With search engines and social media firmly in place as the dominant channels through which we all find news and information online, The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has retooled its online newsroom and empowered more than 45 campus public information officers to search engine optimize and distribute their news content with greater frequency directly to the public through an online newsroom that looks more like a multimedia news portal than a press release archive.
UCLA Newsroom
Issue: Previously, UCLA’s news site was made up primarily of text news releases that had to be uploaded manually by the university’s IT group. Updates were slow and cumbersome and the site itself lacked visual appeal and features critical in an Online Newsroom today. The University also needed to streamline their workflow in order to effectively manage submissions by more than 45 campus public information officers.
Solution: With the iPR Software web-based, online PR software as a service, campus public information officers log in, upload and create a social media press release that is optimized for search engines (SEO), and submit their news and press releases to UCLA’s Office of Media Relations for approval and online publication to the UCLA Newsroom site autonomously without the IT group’s involvement. UCLA’s communication department is now able to update their newsroom website with new multimedia content on a continuous basis throughout the day.
“We’re driving traffic to our website with news and press releases,” said Lawrence Lokman, assistant vice chancellor, communications at UCLA. “Since we launched the iPR Software powered online newsroom (in October of 2007), nearly a million unique visitors each year come to ucla.edu through our newsroom, and the majority of that traffic comes directly from search engines.”
Benefits: iPR Software’s online content management software makes it easy for public information, public relations, media relations, corporate communications, marketing and other nontechnical personnel to SEO and publish multimedia, news and information to the web without relying on a webmaster or skilled IT personnel. Armed with a broadband internet connection and web browser, the iPR Software point and click interface makes it possible for organizational communications professionals to:
- Frequently publish text, documents, images, audio and video content
- Search engine optimize text, images, audio and video
- Manage multiple blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds
- Execute and track opt-in email outreach efforts
- Track web usage statistics and transactional conversions
- Monitor electronic, print and online news and social media coverage
- Version control, online collaboration and sharing tools
