Matrix Group International

Category: Blog

  • A New CMS Won’t Fix Your Broken Web Strategy

    A New CMS Won’t Fix Your Broken Web Strategy

    I read a lot of RFPs (Requests For Proposals) for website redesigns, and I sit through a lot of demos and presentations. What strikes me is the number of projects where the focus is on the content management system, and not the goals and strategy of the project.

    Why do we have such an obsession with changing platforms and technology when a “website isn’t working?”

    I believe this is because we think the problem all along has been the platform. And I believe that in most cases, this approach is wrong.

    As a technology vendor and implementer of technologies and platforms, this thinking might seem counter-intuitive. But the truth is this: web content management systems have come a looooong way and most systems do more than any organization can ever hope to use. Yep, there are differences between WordPress, Sitefinity, Drupal, Sitecore and Ektron for sure, but today, I think these differences are at the margins.

    Ultimately, the things that really matter are the strategy behind the website redesign, the ability of an organization to rally behind the strategy, a solid implementation that includes lots of training, and the quality of the technology vendor.

    If your website isn’t working for your organization, investing in a new CMS with a fancy WYSIWYG editor, drag and drop interface and complicated workflow won’t’ solve your problems. They will help, for sure, but if your content strategy isn’t in place, if you don’t make a commitment to fabulous images, you don’t have a plan for marketing your site, you don’t measure results, and you don’t have the right team in place, you’ll be replacing that CMS in a few short years.

    BTW, don’t confuse my being CMS-agnostic with the idea that once you invest in a CMS, you can let it sit as is — forever. Content management systems must be upgraded on a regular basis so you have benefit of the latest security patches, new functionality, and vendor support. I tell clients to use the upgrade process as an opportunity to reevaluate their businesses processes, get staff trained and retrained, and make optimization tweaks to the website.

    The next time you find yourself saying, “our website sucks, we need a new CMS,” ask yourself this: Is it really the CMS or does your strategy, process and/or training need the reboot?

     

  • The One Thing You Can Do Now to Protect Your Website From Hackers – Create a Strong Password

    The One Thing You Can Do Now to Protect Your Website From Hackers – Create a Strong Password

    A couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of news about a massive brute force attack against WordPress sites to install Minero Miner, Minero is a javascript Crypto miner. The attack used information from the site, like the domain name, common logins and common passwords, to try and gain access to the site.

    Let me say this again. The attack used common logins and password to gain access. This means the attack basically used a whole lot of computers to try and guess credentials. And guess what? If a site uses “admin” and “password123” as the credentials, it was compromised in about five seconds, probably less.

    So this is my regular please to please, please use strong passwords and don’t reuse passwords. What’s a strong password? My tips are below:

    • Create a long password. Some sites recommend 6-8 characters. That’s outdated information. Make your password as long as you can. My Windows password at work is 15 characters.
    • Don’t just add numbers or replace letters with numbers. DOgFi$h123 may have been an acceptable password in the past, but no longer.
    • Don’t use a common phrase from life, a book or the movies. It’s easy to think that “DoOrDoNotThereIsNoTry” is a great password because it’s really long. But guess what? This phrase exists in dictionary attacks used by hackers. Don’t use this password.
    • You are better off stringing together words that are meaningful to you, but don’t commonly belong together. For example, I was staying at the Bellagio Hotel one time and I needed to change my password. So I looked up, saw some balls on the ceiling and came up with “99BouncingBellagioBalls)).” How Secure is My Password says it would be 15 octillion years to guess this password, which I don’t believe, but you get the point that this password is strong because it’s long, it’s got a combination of upper case, lower case, numbers and non-alphanumeric characters. And yet, most importantly, this password was easy for me to remember. I will sometimes string random English, Tagalog and French words together and add in some numbers in the middle of the password to create a strong password.
    • Use a password manager. No, Excel is not a password manager, especially if the file is called passwords.xlsx. A Word doc is not a password manager. A spiral bound notebook locked in your house is much safer than an Excel file on your laptop or share drive. Instead, use a manager like LastPass, KeePass, 1Password or Dashlane. At the company level, use an enterprise password manager like Secret Server (which Matrix Group uses as a company.) Me, I use KeePass.
    • Commit commonly used passwords to memory; let the password manager handle the rest. Me? I remember my office network password and my KeePass password. For everything else, I create long passwords or let KeePass generate them, and then I store them in KeePass.

