UC Irvine, a campus of the University of California, has a student body of 27,000 and boasts leading researchers in science, medicine and law.

“Before utilizing Meltwater News, we had a half-time employee dedicated to combing various news-aggregating sites each day to find where and how UC Irvine was mentioned in the news. This was necessary in order to produce our daily ‘UCI in the News’ newsletter service to subscribers.

Our process was fairly complete as far as it went, but we did not find as many websites and blog mentions, which as mainstream media outlets decline, is becoming increasingly important in the coverage scheme. Also, it was expensive to dedicate a half-time salary and office to this task.

We used Meltwater to relieve the person who was gathering the same information and used that person in a more productive way. We also signed up for the newsfeed service, which gave us an added element for our Web site and streamlined our ‘UCI in the News’ process. We used to send out an e-mail featuring every single mention. Now we pick the top five stories of the day for the e-mail and send that with the link to the newsfeed if subscribers want to see more.

Meltwater is essential for our daily work. It is daily validation of the hard work and great research done at UC Irvine and of our efforts to promote that.”

Cathy Lawhon
Media Relations Director