training methods: how to train your staff to get the most out of your cms
TRANSCRIPT
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Training Methods: How to train your staff to get the most
out of your CMS (Vision Internet)
About Me
Susan WolakWeb Administrator
City of Longmont, Colorado
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@swolak
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End-User Training
Why do organized training?
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If they hate to use it (CMS),
they won’t use it!
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What We Hope The Editors Do
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50 % - Writing awesome content20 % - ADA, SEO, Broken Links, Analytics15 % - News & Events10 % - Videos & Photos (Galleries) 5 % - Remove Outdated Content
What a Typical Editor Does
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60 % - News & Events25 % - Videos & Photos (Galleries)10 % - Remove Outdated Content 5 % - Other
Importance of Training Staff
Obvious ▪ Training For Consistency ▪ Develop Specific Skills ▪ Review Policies / Procedures ▪ Establish Content Guidelines ▪ Review Style Guide ▪ Reduce Frustrations
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Importance of Training Staff
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Non-Obvious
▪ Discuss Usability ▪ Accessibility - ADA ▪ Promote Transparency ▪ Demystify The Web ▪ Empower Editors ▪ Promote Ease of CMS Tool ▪ Share other Resources available to them
CMS Knowledge
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Almost Never CMS Use Level Almost Always
These staff• Primary Job is to work on other
things besides updating the website• Rarely Login except when they are
told to publish something• Get frustrated because they do not
use the CMS enough to remember what to do
These staff• Spend most of their day using the
CMS or access it frequently in their week
• Perform the same tasks over and over with general proficiency
• Get frustrated with things that prevent them from doing their job efficiently
( Insert horror story here )
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12Image Credit: https://anothergenerictravelblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/11/saucy-sassy-cats-the-ocr-edition/
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In Person Training vs Self Paced Video Training
In Person Provides: ▪ Ability for trainee to ask questions ▪ Training is tailored to current site ▪ Great to meet new users face-to-face ▪ See in their faces whether they are
following along with your training ▪ Likely to find knowledge gaps quickly and
determine whether they may need more training
▪ During their hands-on exercises, you can help them if they don’t understand some concept
▪ Hands-on exercises reinforces their learning
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Self Pace Provides: ▪ Ability for trainee go at their own pace ▪ Not sure if they read or watch all of the
require training material ▪ You do not get to meet the users face-to-
face ▪ Can not see in their faces whether they are
following along ▪ You won’t know if they have knowledge
gaps until they call you ▪ Cannot easily ask you questions about the
material while they are going thru their exercises
▪ Likely to be forgotten within days
User Guide to your WCMS
Since no two Web Content Management Systems are the same, you will need to write
your own web user guide.
Unless . . .
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User Guide to your WCMS
You are using the Vision Internet CMS system.
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User Guide to your WCMS
▪ Can be read at their own pace ▪ Relevant to your specific website ▪ Written for their technical level ▪ Can provide links to other online resources and video
training ▪ Time consuming and costly to prepare initially ▪ Probably not going to answer all of their questions
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What should I include in the training?
▪ Your training should reflect the goals and policies of your organization
▪ How much history of the internet and WWW you want to share is up to you
▪ Background of your website(s) ▪ When was built ▪ How many users are using it? ▪ How many editors are there?
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What should I include in the training?
▪ Tour of your public internet website ▪ Showing unique areas of content ▪ Various online services (UB Pay System, Library Catalog, Public
Records Portal, Recreation Class Registration Site, etc.) ▪ Other related websites (Municipal Code online, OEM website, etc.) ▪ List of other components, form building tool, analytic software,
broken link checking software
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It’s not just about the website
Teach content editing too, not just how to add content to your website using your CMS
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It’s not just about the website
▪ Promoting your site ▪ SEO ▪ Social Media ▪ Google Analytics ▪ Writing persuasively
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It’s not just about the website
▪ Telling a story ▪ Making it accessible ▪ Marketing your message through other methods ▪ Understanding images, optimization, resolution ▪ Managing Video files
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Learning the CMS - Main Training
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What should I include in the training?
Designing Web Pages Overview ▪ Plain language for the Web ▪ Separate slideshow presentation ▪ Creating content for the web (handout)
▪ Tips for a successful website (handout) ▪ Jakob Nielsen’s Usability ▪ Ten good deeds in web design (handout)
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-good-deeds-in-web-design/ ▪ Useit.com
▪ Review the Website Checklist (handout) ▪ Quick list of the important steps to publishing your content
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What should I include in the training?
Web Policies ▪ Linking Policy ▪ Accessibility ▪ Style Design / Design Guide ▪ Domain Name Structure (*.gov) ▪ Specific policies of having a Federal TLD
▪ No advertising ▪ Splash page when visitors click links that leave your site
▪ Privacy Policy ▪ Copyright Policy ▪ Ensure they are not breaking it by using someone’s image illegally, etc.
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What should I include in the training?
ADA Policies What’s the number one disability?
