Vanderbilt University's News and Communications office is responsible for managing the university's reputation through various public relations efforts including media relations, social media, publications and more. Their goals are to strengthen perception of Vanderbilt's research, promote the brand, and elevate its national and international profile. They utilize multiple platforms and tailor their messaging, voice and stories for different audiences in order to share research stories and news about the university through various online and social media channels.

1. Telling multimedia research
stories
Vanderbilt University News and Communications
May 20, 2014

2. Public Affairs at Vanderbilt
• Unified across university and medical center
• Comprehensive, in-house public affairs firm
• Responsible for reputation management
locally, nationally and globally

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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)

6. The changing role of the homepage
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7. From meals to snacks
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8. Vanderbilt News Online
• Vanderbilt Homepage
• RSS
• Engineering website
• University news
website
• Research news
website
• MyVU website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube

9. One Story, Many
Platforms
• Homepage
• News website
• Employee website
• Research website
• E-newsletters
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Magazines

10. 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

11. Anatomy of an
Interactive Release
• Short headline
• Original photography
• Infographics
• Illustrations
• Easy sharing
• Tagged by topic
• Embedded video
• Links throughout
• Comments
• Contact information!

12. 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

13. • 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

14. 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

15. Vanderbilt Video
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16. Video Production
• Research Videos
(VNR’s &
Soundbites)
• News
Releases/Videos
• Regular Newscast
• VUStar 24/7 Studio
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17. Example: Robot helps train children
with autism
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18. 18

19. Preparing the Researcher
• Media training
• Video taping
• Pitch
• Coordinate interviews
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20. Examples
Are gifted children getting lost in the
shuffle?
Math being taught to
kindergarteners is old news
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21. Contact Us
• www.vanderbilt.edu
• news.vanderbilt.edu
• facebook.com/vanderbilt
• @vanderbiltu
• 615-322-NEWS
• news@vanderbilt.edu