PR Newswire and Ektron Strike Up One-of-a-Kind Strategic Alliance

NASHUA, N.H., Oct. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Ektron, empowering organizations to fully realize their website's marketing and revenue-generating potential, and PR Newswire, the global leader of innovative marketing and communications solutions, today announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership to integrate press release publishing and social media monitoring into the Ektron platform, enabling customers with a more seamless news distribution experience.

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PR Newswire Sync, an add-on module to the Ektron Web Content Management solution, allows communications professionals to simultaneously publish their PR Newswire distributed press releases on their Ektron-powered website. Karen Meyer, vice president of strategic channels, PR Newswire, describes PR Newswire Sync's value proposition as "eliminating the potential for manually introduced errors, while also lightening the burden of those tasked with managing content on a corporate website."

The PR Newswire Sync application can be added to any Ektron-powered website and continually monitors an organization's PR Newswire account.  As news releases are published through PR Newswire, PR Newswire Sync automatically takes in the content feed and publishes the content with all links and formatting intact.  URL aliasing based on the release title and keyword metadata is added for search engine optimization.  PR Newswire Sync will also add a condensed version of the release to a media summary page on the organization's homepage.

The PR Newswire Listening Dashboard, a social media monitoring application, integrates with the Ektron platform and enables users to monitor conversations about their brand or company on multiple channels -- online and social -- by utilizing keywords and search strings to gather comprehensive reports.  Ektron customers can better determine campaign success and adjust communications strategies based on the findings from the PR Newswire Listening Dashboard.

"PR Newswire's Listening Dashboard is a powerful social media monitoring and analysis tool," said Larry Hawes, principal, Dow Brook Advisory Services. "Companies that integrate the Listening Dashboard into their Ektron environment can monitor and respond to what is being expressed about their products and services, and respond by creating and publishing relevant content. This solution should help increase customer satisfaction and revenue, as well as spur innovation, by closing the loop between customer awareness and response."

"We're extremely pleased to partner with the leader in global communication services, PR Newswire," said Bill Rogers, CEO and founder of Ektron.  "Like Ektron, PR Newswire is continually adding value to their customer services through new technology.  Ektron's new PR Newswire Sync module will help to ensure that the press release process will work more smoothly for Ektron customers, while the Listening Dashboard adds a level of intelligence critical to a thorough communications plan."

For more information on the PR Newswire Listening Dashboard and PR Newswire Sync and to receive a free information packet including Forrester Research's report, "Earned Media: The Intersection of Interactive Marketing and PR" please visit Ektron's "Monitor the Buzz" page at http://www.ektron.com/Monitor_the_Buzz/.

About Ektron 

Ektron simplifies the creation, management and delivery of multi-channel customer experiences for global organizations that are looking to engage with customers online.  Ektron speeds time-to-web, drives business outcomes, and builds customer loyalty through software that powers corporate websites, intranet portals, and social communities.  Ektron helps its customers deliver compelling experiences to their audiences through all digital channels -- including websites, mobile devices and social networks -- by using content to engage consumers, drive business outcomes and further revenue growth. Headquartered in Nashua, New Hampshire, with offices in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, Ektron has thousands of worldwide customers including:  Kodak, Microsoft, NASDAQ and National Health Services UK. For more information, please visit www.ektron.com, www.ektron.co.uk or www.ektron.com.au. 

About PR Newswire

PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry 57 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

SOURCE Ektron