Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Author: Atlantic BT

  • 5 Content Strategy Tactics for Higher Ed Sites

    Tips and Tech to Graduate Your Content to a Higher Level

    Your higher ed website is more than just text and images. Done right, your university site is a digital canvas that allows your users to find and enjoy the content and information they need. Done wrong, and your visitors will bounce from your school’s homepage immediately and just ask Google where the right content is hidden.

    Intro to Content Strategy is over. It’s time to advance your college website with user research, analytics, and technology that graduates your content to a higher plane:

    1. Study your higher ed audience(s).

    Great content strategy begins with user research. Google Surveys and Survey Monkey make it easy to gather feedback from the kinds of students and visitors you want. It’s also smart to run stakeholder interviews in and outside your university or school to learn more about potential improvements to your design and content.

    2. Higher ed users think, act, or learn differently, so give them options.

    Some skip the top-level navigation to click on images. Others lock onto your search function as soon as your homepage loads. You want to design an open content strategy so it’s easy for any higher ed user to find the right content no matter how they search for it.

    3. High-performers know the importance of testing their content.

    Even in an academic setting, nothing published online is meant to last forever. This makes it crucial to always measure the performance of your content so you know what to alter and improve. Even if you don’t run formal user testing, enable Google Analytics on your university sites to monitor how each page performs.

    4. Teach stakeholders to manage their own content—with governance.

    The more you empower each team in your college or organization to create, edit, and share their own content, the more you can think strategically about how to lead your organization’s outreach. This takes a flexible CMS with strong content governance and guidelines—for example, that’s why 7 of the top 10 universities in the world rely on Drupal.

    5. Design with search in mind.

    A huge portion of your users will arrive on your pages after Googling what they need. You want to make sure they find what they want by using accurate headings and subheadings based on a tested and approved taxonomy. Also, please don’t forget meta description text!

    Technology for Higher Ed Content

    At any stage in designing a higher ed site, there are a number of cloud-based tools available to make your strategy work easier. Content audit tools like Blaze can not only perform crawls of all your pages, but also make it simple for your entire team to share one view of any domain. This builds a powerful consensus on how to best optimize content across your site.

    And once you have the right content in place, you want to ensure it loads as quickly as possible. While you can’t control the bandwidth on your users’ Internet connections, setting up a good Content Delivery Network can cache your content and deliver better load times. We prefer Amazon Web Services CloudFront for our websites, but explore your options to find the right CDN for you.

    Finally, if you want stakeholders across your organization to contribute content, you need a platform that both facilitates publishing and enables flexible governance. GatherContent is our favorite example; this web application lets you rapidly produce new pages according to preferred templates, then define which users have editing and publishing privileges.

    If any of this inspires questions, our content strategists will be delighted to help you with advice. Just drop us a line and we’ll get right back to you.

  • Pumpkin Chunkin 2017

    Atlantic BT is proud to announce Pumpkin Chunkin’ 2017: To Chunk or Not to Chunk. Our medieval gourd launcher will sling countless pumpkins across ABT property to celebrate our favorite season of the year. We will also hold a carving contest to choose crowd favorites among our pumpkins, doling out awards like Scariest, Funniest, and of course—the Pumpking. With free food, beverages, and good times to be had, you don’t want to miss this night of orange gourds in flight.

  • Thirst for Knowledge Recap: Content Strategy for Large Organizations

    From running content audits to organizing a redirects plan, the latest Thirst for Knowledge showed all the complexity inside a strong Content Strategy. Led by former ABT Marketing Lead Tori Pratt and ABT Head of Project Management Daniel Hooks (filling in for Haven Hottel from Campbell University), this Thirst for Knowledge unpacked some of the most difficult stages of crafting content strategy for large organizations.

    Using Campbell University’s recent redesign as a working example, this presentation showed how to integrate content audits, content analysis, and content governance on a large-scale redesign with multiple organizational stakeholders. Here are the full slides and audio from the presentation:

    The event also included an in-house demo station from Blaze, the cloud-based content audit platform which powered our content strategy for Campbell University. Two lucky attendees from Saint Augustine University and Durham-based ArchiveSocial won a free three-month subscription to Blaze’s content audit service.