    Want to learn more about passwords? I like these articles:

    https://lifehacker.com/how-to-create-a-strong-password-1797681069
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542576/youve-been-misled-about-what-makes-a-good-password/
    https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/08/18/nists-new-password-rules-what-you-need-to-know/

    Make it one of your 2018 resolutions to replace your passwords with strong ones NOW!

     

  • Getting Started with eLearning and How Mobile is Transforming Professional Development

    Getting Started with eLearning and How Mobile is Transforming Professional Development

    At the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) Tech Conference last week, I attended a terrific session called “Anytime, Anywhere eLearning: How Mobile Transforms Education.” Wendy Rath and Mary Rehm of PRMIA (Professional Risk Managers’ International Association), as well as Ken Parker from NextThought, did a terrific job of articulating PRMIA’s eLearning journey.

     

    Background on PRMIA and its Professional Development Program:

    PRMIA is a professional society that creates an open forum for the development and promotion of the risk profession. A big part of how PRMIA accomplishes its mission is professional development and education. But recently, PRMIA education appeared to be in trouble. Registrations were way down and the association had to cancel a number of meetings.

    What did PRMIA decide to do? Instead of just blasting out more emails, PRMIA decided to go deep and learn more about what’s really happening with their members and their educational needs and objectives.
     
    PRMIA conducted a member survey and learned:
    • Members want more learning opportunities, not less.
    • Members are constrained in terms of time and money.
    • Members want online learning.

    The eLearning Solution

    Knowing what they learned about members’ education need and desires, PRMIA got to work.
    • They took a long, hard look at their technology and realized that much of it was already conducive to eLearning. Much of it supported a mobile experience. The rub was that PRMIA was not taking advantage of these features.
    • PRMIA invested in a new learning mangement platform; they selected Articulate Storyline.
    • They started re-developing their in person courses to be offered online.
    • They offered courses online, in real time, but also recorded courses for on demand viewing later.

    Lessons Learned

    After about a year of effort and redevelopment, here’s what PRMIA learned:
    • When re-developing courses, their winning formula was to split up a course into 10 nano lessons, each about 5-10 minutes long.
    • The sessions work best when they are standalone, i.e., members can pick and choose the sessions that interest them, and don’t need to have taken any prerequisites in order to take a specific sesson.
    • When offering online courses, you need a really dynamic speaker AND really great slides. Otherwise, it’s hard to keep the attention of the students.
    • eLearning must be mobile-friendly. Test out your online courses yourself on a phone and tablet and make sure you can navigate the environment easily.
    • Solicit feedback from registrants and have a plan to respond to comments.
    Is your organization ready for an eLearning strategy? 
  • Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Page Reach

    Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Page Reach

    Have you noticed that the likes and interactions on your Facebook page are decreasing? If so, you’re not imagining it – organic reach on Facebook brand pages fell by 52% last year alone, and Facebook has even admitted that only about 16% of your fans see your updates. Yuck!

    Why is this happening? With an overwhelming amount of content being published to Facebook every second and a limited amount of real estate in each user’s News Feed, Facebook tries to tailor each individual’s feed to deliver what it believes to be the most relevant and interesting for that person. It’s not too surprising then to hear that Facebook prioritizes posts from the friends and family that you interact with the most, and posts from your friends that are linked with your interests. All of this to say, it’s now harder than ever for updates from brand pages to be prioritized and seen.

    In addition, Facebook is a business.  They’ve found that many brands are willing to pay to boost their posts in order to reach more people, providing Facebook with a nice little (ok, large) revenue stream.