▪ Text (font style, size, color) ▪ Colors (contrast) ▪ Images ▪ Navigation ▪ Links ▪ Screen Readers
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Marketing Your Message
▪ 50 Ways to deliver your message ▪ Print ▪ Online ▪ Email (eNotification) ▪ Channel 8 / 16 (Gov channel) ▪ Information Displays ▪ Digital Video System ▪ Social Media Sites
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Social Media Sites
▪ Facebook Pages ▪ Flickr Sites ▪ Google+ Pages ▪ Linkedin Page for the City ▪ Twitter ▪ Youtube Account ▪ Vimeo (for intranet videos) ▪ Instagram ▪ Google Business Listings, etc
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Social Media Sites
▪ Social Media Guidelines/Policies ▪ Software Tools ▪ Hootsuite ▪ SproutSocial ▪ Archive Social
Like buttons can be added to your content pages via CMS options
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Images, Optimization & Resolution
▪ File Formats ▪ Jpg (JPEG), GIF, PNG
▪ Optimize images BEFORE you upload them to the image library ▪ Certain dimensions for certain template locations like slide shows ▪ Refer to your user guide
▪ Add custom % settings to make larger images work for mobile devices ▪ Talk about Resolution ▪ Discuss Responsive Template
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Working with Video Files
▪ City’s website ▪ All videos are first published to our City’s Youtube account
▪ City’s Intranet ▪ All videos are first published to our City’s Vimeo account
▪ Social Media Sites ▪ Depends if the video is a short video, shot quickly to share an event ▪ If it is a longer produced video production with titles, music, then post it to Youtube ▪ Not everyone is on Facebook and we want to share it with our Youtube subscribers.
This also allows us to embed it on our city’s website at a later date.
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Archiving Content
▪ City’s Internet / Intranet sites ▪ Do this manually for each page ▪ Or save the HTML code to your computer ▪ PDF the page
▪ Social Media Website ▪ ArchiveSocial.com ▪ Open Records Requests ▪ Keeps a copy of deleted posts
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Analytics
▪ Google Analytics ▪ Share the logon information ▪ Show examples of quick reports that they can run
▪ Google Search Appliance ▪ Show the reports that are created for valid searches and empty results ▪ Explain the difference between Google.com and customers searching once on our
website
▪ Crazyegg.com ▪ Track a specific page for usability
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Broken Links
How to deal with and find broken links
Siteimprove.com Services ▪ Nightly scan ▪ Monthly reports automatically emailed to staff ▪ Scans for ▪ Broken Links ▪ Misspelled Words ▪ Potential information leakage like credit card numbers, that should not be found on
our website
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CMS Training
How we were trained by Vision Internet ▪ 4 hour session ▪ Rapid fire process of hitting agenda topics ▪ No room for questions ▪ No room for policy decisions (the why are we doing it this way….) ▪ Agenda type handout ▪ Lack of sufficient hands-on time playing with the system
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CMS Training
How To Improve Your Training
We recorded the Vision Internet training sessions
▪ CMS Editor Training ▪ CMS Admin (Super User) Training
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What does it include?
▪ Tour / Overview of Website ▪ How to Log In ▪ Dashboard overview ▪ Add/Edit/Approve/Delete Pages ▪ Options Area ▪ Save/Approve Page ▪ Image Library ▪ Document Central Library ▪ News Component ▪ Event Component
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What does it include?
▪ FAQ Component ▪ Service Directory Component ▪ Facilities Directory Component ▪ Photo Album ▪ Templates ▪ Content areas ▪ Slideshows ▪ Facebook Content
▪ Mobile Responsive ▪ How content changes when viewed on a mobile device
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Vision Internet User Guide – Your first website
▪ Overview ▪ What is Vision Internet CMS
▪ Building your first websites ▪ How to assemble your files ▪ Creating the home page ▪ Content area / HTML Editor ▪ Pasting content from other sources
▪ How to link to various items ▪ Adding Images ▪ How to publish your pages (3 step workflow)
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Vision Internet User Guide – Your first website
▪ Knowing how to create additional pages ▪ Building out the rest of the website ▪ Creating a second mini website, with less step-by-step guidelines ▪ Show and Tell
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Other Tips
▪ Have an extra knowledgeable person (or two) in the room to help you with students during the hands-on portion
▪ Try to provide the Website overview the day before the training so that they can have something to play with on the first day
▪ Students appreciated the hands-on ‘build your own website’ exercises
▪ If you don’t have an Intranet site where you can let trainees learn on, see if your vendor will allow you to use their development server
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Other Tips
▪ Handouts – Handouts – Handouts ▪ Provide your trainees all of the handouts that you are sharing with them. ▪ Include the slideshow with room for them to take notes ▪ Include the step-by-step user guide ▪ Add your content from the training to your intranet site
▪ Photoshop Elements Training ▪ Provide separate graphic training as necessary
▪ Social Media Training ▪ Provide overview for staff managing your social media accounts
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Questions & Answers
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