Brain Waves Blog

Over the last few years, social listening software has become increasingly popular for higher ed martech stacks. But something we hear often from our clients is that marketing teams struggle to get the full value from expensive software. Lack of time, training, and ability to pull readily usable data are common struggles. 

At Campus Sonar, we take perhaps too much pride in telling the world that we’re NOT a software company. It is within social media management software, however, where most of our clients accomplish their listening prior to living the #SonarianLife. For some, incorporating Campus Sonar into an existing tech stack feels redundant. For others, transitioning away from these products to Campus Sonar can feel daunting. So we sat down with three campus pros who made the switch from listening with social media management software to Campus Sonar. We asked them about their tech stack prior to Campus Sonar, making the move from software to Sonarians, and what life has looked like since the move.

Community colleges in the United States have long been underfunded and understaffed. That hasn’t stopped them from serving as a vital resource to their local communities while educating a student body more diverse than many four-year campuses can claim. 

In the first part of this series, I shared our planning and query writing process—how our teams come together to plan each client project and the research that our analysts do in the beginning stage of each project. It was a lot! Now that you made it through part one, you'll sail through part two. Let's go!

Gear up for some Campus Sonar behind-the-scenes! I’m covering how the Research team at Campus Sonar conducts social listening research, start to finish, to pull back the curtain on what we do from project kickoff to presentation of findings and insights to the client.

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.