    But what if your budget doesn’t support boosting Facebook posts? Don’t worry – it doesn’t mean that you can’t improve your reach without getting out your organization’s AmEx card. Here are five things you can do to improve your Facebook page, reach more people, and get more likes and comments, without spending a penny:

    1. Always include an image with your link posts. The best way to make sure your link shares are prioritized and seen is to include a large preview image (1200 x 630 for the best display on high-resolution devices). The Facebook algorithm demotes links with low resolution photos or links with no photo at all, meaning your fans will probably never see the shared content.
    2. Know what’s even better than images? Video! Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. Wow! When uploading videos to Facebook, make sure that it’s an original video that you upload directly to Facebook, not a YouTube embed. Facebook prioritizes posts with native video that it can auto-play and caption.
    3. @ mention people and organizations. Get people to tag themselves in your updates. Doing this gives your post more velocity because they will show up on other people’s and organizations’ timelines and feeds. Plus, people get notified when they are @ mentioned and tend to like those posts.
    4. Be original and keep a dialogue going. When sharing posts from other people or other organizations, make sure you are including an original comment. Facebook likes to display posts that have been personalized in some way by the poster, that encourage new thought and dialogue. Also be sure to respond to comments and engage your audience, because this is social media, and consistent, thoughtful responses and dialogue is what will keep them coming back for more.
    5. Encourage direct visits to your Facebook page, and ask your fans to turn on notifications. Direct visits, or visits where people went to your page directly, and not in a feed, indicate special interest and affinity. When people do this, Facebook will tend to prioritize your posts for those people. Encourage direct visits by promoting your Facebook page and specific posts on your website and in emails. Also be sure to ask your fans to turn on notifications for your posts, and even to select “show first in news feed” under the follow options on your brand page, so they never miss a post.

    Bonus tip: Always keep a pulse on the social media and search algorithm updates, but don’t let them rule you. Test, tweak, and test again to see what works best for your organization and your audience.

  • 5 Favorite Free Stock Photography Resources Part II

    There’s no doubt about it: finding good stock photography can be tough.  And when it isn’t tough, it’s expensive. When I scroll through images on the popular stock house websites looking for images for our blog posts or newsletters and see how much they’re charging for their stuffy, posed, man-in-suit photos I am always aghast. And annoyed. Very, very annoyed.

    Thankfully, I’ve come across a few great stock photography websites recently that are completely free. While we still use many of the resources that Andi shared a few years back, the sites below have become my new go-tos. Most, if not all, of these sites are full of royalty and attribution-free photography, meaning you can use, copy, modify, and distribute these photos without the permission of, or reference to, the photographer. Yes, even for commercial use!

    1. Pexels – Built to help designers, bloggers, and just about everyone else find high-quality, free images, Pexels is one of our absolute favorites. They recently launched a free stock video collection as well.
    2. Unsplash – Started as a Tumblr blog where a photographer shared 10 photographs that were leftover from a photo shoot, Unsplash has grown to a collection of over 300,000 photos contributed from over 50,000 photographers. They are all simply stunning (and all free)!
    3. Burst – Powered by Shopify, this free stock site was built to “empower designers, developers, bloggers and entrepreneurs to create stunning websites and marketing campaigns.” There are thousands of stunning stock photos, ripe for the choosing!
    4. Pic Jumbo – When the large stock houses turned down freelance photographer Viktor Hanacek’s photos, he decided to use his coding skills to start his own free stock website. Almost all of the images were shot by him, and while he always welcomes attribution, it’s not required. The only thing you can’t do is redistribute the photos, but if you’d like to, there’s a paid plan available for that purpose.
    5. Foodiesfeed – While this stock site may only be of interest to a limited audience, there are lots of high-res and drool-worthy free food photos on this site.

    Remember that over time licensing agreements on these sites may change, so be sure to always, always read the fine print and abide by the rules!

