Brain Waves Blog

A key outcome of social listening is the ability to identify real-time opportunities to engage with your audience groups when they’re talking to your campus or about your campus.

If we asked you to define your brand right now, could you? Would your response be based on your gut or tangible evidence? If you can't, did you just panic a little bit? Don't worry; you're certainly not alone.

There’s a new kind of crisis on campus—the social media crisis. You know the one, the email interaction that gets posted to reddit, the tweet-gone-awry from an official account, or the local news story that catches the eye of someone influential online. Before you know it, a snafu that might have slipped under the radar in the past has sparked a national conversation, and there are literally thousands of people talking about the campus every day.

With March Madness upon us, you might notice a higher prevalence of basketball mentions in your school’s online conversation, or just online in general. While athletics can bring helpful attention and money to your school, for staff members interested in other areas of the conversation, the focus on athletics can overshadow the academic conversation and targeted brand messages. Separating the athletics conversation from the rest of the conversation is possible and can be helpful in strengthening non-athletic conversations.

At Campus Sonar, influencers are an important part of the social listening conversation because they create a connection between audience and content. More and more, people are turning to social media to help make decisions. In fact, a recent Edelman study found that 53% of people view "a person like yourself" as a credible technical or academic expert.