Telling multimedia research stories

Vanderbilt University News and CommunicationsMay 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

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

Media landscape

• 50 percent of public now cites Internet as main source of national and international news. 71 percent of 18-29 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 2010

• 50 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)

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The changing role of the homepage

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From meals to snacks

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 News @ 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!

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

• Stories: “Why Vanderbilt,” top prioritiesPlatform: HomepageAudience: Potential students, internalVoice: Relatively formal, more marketing driven

• Stories: The “heart” of the institutionPlatform: Facebook Audience: Alumni, parents, internal, prospective studentsVoice: Friendly, lighthearted, responsive

• Stories: Breaking news, customer service, attaboysPlatform: TwitterAudience: Media, alumni, current students, athletics, subject matter enthusiastsVoice: Pithy, direct, cheerful

Strategy = Story + Platform + Audience+ Voice

Tools we use

• OmniUpdate for content management• WordPress for news content management and HTML email

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 email distribution• Feedburner to generate branded daily email news releases from RSS

feed

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Vanderbilt Video

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Video Production

• Research Videos (VNR’s & Soundbites)

• News Releases/Videos

• Regular Newscast• VUStar 24/7 Studio

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Example: Robot helps train children with autism

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Preparing the Researcher

• Media training• Video taping• Pitch• Coordinate interviews

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Examples

Are gifted children getting lost in the shuffle?

Math being taught to kindergarteners is old news

Contact Us

• www.vanderbilt.edu• news.vanderbilt.edu• facebook.com/vanderbilt• @vanderbiltu• 615-322-NEWS• news@vanderbilt.edu