with them. Bullets, lots of question marks, extra spaces to make files jump to the top of a list etc. Were my problems as a new user.

Hope all is well.

Mary

    Brooks Duncan - January 21, 2012 Reply

    Hi there Mary,I'm always happy to geek around with Hazel and TextExpander! Is there anything in particular you'd like me to drill down into?

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