Late in February, with the college basketball season hitting its home stretch, the sport’s biggest rivalry returned to the biggest stage, with the eighth-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels visiting the top-ranked Duke Blue Devils.
“Our campus is small; there’s no way there’s enough conversation about us to justify investing time or money in it.”
“We don’t do much on social media, so there’s no use in thinking about social listening.”
These are common statements I hear at conferences, and it’s so hard for me to not immediately jump on my soapbox and start preaching. I know in my gut that most campuses can gain valuable strategic insights from understanding their online conversation, and that conversation is happening with or without an investment in social media from the campus.
An institution’s online conversation volume is an indication of how many people are talking about it. Once you know the conversation volume for your institution, you can segment it to see who is talking about you, what they’re talking about, and where they’re talking. All of this helps you better understand the conversation about your institutional brand and create a strategy that resonates with your audiences.
Happy Valentine's Day! Last year our Valentine's gift to you was The Higher Ed Social Listening Handbook. Because we appreciate you so much, we're gifting you again this year—introducing our newest research report, 2019 Online Conversation Benchmarks for Higher Education: A Social Listening Study.