Brain Waves Blog

It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but the anger arose faster and more intensely than anticipated when I referred to prospective students as customers in a conversation about recruitment.

At Campus Sonar, our humans set us apart. Our experience researching and analyzing the nuances of online conversation means we understand how to measure the effectiveness of your content. We know how to analyze who sees your content and understand how that’s impacted by each platform. When you develop social media strategy and create corresponding campaigns, this is ultimately what you need to measure to show success, right? The effectiveness of your campaign. If it worked.

A few short months after beginning my MBA at Drexel University, I landed the role of social media strategist in Drexel’s Office of University Communications. With no professional marketing experience under my belt, I was suddenly responsible for being the digital voice of a prestigious institution with a combined social media audience of over 260,000 followers.

Community College Remains Top of Mind

Today’s Briefing analyzes publicly available online conversation in the U.S. and on Reddit and YouTube (which span beyond the U.S.) about the coronavirus and higher education from May 11–17. In this analysis of volume, topics, sentiment, and key audiences, we highlight conversation about community colleges (again!) and summarize trends from our ten weeks of Briefings.

If you’re reading along in my series, you’ve staffed your social media team and determined the equipment you need to keep it going. In my final post, I’ll cover the core components needed for a sustainable program. Given the ever-changing nature of social media, this category of resources is just as essential as the other two; prioritizing them is an exercise in futility. This category encompasses everything that continues to build on a strong foundation for a social media program so it grows and innovates over time.

Community College Convo Stays Viral

Today’s Briefing analyzes publicly available online conversation in the U.S. and on Reddit and YouTube (which span beyond the U.S.) about the coronavirus and higher education from May 4–10. In this analysis of volume, topics, sentiment, and key audiences, we highlight the impact of another viral tweet recommending community college, conversations relevant to recruitment and retention, how students (now alumni) and their friends and family talked about graduation, and the continuing conversation about online classes.