    Have you found any other great royalty-free stock photography websites? Please share!

  • What Employees Want From Office Space: Flexibility

    What Employees Want From Office Space: Flexibility

    About a year ago, I was facing a big office space decision. Do we stay in our current office or move? Keep the current space design or blow it out? Our landlord paid for a fancy architect to come up with new layouts and designs. In the end, we decided to stay in place, sign a short lease and use a modest budget to think about what the next generation Matrix Group office space should look like.

    I held meetings with staff, we visited other offices, and we scoured design magazines and blogs. After a year of discussions and moving furniture around, here is what we’ve learned:

    It’s not about offices, workstations or open space. It’s about flexibility. Turns out most of my staff like being in an open, airy area. BUT, on a regular basis, they want the option to work from home, be isolated so they can concentrate without interruption, or crash on a project with 2-3 other team members. It’s not unusual to find the IT team huddled in one of our huddle spaces during a launch. Or the new biz team meeting in Tatooine (one of our conference rooms) when crashing on a proposal.

    Small meeting rooms can meet a lot of needs. Previously, we had two small meeting rooms and one large one. The large room is used infrequently – a few times a month when we have staff meetings and for large meetings. We replaced the finicky projectors with large TVs and Chromecasts and never looked back. We use the small conference rooms for group calls with clients, troubleshooting teams, and as isolation rooms for people who need quiet time.

    Good design and lack of clutter are inspiring. Over time, office space just degrades. We accumulate junk, the walls get dinged, and stuff gets dingy. It’s so important to step back and give the office a fresh look. In our case, we didn’t have budget for a complete overhaul, so we cleaned the carpets, repainted some walls, bought some new lobby furniture and came up with new artwork for the walls. We also encouraged the staff to declutter their spaces; it’s amazing how much stuff I tossed just from my own office! When I walk around the office, I can feel the breathing room we created just by tossing a lot of junk we had stopped noticing!

    Rethinking how we communicate. On any given day, I have staff working from home or working in a location other than their desk. So how does the poor receptionist find people when they get a call? How do I find someone I need to consult on a project? In our case, Slack has been a godsend and a game changer. Using Slack, we can communicate directly with other staff. Even better, we have Slack channels for each client and each team (e.g., the MatrixMaxx team or the new biz team) so we can easily collaborate, share, and keep each other updated. The expectation is that all staff stay on Slack if they’re working. So it doesn’t matter if you’re working in the kitchen or Tatooine; you will respond if you get a Slack message. Most of us have Slack on our phones as well, so it’s easy to respond to quick questions. Yes, Slack has reduced the amount of in-staff email we send out.

    I’m almost done with the my office redo and the new wall stickers and artwork are coming next week. So stay tuned for a blog post with before and after photos. I’m loving our office and loving the conversations we continue to have about next generation office space.

    How about you? Do you love your office space? What’s working? What do you wish you could have and do?
  • The Inflection Point

    The Inflection Point

    As I write this, I’m currently watching the live event of Apple’s latest iPhone 8 event. They just announced an update to the Apple TV set top box, with support for 4K, because, according to Tim Cook, “TV is at an “inflection point” with the mainstream adoption of 4K.”

    This made me ponder the implication of this term “inflection point”. By definition, in math terms, it’s “a point of a curve at which a change in the direction of curvature occurs.”  In Tim Cook’s reference, it’s when a technology reaches a certain critical mass in terms of how many people use it, hence Apple’s new product.

    In larger, cultural terms, an inflection point represents a fundamental change in how people live, do business, communicate.  On the NY Times website, there is a video of all the things the iPhone “destroyed”, in terms of how it disrupted whole industries, and changed how we interact with each other:

    The list of disruptions engendered by the rise of mobile technology is enormous, including the taxi industry, alarm clocks, cameras, etc. Every organization is faced with the potential of disruption, with the inflection point. The key is to anticipate this disruption, and embrace it, to evolve, rather than die. History is littered with industries and companies that could not embrace change and fell by the wayside.

