Brain Waves Blog

When I saw the opportunity to lead a centralized social media effort in higher education, I jumped at the chance. Luckily, it was also at North Carolina State University—in one of America's fastest growing cities, Raleigh, NC.

2017 was the year for higher education to embrace influencer marketing. I know, because I googled "influencer marketing higher education" and the top three results for the year were about higher ed marketing trends. If you're feeling a little behind now that 2017 is on its way out, read Five 2017 Marketing Trends and What They Mean For Higher Education from Stephen App at eCity Interactive—he set the precedent for applying the mainstream influencer marketing trend to our industry.

Brand benchmarking is one way to strategically use social listening. As a modern brand manager, you need to understand the online conversations about your brand to gain competitive insights and develop an effective brand strategy. One benchmark metric you can use to evaluate online reputation is share of voice.

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.

Recently I found myself happy to be stuck in downtown traffic. It meant I had enough time to listen to Building a Modern Higher Ed Marketing Team in one sitting. This episode of Helix Education's Enrollment Growth University podcast featured an interview with Dr. Joseph Brennan, Vice President for Communications and Marketing at the University at Albany.

Today I get to introduce the higher education community to Campus Sonar, and I couldn't be more excited! This post details what inspired us, how we developed our service, and what you can expect from us.