Brain Waves Blog

Influencers are an important part of the social listening conversation. They create a connection between audience and content, providing experiences their audience can relate to. As more and more people turn to social media to connect with others, share experiences, and search for help in making decisions, influencers have an enormous impact. In fact, a 2021 Edelman study found that 53 percent of people trust what influencers say about brands more than what the brands themselves say. 

By now you’ve probably heard about TikTok, the short-form video app with more than a billion downloads worldwide and over 500 million active users. Launched in China in 2016, it entered the U.K. and U.S. markets in 2018. Currently it supports 15 languages and users in at least 75 countries. According to Google Trends, interest in TikTok as a search term peaked this summer in both the United States and the U.K., and worldwide in April 2019.

What is the goal of your content marketing? Whether you’re new to the content marketing game or a seasoned veteran, you probably answered this question by referencing themes such as attracting more qualified leads at a lower cost, as well as success metrics like organic web traffic, keyword rankings, cost-per-acquisition, time on page, etc.

At the University of Central Florida (UCF) we learned through our standard social listening on Instagram that our students wanted campus-specific GIPHY stickers. The large number of direct messages and replies asking us to create GIPHY stickers led us to dedicate time and resources to our rather bland and useless GIPHY channel. While we technically had an account, we officially transitioned it to a brand channel. A few short months later, we released our first GIPHY sticker pack—of course flaunting UCF’s black and gold brand. And in just over nine months, our GIPHY channel grew from a whopping 104 views to more than 104 million views as of July 2019. That’s an average of 11.5 million views a month!

When I began in higher education as an academic advisor, I interacted with undergraduate students daily. From each conversation, I gleaned insights into needs, barriers, and successes students experienced at my institution. As I moved into university administration, that student-centered perspective greatly informed my work on retention and graduation initiatives. Heading into my fifth year in administration with little direct student interaction, my sense of the current student experience feels a little out of date. I realized this challenge was likely not unique to me and set out to learn what’s worked for seasoned university administrators to remain connected to the current student experience at their institutions. Here’s what I learned.

Regardless of having the word social in the name, social listening is not something you do just to get better at social media. Let’s repeat that—social listening is not just about social media! Social listening is an investment in strategic intelligence (across various channels), that gets you closer to what is being said to and about your institution with implications across almost every area of campus. Listening to your online conversation builds trust, which is arguably the most valuable commodity today.