Telling multimedia research stories Vanderbilt University News and Communications May 20, 2014
Public Affairs at Vanderbilt Unified across university and medical center Comprehensive, in-house public affairs firm Responsible for reputation management locally, nationally and globally
Overview News and Communications produces and manages: – Media relations, media training, media tracking – Video – Web communications – Social media – Publications – Communication planning – Internal communications – Issues management Partners closely with school and college communicators, Development and Alumni Relations, Undergraduate Admissions, Human Relations and other campus constituents
Media landscape 50 percent of public now cites Internet as main source of national and international news. 71 percent of year olds cite Internet as main source of news Social media is now primary source of news for 19 percent of Americans, double what it was in percent of Americans own a smart phone or tablet, of those who do, 66 percent get their news on these devices Pew Research Center for People and the Press (July 2013)
Overall Content and News Goals Strengthen public perception of Vanderbilt’s research enterprise Promote and protect the Vanderbilt brand Elevate national and international profile Provide exposure and promotion for faculty Vanderbilt community engagement and pride
Mining Our Experts Monitor daily news for opportunities Promote our experts online Prepare tipsheets in response to breaking news and anticipated events Re-use existing content to take advantage of the news of the day
Vanderbilt News Online Vanderbilt Homepage RSS Engineering website University news website Research news website MyVU website Facebook Twitter YouTube
One Story, Many Platforms Homepage News website Employee website Research website E-newsletters Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Magazines
Research Vanderbilt Multidisciplinary, multimedia website promoting Vanderbilt research 667,752 unique visitors over past 12 months Represents ~40 percent of all traffic to Vanderbilt news-oriented content
Anatomy of an Interactive Release Short headline Original photography Infographics Illustrations Easy sharing Tagged by topic Embedded video Links throughout Comments Contact information!
Stories: “Why Vanderbilt,” top priorities Platform: Homepage Audience: Potential students, internal Voice: Relatively formal, more marketing driven Stories: The “heart” of the institution Platform: Facebook Audience: Alumni, parents, internal, prospective students Voice: Friendly, lighthearted, responsive Stories: Breaking news, customer service, attaboys Platform: Twitter Audience: Media, alumni, current students, athletics, subject matter enthusiasts Voice: Pithy, direct, cheerful Strategy = Story + Platform + Audience+ Voice
Tools we use OmniUpdate for content management WordPress for news content management and HTML generation HootSuite for Twitter and Facebook monitoring and Twitter posting Sysomos for social media conversation monitoring Flickr for photo galleries and photo sharing Disqus to manage WordPress comments Storify to “curate” content around events ExactTarget for distribution Feedburner to generate branded daily news releases from RSS feed
Vanderbilt Video 13
Video Production Research Videos (VNR’s & Soundbites) News Releases/Videos Regular Newscast VUStar 24/7 Studio 14
Example: Robot helps train children with autism 15
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Preparing the Researcher Media training Video taping Pitch Coordinate interviews 17
Examples Are gifted children getting lost in the shuffle? Math being taught to kindergarteners is old news 18
Contact Us news.vanderbilt.edu NEWS