How Social Listening Drives Communication and Enrollment Strategy

Editor's Notes

• #3: We have a trust problem in our country, around the world, and especially in higher education. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, which has been collecting data about trust around the world for over a decade, the most second most trustworthy person in this country is “a person like me.” This comes just behind an academic expert, who is most trustworthy – a position regained after being tied for first last year. CEOs – 37%Government Officials – 29% While 70 percent of people trust the education sector in general, the majority (58 percent) of Republican or Republican-leaning voters think higher education has a negative effect on our country. Trust is a valuable commodity. When we as individuals or organizations are trusted, we can be more efficient and productive.
• #11: How much conversation is there? Well, we’ve measured that.  We studied a year of online conversation from a representative sample of 65 higher education institutions in the United States. Much of our summary data doesn’t include athletics conversation, which accounted for 0–93 percent of online conversation about institutions in our sample (a summary of the athletics conversation can be found on page 14). Not all institutions in our sample had an athletic program and not all campus staff are interested in conversation about athletics. Removing athletics-related conversation from our initial benchmarks allows us to better represent conversation across all United States higher education institutions. The annual online conversation volume for the sample ranges from 21 mentions (a very small, private, nonprofit faith-based institution in the Southeast) to about 9 million mentions (a large, private, nonprofit doctoral institution in New England) from August 2017 to July 2018, with a median value of 3,509 mentions. Small schools average about 5,000 non-athletics conversations per year. Adding Athletics increases that conversation between 150%-200%, on average.
• #12: How many individuals and organizations contribute to the conversation? That varies a lot.
• #22: Private nonprofit institutions may not capture the same amount of non-athletic conversation as public institutions, but they almost always outperform public institutions in terms of non-athletic admissions conversations. With outliers removed, private nonprofits see up to 3,074 annual mentions from admitted students, while public institutions only see up to 1,525 for our sample. The range here is vast – the median is 27 admissions conversations; but at all measures privates have about twice as much admitted student conversation than publics.
• #24: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/hug-your-haters/new-research-shows-how-fast-companies-have-to-be-in-social-media/
• #25: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/hug-your-haters/new-research-shows-how-fast-companies-have-to-be-in-social-media/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/q2-2017/ - ranked education #13 out of 16 in brand engagement in Q3 2017 (how responsive brands are to consumers)
• #50: Define owned vs earned. The percentage of owned conversation within the sample ranged from 0–76 percent, while the earned conversation ranged from 24–100 percent. Three institutions in our sample (small or very small private institutions) did not publish any owned content during our data collection period.
• #51: While public institutions have higher metrics than private institutions by nearly every measure of online conversation, it’s interesting to note again the impact of athletics. With the addition of athletics conversation, the share of owned conversation for each type of institution falls between three percentage points of each other (32 percent to 35 percent) from a difference of 15 percentage points (17 percent to 33 percent) without athletics. Athletics conversation levels the playing field, one could say. Private institutions should leverage their owned athletic content as much as possible for brand alignment.
• #53: The topics of owned and earned conversation can vary—63% of the institutions we studied saw no alignment in the top five topics. Alignment of owned and earned conversation themes is a measure of institutional influence, and only a third of institutions we studied currently see any alignment. Twenty percent of institutions shared at least one topic of conversation between owned and earned, and 10% aligned on two topics (some institutions had such low online conversation volume that we couldn’t measure topic alignment). What was different about the institutions with greater alignment? They saw more retweets of their owned content. Generating quality engaging content on Twitter that audiences want to share seems to influence how their audience talks about them online.
• #55: Well-defined brands have clearly defined brand attributes. Historically, whether the brand attributes were resonating with audiences or not was measured based on feelings and perceptions. Now that much of the conversation is online, the growth of key brand attributes in brand conversation—and the sentiment of those conversations—can be quantified. Using qualitative research methodology, brand managers can develop a taxonomy related to their brand attributes to capture and categorize conversation that aligns with those attributes. Then, brand attribute conversation can be quantified as a percentage of all conversation, growth of each attribute can be measured over time, and sentiment of each attribute can be scrutinized to identify opportunities to improve brand messaging.
• #57: This looks a lot like qualitative research!
• #58: Over 4 months, 13%
• #70: Online conversations are an always-on focus group that you can ask any question, at any time.
• #71: We have access to unfettered opinions all over the internet, and I think modern market researchers need to be better at making use of them. While they may not stand up to the scientific scrutiny that a mall survey does, the thoughts and opinions that people like you and me post online, every day, are authentic and have the potential to provide really valuable insight to our organizations. With this in mind, I think that modern market research needs to have some essential qualities that social listening just so happens to deliver. Here are two examples.
• #74: Responses from interviews with student success professionals
• #75: This changed our recommendations
• #76: Spring Hill College is a Jesuit, Catholic, liberal arts college located on the Gulf Coast in Mobile, AL. The College has about 1,600 students and is about 90% residential. Being founded in 1830, SHC is the oldest Catholic college in the Southeast and the third oldest Jesuit college in the U.S.
• #77: In our work with Campus Sonar, we wanted to see the organic, real conversation that was out there, not only from constituents (students, alumni, friends, facstaff) but also from potential students and parents and our own community. Marketing is heavily Admissions-driven so we pay fast attention to what is being said about Spring Hill College. I am a firm believer in that you cannot create a brand and force your audience to identify with it. This is where our work with CS was so integral for me! Our college is small but being 189 years old, we have a great deal of alumni and others with a close relationship with the College. But what are they saying and how can we incorporated that so our message mirrors what they are saying? Turns out, our people love us as much as we love them. The most organic theme we saw after Campus Sonar looked back over three years of what people were saying about SHC is that WE ARE FAMILY. This was the most duh slash ah-ha moment I’ve had since I joined the SHC Family. Of course we are! And we knew that but … we didn’t? I’ve joked with Liz on Twitter that our social listening experience with CS is basically me saying we realized that “we know that they know that we know what they know.” We didn’t need to develop a whole new brand … our brand is right in front of us. Instead, we have given our brand a glow-up using either the word “family,” the idea of family or sometimes both.
• #78: Liz talk about how the research works
• #82: , enabling us to re-establish public trust and build more authentic relationships.
• #83: Take questions/discussion/etc.