    Since I’ve been with Matrix Group (1999), there have been a huge number of inflection points, both culturally and technologically. Every time there is a major fundamental change, we’ve had to adapt our design process, business practices, and offerings to clients. From desktop to mobile, cloud computing, content management systems, these new technologies have all had huge impacts on our business, and how we help our clients.

    Some of the new potential inflection points include the internet of things, virtual reality, screen less experiences etc.  As a company that designs interactive experiences for our clients, it’s imperative that we stay on top of these changes, embrace these changes, and think about how we can apply these inflection points to help our clients evolve and thrive, and not die.

  • 9 Tips for Holding a Successful Training Session

    Holding a training session can be tough. You have to give your audience all of the information they need in a limited time frame, without overwhelming them or, let’s be honest, putting them to sleep. It can be quite the task and balancing act.

    At Matrix Group, we conduct a lot of training. Over the years I’ve held hundreds of trainings and MatrixMaxx product demos. While my sessions aren’t always 100% flawless, I like to think that I’ve gotten pretty good at holding a successful training session.

    Recently, I gave some of our staff a training session on giving training sessions. Here are the 9 top tips that I shared with the Matrix Group staff on how to make your training sessions successful:

    1. Know your material – This one may seem obvious, but be well prepared and don’t try to wing it. Make a quick bulleted list for yourself of the key points that you want to cover, and, if you do the same training regularly, it might be worth your time to create a standard presentation template that gets customized for each individual training.
    2. Know the audience’s goals – Ask yourself: What are they trying to get out of this training or demo? What information is the most important and useful to them? Do they want an overview, or a deep dive into one or two areas?
    3. Learn about the organization(s) you are talking to – Ask them questions about how they currently do certain things ahead of time, so you can better prepare. Also, be sure to know about any unique customizations the client(s) may have in place when holding a software training.
    4. Prepare sample data – It often goes a long way for the client to see data like their own. Note a couple of examples that illustrate your points, and populate some sample data where necessary.
    5. Slow down – Don’t be afraid of a little silence and don’t rush through the material. You may know the information like the back of your hand, but your audience doesn’t, so make sure you are giving them enough time to let things sink in.
    6. Practice – A little practice makes a big impact, especially if you are conducting a training on or using new material. Formulate a plan for what information you are going to cover, go over your examples and illustrations and think about what you are going to say for each one, then practice, practice, practice.
    7. Speak clearly – Try to avoid “ums” and “ahs”. The previous two tips will also help you to do this. Also, if you are giving a training remotely, keep in mind that conference phone lines tend to muddle things, so take extra care to enunciate.
    8. Periodically prompt for questions – Before changing topics, ask if there are any questions. This gives the more shy audience members an opportunity to ask questions.
    9. Be clear on who will be taking notes – It can be hard to take notes while also conducting a training, without breaking the flow of your presentation. If you have someone else from your organization helping out with the training, be clear about who will be responsible for note taking ahead of time.

    As with anything, practice really does make perfect. But hopefully with these tips you’ll be able to knock any training session out of the park, whether it’s your first or your 50th.

    Have any other tips for how to ensure that your training sessions are successful? I’m all ears!

  • Our Favorite Video Editing Tools: Final Cut Pro & iMovie

    It’s no secret that video is one of the hottest marketing trends and tools right now. If you haven’t taken the leap into video creation for your organization, now is certainly the time!

    Video creation can seem like an overwhelming task at first thought, but good news! If you have a smartphone (who doesn’t these days?) and the right video editing software, you can create pretty great video content. Sure, your videos may not be super bowl ad worthy, but you’ll be surprised at the quality of content you can produce with the right tools.

    Two of our favorite editing tools are iMovie and Final Cut Pro, which are both Apple products. While they are a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison – one is a more basic, budget friendly option and the other is more full-featured and an investment – they are both great tools to get the job done, depending on your needs.