    As you plan content for your organization, we don’t want you to have to tackle this complex task on your own. If you have any questions about specific aspects of content strategy and governance, do not hesitate to contact us for help.

     

  • Security and Me: My Takeaways from Thirst for Knowledge

    In just the second quarter of 2017, there were at least 62 million detections of malware on IT systems across the world. This was just the introduction to ABT’s Thirst for Knowledge event last Thursday. Thanks to our Research Manager Randy Earl, I also learned that the first line of defense against these kinds of cyberattacks is teaching employees like me how to be smart about security.

    This was the first time my company has help this kind of informational lesson before one of our Thirsty Thursday networking events, and it was a big success. I got to speak with both new and old friends from outside my company, and there were lots of good points in the presentation and an engaging discussion from the crowd. Here are my main takeaways from the presentation:

    How to Make a Good Password

    Randy Earl referenced this xkcd comic at Thirst for Knowledge.
    Randy alluded to this xkcd cartoon on making stronger passwords.

    Judging by the questions and comments from the presentation, it’s pretty clear that attendees take password security seriously. However, some had gotten bad advice about how often to change passwords and how to design a good one.

    Thankfully, Randy provided some helpful guidelines on how to design passwords that a computer wouldn’t easily guess (and that guys with mediocre memories could actually remember!). Having long (12–15 characters) passwords that used a series of unrelated words were both difficult for a computer to guess while being simpler to recall later. Randy taught us that having this kind of longer password in place was more important than requiring employees to change their passwords every 60 days.

    Randy also spent some time explaining the need for password managers and how helpful they can be in a larger organization. At Atlantic BT, we use Pass as our main tool to generate strong passwords and store them in a safe location. Naturally, it’s important to use a strong password to ACCESS Pass, otherwise your credentials for this password manager could be stolen.

    Mobile Security Takes Some Effort

    When will there be a good password manager for mobile devices? Touch ID has served as a good security measure, but for those with lots of logins and/or multiple devices, an easy-to-use mobile password manager would be helpful. As of now, Randy described mobile password managers as “tedious,” implying that their usability needs improvement.

    In the meantime, it’s good to see password managers are trying to keeping up with mobile OS updates; LastPass announced AutoFill on the same day as Android announced their new Oreo OS. So it looks like we have the tools to secure our mobile devices (as long as we remember to lock our phones!) even if password managers are still working on usability.

    Do Individuals Need Offsite Backups?

    While Randy was explaining the importance of backing up critical data to guard against ransomware, one attendee made a big point of keeping data backed up OFFSITE in addition to offline. Randy agreed, since these offsite backups would protect a company if its office flooded, caught fire, or had some other environmental disaster.

    It might be easy for an individual to think their data is safe enough that they could get by without an offsite backup. I would disagree; offsite backups are as important for individuals as they are for large companies. We never know when disaster can hit us, so it’s vital for anyone with data they value (so, essentially everyone) to have an offsite and offline hard drive or thumb drive to back up important files. 

    That in mind, the point Randy made was clear: having a strong backup solution in place will save a business owner from a lot of anxiety—especially if they work in targeted industries like healthcare or finance.

    Next Thirst for Knowledge on September 21

    All in all, this Thirst for Knowledge event gave everyone a lot to think about and new practices to adopt in matters of security. I’m looking forward to the next Thirst for Knowledge event on September 21. Be sure to follow Atlantic BT via Twitter for updates on the subject and speaker for the next Thirst for Knowledge.

  • ABT Announces Thirst for Knowledge Series

    If you have a simple question, you can ask your smartphone and get 20 relevant answers. But what happens when your questions aren’t so simple? Sometimes you want more than a quick answer—you want knowledge, a nuanced, intelligent discussion of a complex topic with people you can trust. Ideally, over a good beer.

    Register for the next Thirst for Knowledge on Content Strategy for Large Organizations.

