Brain Waves Blog

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr… the list goes on. And for some schools, it goes on, and on, and on: at many schools, dedicated fans, student groups, professors, and departments decide to make social media accounts that are unofficially affiliated with the school. They may use your school name or logo, but the content they post may not have to follow the same guidelines and brand messaging that the official campus social media accounts do.

Sometimes when people hear social listening, they think that online analysis is limited to social sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. Luckily—for both analysts like myself and for our clients—that’s not the case! As many colleges and universities earn reviews from prospective and current students, alumni, and parents on sites like College Confidential and Cappex, it’s important to understand the picture these reviews paint of higher education institutions. Campus Sonar uses social listening to gather reviews from these sites and analyze both positive and negative comments. We capture the thoughts about a higher education institution from across the internet, which could include: the typical student, why others recommend (or don’t recommend) it, opinions on academic programs and resources, or other trending topics from the cost of tuition to the food in the cafeteria.

Quality data and insights are valuable to higher education marketers. In Are You a Modern Marketer? we maintain that these insights help higher education professionals create data-informed strategies to drive recruitment, growth, and enrollment. But how do higher education professionals find data and leverage the insights accordingly?