Social listening is more than responding to Facebook and Twitter posts. Used strategically, it supports four business functions: reputation management, customer service, market research, and brand benchmarking. This session will define social listening, explore use-cases for higher ed, and review tools to support a robust social listening program.

1. Online Reputation IS Your Reputation:
Are You Listening?
Liz Gross
HighEdWeb
October 9, 2017

2. 60% “A person like me”
is a credible
spokesperson

3. Reputations are made and destroyed overnight,
thanks to:
• The power of online and social media
• An emboldened public who has seen Twitter bring
down corporate titans and foment social-political
unrest around the world.
Public perception has become reality
Zach Olsen, Inside Higher Ed’s Call To Action Blog, August 30, 2017

4. United’s Dao Incident
Read more: www.brandwatch.com/blog/react-united-airlines-overbooked

5. NYC Shakespeare In The Park
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/theater/donald-trump-julius-caesar-public-theater-oskar-eustis.html

7. Unicorn Frappuccino
Read more: https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/frappuccino-happy-hour-starbucks/

8. Joel Osteen & Hurricane Harvey

9. The internet is real life

10. social listening
real life: transcribed, categorized,
and analyzed to provide your
institution with the insights it
needs to support data-driven
strategies

11. how social
listening
works
all conversations
queries
results

12. 4Strategic Uses
for Social
Listening in
Higher Education

13. Reputation Management
Modern reputation management means you can
• Know about issues before your president
• Track the origin and spread of issues in real time
• Quantify the size of an issue

14. University of Texas at Austin: Social Listening for
Public Relations and Issue Management
2012-2015
• Major crime on campus
• Supreme Court case
• Removal of Confederate Statues
• Legal carry on campus
• Public conflict between president and Board of Regents
• This prompted social listening
@MikeHornAtTerry

15. University of Texas at Austin: Social Listening for
Public Relations and Issue Management
#IStandWithBillPowers
• Blog titled “UT President’s Job May Be in
Jeopardy” goes live
• Alumni establish “I Stand With Bill Powers”
Facebook page
• Conversation migrates to Twitter with
#IStandWithBillPowers
• Multiple channels, multiple conversations, over
multiple years
@MikeHornAtTerry

16. Ohio State University: Pro-Active Issue Monitoring
Crisis Monitoring Pre-November 2016
Social listening query to track brand mentions along with
keywords in the following areas:
• Campus security
• Boycotting and protesting
• Tuition costs
• Inclement weather
• Fraternity and sorority issues
@OhioState | @ShawnaFPK

17. Focused Social Listening In A Crisis
Safety
• Monitor questions and draft
responses
• Analyze images, videos, and
news mentions for new info
• Supply students and campus
community with new updates as
they are confirmed
Brand Management
• Provide communications teams
with current information
• Understand volume of convo
• Analyze spread/growth of convo
• Gain insights about
conversation sentiment
• Understand and address
spread of misinformation
@OhioState | @ShawnaFPK

18. This is what a crisis looks
like on social media
@OhioState | @ShawnaFPK

19. Customer Service
Modern customer service means
• Meeting or exceeding response time expectations
• Finding and responding to comments and
complaints
• Identifying patters in customer conversation to
inform content strategy

20. Most Organizations Don’t Respond Fast Enough
of social media
complainers are happy
with response time
32% of social media
complainers expect a
response within 1 hour
39%
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/hug-your-haters/new-research-shows-how-fast-companies-have-to-be-in-social-media/

21. Most Organizations Don’t Respond Fast Enough
• Businesses only respond to 63% of social media
complaints within 24 hours
• Education is one of the least responsive industries
on social media
• Average education response time is over 9 hours.
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/

22. Half Your Audience Thinks You Ignore Complaints
Social
Media
Review Sites Boards/
Forums
Expects a reply 42% 53% 47%
Baer, J. Hug Your Haters. 2016

23. Not Finding and Responding To Complaints Hurts
Brand Advocacy
Social
Media
Review Sites Boards/
Forums
Change in Advocacy:
Answered Complaint
+ 20% + 16% + 25%
Change in Advocacy:
Unanswered Complaint
- 43% - 37% - 38%
Baer, J. Hug Your Haters. 2016

24. Pepperdine University Hugs A Hater
Social Listening since 2014
• 2016: Special event limited campus parking
• Student tweeted about (not at) Pepperdine
• @Pepperdine found it immediately, responded,
offered solution: the Pepp App
• Downloads increased
• Student deleted the negative tweet
Read more: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/call-action-marketing-and-communications-higher-education/social-listening-belongs-modern

25. Great Lakes Gives The Student Loan Party We
Didn’t Know They Wanted
Standard passive-aggressive tweets from 2014-2015

26. Great Lakes Gives Borrowers The Student Loan
Party We Didn’t Know They Wanted
We got the message and delivered

27. Market Research
Modern market research must be
• Fast
• Flexible
• Longitudinal
• Quantifiable
• Human

28. Conversation Analysis Uncovers Previously
Unknown Brand Attribute

29. There Are Some Things Students Tell Reddit That
They Won’t Tell Campus Staff
800,000 online conversation about why students drop out

30. • Unstructured social data + analysis framework =
valuable insights
• Students talked about 5 main reasons for dropping
out
• Only 3 were identified during interviews with
campus professionals
There Are Some Things Students Tell Reddit That
They Won’t Tell Campus Staff

31. Brand Management
Modern brand managers need to understand the
online conversation about their brand
• Share of Voice
• Owned vs Earned

32. Terry College of Business Tracks Online Share of
Voice
They can quantify the impact of content and brand marketing
13%
79%
85%
2017
Terry College
Goizueta
Scheller
College
47%
38%
16%
2016
Terry College
Goizueta
Scheller
College

33. Understanding What Role Campus-Created Content
Plays In The Online Conversation
Two campuses with very different content strategies

34. Beloit Colleges Considering Digital Reputation
Metrics For Brand Management
• Positive sentiment across social channels
• Change from neutral to positive media and social mentions
– Specifically around three key brand attributes
• Referral traffic from digital sources with positive reputation scores

35. Tools To Make It
Happen

36. Social Listening Requires Tools
I know these are the three things you want. You can’t have all three.
Free
Great
Data
Powerful
Search

37. • Twitter search (advanced)
• Tweetdeck
• Hootsuite free
• Instagram search
• Follower Wonk
• Brandwatch for Students (brandwatch.com/students)
• Sysomos free trial (sysomos.com/campaign/search-trial)
Free Options To Get Started
Free

38. • Hootsuite Pro
• Sprout Social
Low-Cost Options Do A Bit More
< $100 per
month

39. • Brandwatch
• Sysomos
• Synthesio
• Crimson Hexagon
• Nuvi
• Many others
Full-Feature Software to Support
Strategic Social Listening $10K - 50K
per year

40. Social listening is
not a social media investment.
Social listening is a strategic
investment to get closer to your
audience, better manage your
reputation, and meet modern consumer
expectations.

41. The future of social listening includes:
• Image search and analysis
• Social insights panels for key audience segments
• Contextual conversation data
This is just the beginning!

42. the end.
Liz Gross
@LizGross144
lizgross.net
campussonar.com
linkedin.com/in/lizgross