Brain Waves Blog

Social listening may seem simple, especially if you’re getting a pitch from a software company. Just enter your search terms, and ta-da—social data. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Each software product collects data differently, and the data that’s returned may come with nuances that aren’t obvious to the casual user. Since social listening is all that we do, I’m sharing what we’ve learned working with millions of social mentions from about over a hundred institutions. Hopefully it will help you make an informed decision about how to approach social listening for your campus.

A savvy analyst can draw conclusions even when the data they’re presented with is limited in scope or volume. While these conclusions come with limitation disclaimers, they still offer a valuable point of consideration when you’re developing your campus strategy and identifying which problems are most in need of solutions. Research Manager Amber Sandall and Client Success Manager Beth Miller share what our analysts look for in social data when the answer to their research question isn’t always obvious at first glance as well as some specific ways that social data can inform campus decision making.

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.

When I founded Campus Sonar, I wrote a blog post about the need for data-informed marketing in higher education. It’s been almost two years now and the industry has made progress, but I feel like we still have a ways to go. Recently, I contributed to a blog series for Adapt about data-driven marketing and current trends—and I realized I had a lot more to say (most of you won’t be surprised about that). So here’s part two of my thoughts on data-driven marketing, marketing trends, and the impact on higher ed.