The Challenge:
The University of Alberta is a public research university with an enrollment of 40,000-plus. Like many universities, communications at U of A is highly decentralized, with each college directing its own comms, mostly in the form of press releases about its research, as well as a small university-wide comms team. Ragan Consulting was asked to help the school develop a “brand journalism” program that would improve the skills of the writers and create an external platform to support the school’s research work.
The Work:
RCG began its work with a series of workshops and training sessions for the communicators throughout the university. At the same time, we began planning and execution of the external comms platform. We also gave a series of presentations about the site to college communicators, to showcase the benefits of brand journalism and their role in it. Finally, we worked with the central staff to create a newsroom process that would handle the larger workflow.
The Results:
The result was the launch of Folio, whose mission is to “share U of A expertise through a credible, relevant news source that informs, stimulates thoughtful discussion and challenges opinion.” Over the course of one academic year, page views grew from 292,000 to 423,000, an increase of 44.5 percent.