According to an article in The Huffington Post this week, “fewer Americans believe going to college is worth the ball and chain of student loan debt. In 2008, 81 percent of adults thought college was a good investment. That number dropped to 57 percent, according to a national survey of 3,000 Americans commissioned by Country Financial and compiled by Rasmussen Reports. Americans are also increasingly embittered over student debt. Last year, 31 percent thought more than $20,000 in student loan debt was too much. In 2012, that number jumped to 42 percent.”
If you read my blog posts regularly, you know that I like movie references. So, as Strother Martin said to Paul Newman in the classic 1967 movie, Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” From a marketing perspective, it means that colleges and universities need to do a better job in communicating the value of their brands and connecting with their customers; I mean students; no, I mean customers. Americans have traditionally valued higher education as a route to a better future for themselves and their children. So, it shouldn’t be too difficult, right? And, what is the key to good communication? You guessed it – listening!
If more and more Americans believe that college isn’t worth the cost, then colleges need to be smarter in terms of communicating the value that they provide. That starts by knowing how you are currently being perceived.
Converge Consulting utilizes Social Media Listening with Sentiment Analysis and Text Analytics to help monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of branding campaigns. Listening on various social media and online channels to analyze posts, comments, and other site activity for sentiment as well as keywords/topics/themes, it is possible to ascertain constituent sentiment related to the institution, assess what channels are being used to discuss the institution (this assessment can inform channel-specific strategy as well as overall messaging strategy), and identify relevant topics and discussion themes.
