Ektron Increases Page Views 38% for Top Local Sports Site

NASHUA, N.H. and TULSA, Okla., Sept. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Ektron Inc. announced today that OKBlitz.com, the leading local sports site in Oklahoma, is recognizing productivity gains, cost reductions and new revenue generation with the use of the Ektron Social Software Suite.  OKBlitz.com provides comprehensive coverage of Oklahoma sports including news about the NBA team, OKC Thunder, as well as stories on local college and high school basketball, football and baseball teams.  Since Ektron's Social Software Suite was put into play, comparative analysis revealed a 38% increase in page views during the high school football season.

"Local sports are as competitive in some states as national sports, so we built a powerful site to support this interest in Oklahoma," said Tim Demers, director of web development for Griffin New Media.  "We needed a sophisticated and established content management system that content editors located around the state could contribute to.  At the same time we wanted to have as much of the community layer already built in as possible coupled with a cohesive environment with which we could administrate and develop in ourselves.  Ektron met these requirements and more."

The OKBlitz.com media group now numbers over 30 anchors, reporters, producers, photographers and editors, all providing the site with daily updates of local sports content. OKBlitz.com measures and recognizes the value of the Ektron platform in three ways 1) through productivity gains, 2) in cost reductions, and 3) by new revenue generation, for example:

• Productivity increases because editors and content providers can work productively with Ektron without knowing what's going on in the underlying development environment.  Content creators can take ownership of updating the site with their content while the development team simultaneously can work in the background to implement new site features.
• Development costs are reduced with the community elements Ektron provides as part of the installation package.  Other content management systems OKBlitz.com evaluated would have increase costs and development time, forcing OKBlitz.com to integrate third party tools into the site for blogs, forums, etc.  Ektron also was able to preserve OKBlitz.com's Search function instead of using third-party social community add-ons.
• To generate new revenue, OKBlitz is using the Ektron Smart Forms feature.  "Smart Forms" essentially standardize the way that content is entered – information, attributes, and descriptive text goes into the database as structured XML data, making it simple to repurpose this content wherever and whenever needed.  Ektron Smart Forms give OKBlitz.com the capability to sell advertising down to a specific school or team.  For example, a local hardware store might be sponsoring a baseball team—they can buy banner advertising wherever news or discussion of that team appears, extending the store's sponsorship to the internet.  

"The Ektron Social Software Suite allows companies to engage customers, prospects and employees through communities and collaboration," Bill Rogers, founder and CEO of Ektron.  "Since OKBlitz.com launched, the site continues to deliver on their business-critical demands while consistently growing site traffic."

Ektron Social Software highlights include:

• Customer communities - external communities increase customer engagement and foster authentic conversations.
• Enterprise 2.0 collaboration – social tools inside the enterprise improve productivity and business results.
• Social CRM – social tools change the way companies sell, market and support.
• Connections to social conversations from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other networks to communities.

Additional information about the benefits of Ektron's Social Software Suite:

http://www.ektron.com/social_software/

http://www.ektron.com/case-study/OKBlitz/

About OKBlitz.com

In the late summer of 2009, Griffin Communications consolidated the resources of sports departments at KWTV in Oklahoma City and KOTV in Tulsa and formed one centralized statewide sports division: OKBlitz.com. With additional staff, the team now numbers 25 anchors, reporters, producers, photographers and editors who work to serve the sports-crazed state of Oklahoma. The division provides daily sportscasts and other local sports programs on Griffin's television stations, News9 in Oklahoma City and Newson6 in Tulsa, and maintains the statewide website focusing on local sports content.

About Ektron

Ektron Inc. has innovated web technology since 1998. By integrating web content management (WCM), marketing optimization and social software, Ektron's software and solutions improve operational efficiency, drive revenue growth and build customer loyalty. Ektron empowers marketers to create, publish and optimize web content that engages, converts and retains customers. Developers benefit from Ektron's extensibility and commitment to the Microsoft .NET framework. Headquartered in Nashua, New Hampshire, with offices in Australia, Canada, Singapore and the United Kingdom, Ektron has more than 8,000 customers worldwide including Carnegie Hall, Diageo, Home Depot, International Chamber of Commerce, Kodak, Microsoft, NASDAQ, NHS, Saint-Gobain, The Law Society, and the University of Notre Dame. For more information, please visit www.ektron.com.

Ektron, the Ektron logo and eIntranet, are trademarks of Ektron Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Ektron Inc.

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