Brain Waves Blog

Strengthening your brand is one of the most effective ways to keep your campus resilient and prepared for what’s next. Measuring brand equity enables you to understand and grow brand strength over time. Brand identity is one of the five aspects of brand equity. It’s the face of your brand or the scope of your online presence and incorporates all five elements to reveal how you show up online.  

Strengthening your brand is one of the most effective ways to keep your campus resilient and prepared for what’s next. Brand equity—the value your brand holds in the minds of your audiences—is how you understand and grow that strength over time. When you evaluate brand equity using social intelligence, you can track shifts in brand awareness and identify the key factors that influence it.  

In 2024, social media became the world's largest marketing channel, as measured by marketing spend. Why? It’s the biggest opportunity to build trust in a brand.

Recently, I spoke to student success professionals about the student experience data available through social intelligence. As always, I spent some time talking about Reddit, and the role it plays—particularly for younger people—in experience sharing, information gathering, and ultimately decision making. After the session I learned that some attendees were uncomfortable with real-life examples shared that mentioned their college.

You’re constantly balancing urgent requests and strategy, handling increased expectations, and needing actionable data to support your team’s priorities. All of these challenges feed into your need for a brand strategy that’s built on a solid foundation. Campus Sonar’s brand equity framework is that foundation. The purpose-built model supports your understanding of the value your brand has in the mind of your audience.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is more than just a buzzword, it’s become woven into the fabric of everyday life. Picture a student searching where to go to college who is met with an AI summary at the top of the search results, or a parent typing prompts into a university chatbot to figure out when Move-In Day occurs, or a professor leveraging generative AI in the classroom to tailor feedback to individual learning styles. In all of these scenarios, you can use AI to center the needs and questions of individuals in your marketing strategy.