“ The Brookings digital strategy is supported greatly by the development of the mobile site, mobile applications, social media integration, and multilingual content. These applications would not be possible without Sitecore, which is the connective tissue for delivering all Brookings web content. „

- Mark Gregor, Velir

Challenge

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization based in Washington DC, which conducts high-quality, independent research and provides innovative, practical public policy recommendations.

Its website, brookings.edu has been on the Sitecore platform since 2007 when Velir teamed with Washington, DC based, Threespot, to build a new website for Brookings. Since then, Brookings has continuously engaged the team to enhance its website scope and functionality. The goals of the most recent Brookings web initiatives have been to broaden its reach across both digital and physical space. Brookings web content is now available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic, while users have a wide choice of access methods including native mobile applications, RSS, social media, and email.

Solution

Rather than add new systems to manage, Velir extended Sitecore to deliver mobile and cross-channel publishing to all of Brookings’ digital properties, leveraging the existing Sitecore content library.

Velir extended Sitecore in several notable ways: They  used a custom-built API on top of Sitecore to send the content to the mobile optimized sites and native applications for the iPhone/iPad, Blackberry, and Android. This allows users to access, via their phones, thousands of articles available on the main site. Velir also integrated social media into the Sitecore solution. Content authors simply check a box to publish out to Facebook and/or several different Brookings Twitter accounts. Twitter publishing also includes a custom URL shortener, brookin.gs, and the option to schedule the posting time of Tweets. All of these efforts further the Brookings brand and its reputation as a leader.

Result

The enhanced site is terrific for content creators and editors as it allows content to be created, edited, and stored in a single location, while published out to every digital channel. In most organizations each medium, be it email, mobile, or social, is managed separately, creating headaches in keeping its communications standardized. This solution solves the problem in an elegant and scalable way.

The mobile application has several integration points which Velir planned and executed: integration with the YouTube API to display videos using the standard video player; integration with the standard "share" function on Android; and integration with the  devices’  built in maps, phone and email functionality.

According to Mark Gregor, Velir, “The Brookings digital strategy is supported greatly by the development of the mobile site, mobile applications, social media integration, and multilingual content. These applications would not be possible without Sitecore, which is the connective tissue for delivering all Brookings web content. Users can now easily access Brookings research on the go, which is vital for policy makers and researchers in our nation's capital who are constantly on the move.”