    Here’s a little background on each editor, and the advantages of each:

    iMovie

    This is a great program for beginner video editors to use to learn the ropes. We love it for it’s ease of use and basic editing features – it has enough tools to get the job done, but none of the more complex editing options that often intimidate beginners. Since it’s an Apple product, you can seamlessly bring in different Apple programs to the application such as iTunes, Garageband, Photos, etc.

    We also love that it:

    • Makes it easy to jump back and forth between scenes
    • Is very simple to change the audio over a video clip
    • Gives you the ability to fix shaky/unsteady video
    • Is available on all Apple devices, so you can make edits on your video from anywhere

    The biggest advantage of iMovie is that it’s free! A great way to get some exposure to video editing, without an initial investment.

    Final Cut Pro

    This is a signature video editing software, and includes more advanced features and capabilities. With a modern and sleek design, Final Cut also makes the experience for the editor more exciting while remaining pretty easy to use.

    Some of our favorite features include:

    • The magnetic timeline, which makes it easier to produce your project. It automatically snaps multiple clips into place and gives you the ability to move the clips around the timeline quickly and easily.
    • Multi-Channel Audio that allows use different audio channels to make the sound of the video high-quality.
    • Compound clips option, that keeps you from worrying about gaps when you add videos together, and it transitions the video smoothly.

    There is a cost associated with Final Cut Pro – right now it’s priced at $299 – but we believe it’s one of the best video editors on the market and worth every penny.

    For most of our video editing needs here at Matrix Group, such as the Matrix Minute video series, we use Final Cut Pro. But we also love using iMovie to quickly edit and post videos to social media that are more timely.

    There are many other video editing programs out there, but these are by far our favorites. And remember, if you ever need any video help, we’re here for you!

    Have to dabbled in video editing? What’s your platform of choice?

  • What is a Canonical URL and Why Should I Care?

    A canonical URL or “canonical link” is an HTML element that helps search engines avoid the appearance of duplicate content. It does this by identifying a preferred version of a web page. Using canonical URLs improves your site’s SEO and makes searching the site easier for your visitors. The canonical link appears in the head section of a web page and looks like this:

    <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.yoursite.com/page-path/page-title/” />

    How it works

    Imagine you’re throwing a party at your home and you provide directions to your guests. (I recognize that nowadays people will just plug your address into their navigator, but my father refuses to use such technology and still prefers written directions and paper maps.) Knowing that your guests will be coming from different starting points, you provide a different set of directions whether they are coming from the north, east, south, or west. Each set of directions presents a differt route, but each ends up at your house.

    Now consider that you publish a news story to your website, and your website allows your visitors different paths to get to news stories. One path may be to navigate to a menu choice “News” and click the link to your story. Another might be to click a link from a section titled “Latest News” on your home page. A third might be that your visitor navigated to some other page and saw the link to your news story in a side bar of related content. This could result in three different URLs:

    No matter how visitors navigate to your news story, they will end up reading the same content, even if the URL and the appearance of the web page around the storyare different based on how they got there. Likewise, the different directions you offer your party guests will result in them all arriving at your home regardless of which route they took. The directions you provided your guests are like your web pages and your home address is like the canonical URL! There are different ways to get there, but only one home. Following through with the news story example, each of the pages above should have the same canonical URL. It might look like this:

    <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.yoursite.com/news/archives/story-title/” />

    Search engines crawl through links on your site just like humans only [very much] faster. That means that Google will find all three paths to your news story just as visitors will. Should it show all three results? No, instead when it sees the canonical URL – common to all three pages – Google presents that one. In doing so, Google avoids the appearance of duplicate content and your website visitors are not confused by multiple links to the same story. That’s why canonical URLs are important.

    Historical footnote

    The canonical link element was introduced in 2009 by consensus among the major search engines Google, Yahoo! and Bing. It was formally added as an HTML standard in 2012 and is now an expected feature of all modern content management systems.