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.

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.

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.

Community Colleges' Time to Shine

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 April 27–May 3. In this analysis of volume, topics, and sentiment, we highlight conversation about community colleges, Zoom University, and President Trump.

I’ve never met a marketer who would tell you their department is fully funded and adequately staffed. Marketing is just one of those wishy-washy, nebulous concepts that can be extremely difficult to grasp unless you’re involved in the day-to-day work these professionals tackle. In higher education in particular, it’s easy for marketers and communicators to feel slighted, like our work is often overlooked and first on the chopping block when the time comes for difficult budgetary decisions. It’s common to celebrate admissions and development staff during times of high revenue—but institutions tend to forget about the communications pros who plan, create, and deliver key messages for those offices. And that’s a mistake.