Brain Waves Blog

In the world of enrollment marketing, there tends to be one dominant query; how do we get X number of students to enroll at Y campus by Z date? Clearly articulated enrollment goals are essential as individuals transition from vaguely interested to “enrolled.” However, many campuses are so highly focused on yield strategies and fanfare in the final stretch of decision-making that they often overlook the more subtle opportunities around earlier milestones in the enrollment funnel. 

Sonarian capabilities differ based on historical and ongoing social listening. That doesn’t necessarily make one approach better than the other. 

At Campus Sonar, we take perhaps too much pride in telling the world that we’re NOT a software company. It is within social media management software, however, where most of our clients accomplish their listening prior to living the #SonarianLife. For some, incorporating Campus Sonar into an existing tech stack feels redundant. For others, transitioning away from these products to Campus Sonar can feel daunting. So we sat down with three campus pros who made the switch from listening with social media management software to Campus Sonar. We asked them about their tech stack prior to Campus Sonar, making the move from software to Sonarians, and what life has looked like since the move.

Community colleges in the United States have long been underfunded and understaffed. That hasn’t stopped them from serving as a vital resource to their local communities while educating a student body more diverse than many four-year campuses can claim. 

The average number of institutions a student applies to has been steadily increasing, and your prospective students evaluate your campus against many others. To help your institution stand out, one of the best uses of time and resources is building competitive intelligence—the process of gathering and analyzing information about peer institutions to inform your own positioning. 

Crises happen. The ripples are felt in-person and online. While talking to every person affected would be helpful, it is not realistic. Social listening, however, gives campuses instant access to online conversations about a particular crisis as they emerge on social sites, in forums, on blogs, in the news, and on other websites. Furthermore, social listening allows for unique views into trends within those conversations as the crisis unfolds in real time. All in all, social listening puts campuses in a better position to plan or adjust crisis communication strategies in the moment based on emerging insights. But this is only effective with human analysts teaming up with technology to write the perfect query and easily visualize the data. 

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