The Latest Innovation in Brand Research:

Social Listening

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Presentation AgendaWhy This Matters ...……………………………….

Research Methodology ………………………...

Common Segmentations …………………….

Case Studies ………..……………………………….

Industry Benchmarking ……………………….

3 Key Takeaways ………………………………….

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“Brand is not what you say

it is. It’s what they say it is”.

-Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap

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61%“Someone like me” is a credible spokesperson

4Source: 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer

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● Online and offline conversations about

brands are roughly equal in size

● People have different motivations to share

online than they do offline

● Online word-of-mouth has a greater impact

on high-value purchases, like vacations… or

higher education.

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Word-of-Mouth is Online and Offline

Source: Jay Baer & Daniel Lemin, Talk Triggers

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You can’t afford to ignore what “they” say about your brand.

Social listening research translates what “they” say into actionable insights for your brand strategy.

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Social ListeningResearch Methodology

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● Develop research questions and define

project goals.

● Write a custom query to collect online data

related to project goals.

● Segment the data collected into appropriate

categories.

● Validate the data that’s been collected and

segmented (cleaning).

● Analyze and identify insights.

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Brand Research Process Overview

Analysis

Segmentation (owned/earned, brand-aligned, audiences)

Data validation & cleaning

Identify insights

Inputs

Campus Goal

Research Questions

Brand Pillars or Themes

Relevant online conversation (software + query)

Outcomes

Assess alignment of brand strategy with brand perception, including change over time.

Understand brand alignment by audience

Identify high-performing and low-performing brand themes.

Assess owned media for brand alignment

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Social Listening For Brand Research

Download the full research guide at info.campussonar.com/ama

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Common Brand Segmentations

Social listening metrics to assess and understand brand

health

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Owned and Earned ConversationOwned Conversation

● Created by brand accounts or

published to branded web properties

● Shares of that content by others

Earned Conversation

● Published by external audiences

about your brand

● Includes both tagged and plain text

mentions

● Example: students, prospects,

alumni, journalists, employees

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Alignment of owned and earned conversation themes is a measure of institutional influence

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● If you’re creating the right amount of content

● If your messages are resonating with your audience

● If you’re losing or gaining influence of the conversation

● What brand-aligned messages your audience wants you to talk about

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Owned/Earned Helps You Understand:

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The portion of all online

conversation from and about your

institution that aligns with

identified brand themes or pillars

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Brand-Aligned Conversation

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● Build a taxonomy to identify how brand-aligned conversation might appear

in a variety of online sources (news, social media, Reddit)

● Build Boolean queries to identify language that matches the taxonomy

● Query the entire dataset of online conversation about the institution to

identify brand-aligned mentions, categorized by brand theme/pillar

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Qualitative Coding = Brand Themes

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● Identifies what audiences segments are more likely to have brand-aligned

conversations

● Uncovers what brand themes resonate most with the public

● Assesses if your owned digital properties are communicating in

brand-aligned ways

● Identifies media or journalists that tend to produce brand-aligned coverage

● Quantifies how brand-aligned conversation is changing over time

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Brand-Aligned Conversation Analysis

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Use qualitative research taxonomies to identify

who is talking about your brand online.

● Prospective students

● Admitted students

● Current Students

● Alumni

● Faculty

● Parents/Family

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Audience Segmentation

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Use qualitative research taxonomies to identify

what aspect of your brand is being talked

about.

● Athletics

● Pandemic Response

● Online Classes

● At-Risk Students

● President or Board of Trustees

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Topic Segmentation

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Case Studies

What this looks like at a small liberal arts college and a

large private university.

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Small Midwest Liberal Arts CollegeResearch Goals

1. Benchmark brand-aligned conversation Sep-Dec 2018

2. Owned content alignment: how are official channels representing the

college?

3. Understand the impact of owned brand-aligned content on earned

conversation

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SMLAC Learned: Brand Benchmarks

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SMLAC Learned: Pillar Benchmarks

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Pillar 1 Pillar 2 Pillar 3 Pillar 4 Pillar 5

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SMLAC Learned: Owned Content

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Pillar 1 Pillar 2 Pillar 3 Pillar 4 Pillar 5

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SMLAC Action StepsContent Creation

● Revisit goals of owned content to align with brand goals.

● Align a new building project with Pillar 5, and prioritize

content creation for Pillar 2.

Social Media Strategy

● Develop voice guidelines that align with brand pillars.

● Focus on improving brand-alignment on Twitter

Earned Media

● Identify what strategies result in brand-aligned news

coverage and expand that to new media outreach.24

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Large Private UniversityResearch Goals

1. Benchmark brand-aligned conversation July 2017 - December 2018

2. Understand what brand theme messages are already represented in

conversation (coinciding with brand surveys)

3. Assess the prevalence of brand-aligned conversation, by theme, in

conversation from four key audiences (i.e., students, alumni, faculty,

admitted students)

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LPU Learned: Brand Benchmarks

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Theme 1 Message Analysis

Message 3 isn’t differentiated, Message 4 is cloudy

LPU Learned: Refining Messaging

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Message 1

Message 2

Message 3

Message 4

Message 1 Message 2 Message 3 Message 4

Theme 4 Message Analysis

Message 1 doesn’t resonate. Message 2 is clear.

Message 1

Message 2

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LPU Learned: Audience Brand Convo● Faculty have more conversations about LPU than other audiences, and

mention it in brand-aligned ways 7 percent of the time.

● Students have fewer conversations about LPU, but they’re twice as

likely to be brand-aligned.

● Across all four audiences, there wasn’t a single mention of Brand

Theme 3

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LPU Action Steps● Reconsider the use of Theme 3, as it has very little usage; none with priority

audiences.

● Reconsider some of the theme messages that weren’t distinctive.

● Faculty can play a larger role in brand marketing, authentically. They regularly

create content related to the brand theme that’s most prevalent in admitted

student conversation.

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Industry Benchmarks

What we’ve learned so far about online conversation

from and about higher education brands

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2019 Benchmarks

● August 2017 - July 2018, 63 institutions

2020 Benchmarks

● August 2018 - July 2019, 93 institutions

Each study used a quota sample of primarily four-year colleges and universities in

the United States, with special attention following CCIHE characteristics:

● Institution Control

● Size by Enrollment

● Geographic Region

● Program Type31

Online Conversation Benchmarks

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info.campussonar.com/benchmarks32

Download the 2019 Benchmark Report

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2019: Non-Athletics Conversation Volume

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2019: Non-Athletics Individual Contributors

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2019: Athletics Effect

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2019: Owned vs Earned

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2019: Owned vs Earned Topic Alignment

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● Everything increased

● Also, everything took a little longer in 2020

● Catch Steve App’s Innovation Showcase

presentation right after this session for more

information

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New Benchmarks Released Jan 2021

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3 Key Takeaways1. If you don’t understand what people are saying about your institution,

you can’t assess your brand.

2. Social listening research (software + human analysts) allows you to

collect and analyze the online conversation about your institution,

using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

3. Using this research, you can identify opportunities and threats to your

brand strategy, assess institutional influence, and develop messages

that resonate with your target audience.

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Final Thought“If Gen Z is able to discover colleges through

their own channels, they’ll wind up ignoring

the gobs of traditional propaganda from

colleges even more than they do already.”

“Students and families will finally learn about

the real place behind the facade of the

marketing machine.”

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@LizGross144

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Questions?

Liz GrossCEO, Campus Sonar

Get these slides and our research guide: info.campussonar.com/ama