    This was the inspiration for Atlantic BT’s new teaching series: Thirst for Knowledge. Every month, Atlantic BT will host a casual seminar and discussion on essential topics and best practices for companies in the digital age. Each Thirst for Knowledge will include a short lightning talk from a local expert, followed by free food from our favorite food trucks and craft beer from our taps. As CMO Eileen Allen said:

    “One of my favorite things about Atlantic BT is how we understand the human side of using technology. If people don’t understand how to actually use the tech they have, even the best platform in the world won’t do them much good. I’m excited to see how our Thirst for Knowledge events can bring people together to freely share what we’ve learned. This is community-building at its finest.”

    The topic for our inaugural Thirst for Knowledge on August 24 is the human side of cybersecurity, entitled How to Secure Your Workforce without Ruining Their Lives. ABT’s Senior Business Strategist and Research Manager Randy Earl will lead a casual discussion of how to promote best practices in digital security without hurting the morale or agility of an organization. Earl emphasizes that this will be a laid-back lesson rather than a dry technical presentation:

    “We’ll cover topics like two-factor authentication made easy and promoting mobile device security, but I want this talk to be as fun and entertaining as possible. Expect lots of memes and XKCD comics. I want this event to give our clients and contacts a worthwhile and enjoyable reason to leave work a bit early on a Thursday.”

    Next Thirst for Knowledge – Sept 21

    The security talk begins at 4:30pm, and will be followed at 5pm by free drinks and games in the ABT Level One Lounge, in addition to free food from the Only Burger food truck. To register for the event, visit the Thirst for Knowledge page.

  • What Type of Clients Collaborate Best with ABT?

    A culture of collaboration is everything. Moreover, that applies to more than just different departments—when it comes to projects with our clients, it’s essential that these clients collaborate closely with us in developing their solutions.

    Over the past 19 years, we’ve found the following characteristics to be strong indicators of clients who will collaborate well with Atlantic BT to create highly successful projects and healthy partnerships. This is by no means a list of requirements to hire ABT, but your organization will work best with us if:

    You want to be an engaged part of the process.

    To collaborate, you must engage.
    To collaborate, you must engage.

    We are experts in digital solutions, but you are the experts in your business. That means we need to work closely with you to leverage your expertise for maximum effect.

    You understand and appreciate team efforts.

    You can't collaborate without trusting your team.
    You can’t collaborate without trusting your team.

    We find the collaboration of many minds across disciplines to be the most effective path. As a result, we make teamwork part of the process—from workshops in discovery all the way through to deployment.

    You appreciate an analytical, data-driven approach to developing strategy.

    We love data, and it powers our best projects.
    We love data, and it powers our best projects.

    We always want to know what your business reality is, rather than making an assumption. This can be challenging, as it sometimes forces a re-examination of existing practices and policies, therefore, the next point is important…

    You are open to change.

    If you're open to change, you are ready to collaborate.
    If you’re open to change, you are ready to collaborate.

    To be truly innovative, we have to challenge existing assumptions and practices. While change can be uncomfortable, it is better to drive data-driven change than passively react to market changes later.

    You have a continuous process improvement mindset.

    To collaborate best, you need to have a plan for continual improvement.
    To collaborate best, you need to have a plan for continual improvement.

    In today’s web environment and competitive marketplace, the only fixed truths are that change is constant and competition is fierce. A one-and-done approach will lead to a solution that could quickly become dated and ineffective. Instead, our most successful clients are constantly monitoring their key metrics, looking for opportunities, then leveraging new solutions for the opportunities they find. That done, the cycle repeats anew.

    Like what you hear? Let’s work together.

    When you watch our team in workshops, whiteboard sessions, and presentations, you can see all of the above in action. We are most excited by digging into understanding customer needs and providing innovative solutions. If you approach your project and your organization the same way, then we’re eager to get started on our partnership.

    To get a closer look at some of our recent work, take a look at our collaboration on the official NC.gov website and the site redesign and rebrand for Campbell University. In addition, you can also experience our culture in action by joining us at our next Thirsty Thursday party on August 24. It’s a great way to meet our people, and enjoy good food and drink while talking shop.