To Campus Sonar and our clients, data is life. Campus Sonar analysts eat, sleep, and breathe data because it’s the cornerstone of the work we do—the actionable insights our strategist suggests are grounded in tidbits of information that analysts ferret out of the most obscure areas of the interwebz.
Some things are meant to be left alone—unchanged and unchallenged. Social listening is definitely not one of those things.
Nerdiness is part of Campus Sonar culture. So is innovation.
What do you think of when you hear “artificial intelligence” or AI?
Social listening is changing the way economists talk about sexism and gender bias in the profession, illustrating how insights from online conversations can have massive offline impacts. Similarly, understanding conversations from audiences that your institution serves (e.g., professionals working in the field you’re preparing students for, alumni, or prospective students) can transform your marketing, program development, recruitment, or fundraising strategy.
The 2019 Online Conversation Benchmarks for Higher Education: A Campus Sonar Social Listening Study opens with “[t]he internet is real life,” and continues with a discussion of how institutions of higher education can use the internet to connect with their communities. It goes on to say, “...the reality is that their online presence is a combination of what they say about themselves and what others say about them.” As soon as I read that, I realized the importance of this study. The combination of what institutions say about themselves and what their community says, if we remove the online part, is also known as educational or campus ethos, which is the story, narrative, or mission institutions build around themselves but don't directly control.