Brain Waves Blog

“Geez! I heard you, Mom!”

“Yes, but were you actually listening?”

Ah, this is a conversation some of us may have had with our parents (or kids!). And it’s true. There’s a nuance between “hearing” and “listening.” In communication classes, you may have discussed these differences.

ROI. Everyone likes to ask for it, yet few report it. That’s because it’s hard to quantify both sides of the Return on Investment equation in higher education. The investment should be easy enough: staff time, software, marketing expenses, supplies and materials, vendors/consultants are the most common components of an investment. The return poses more difficulty, as it can take years to materialize (e.g., a major gift, a life-long donor, or an enrolled and retained student). But Campus Sonar and EverTrue are up to the challenge. Let’s talk about the ROI of social listening.

Even if you haven't seen the musical "Hamilton," its songs and memes are hard to escape.

You've likely seen the one in which Alexander Hamilton's political rival Aaron Burr tells him to "Talk less, smile more." Though not a motto I tend to live my life by IRL, it's the first thing that comes to mind when considering the importance of social listening for strategic marketing and communication.

Whether your executive leadership is socially savvy or not yet up to speed on "the Twitter," it can be challenging to explain the concept of social listening. Some of the challenge can be chalked up to the presence of social in the term. It's not surprising that their mind may immediately jump to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat and the efforts they've heard about chasing followers and engagement rates. In many cases, these social media efforts haven’t been tied to strategic priorities or value to the organization. That's a problem for another article, but the challenge remains: how do you talk to executives about social listening?

Sometimes when people hear social listening, they think that online analysis is limited to social sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. Luckily—for both analysts like myself and for our clients—that’s not the case! As many colleges and universities earn reviews from prospective and current students, alumni, and parents on sites like College Confidential and Cappex, it’s important to understand the picture these reviews paint of higher education institutions. Campus Sonar uses social listening to gather reviews from these sites and analyze both positive and negative comments. We capture the thoughts about a higher education institution from across the internet, which could include: the typical student, why others recommend (or don’t recommend) it, opinions on academic programs and resources, or other trending topics from the cost of tuition to the food in the cafeteria.

Quality data and insights are valuable to higher education marketers. In Are You a Modern Marketer? we maintain that these insights help higher education professionals create data-informed strategies to drive recruitment, growth, and enrollment. But how do higher education professionals find data and leverage the insights accordingly?