Presidents and boards are getting the wrong information from social media. Don’t just consider it a marketing channel for young people–social media is an always-on focus group where you can take the pulse of your community and the general public to assess reputation, risk, and trends. Social intelligence strategically uses social media and online conversation data to find the right way forward within a business in research, product, communications, or marketing. It answers three risk-related questions for fiduciaries.
What’s our current level of reputational risk?
When people or media outlets post about your institution or its employees on social media, it impacts public perception. Social intelligence enables you to proactively identify new reputational risks, assess the risk of a potentially damaging narrative, and understand public perception to determine how and when to respond to reputational risk. The sentiment of earned conversation (what individuals and the media say about the institution) is one of the reputation measures used in board reporting for Duquesne University to support data-driven decision-making in times of concern. They also used it to highlight the positive impact of March Madness on brand awareness. When you need to make tough calls to right-size academic programs to meet market needs, analyzing sentiment in the moment and comparing it to previous periods gives you confidence that you understand public perception.
Is our marketplace perception aligned with our strategic priorities?
An organic, unprompted conversation about your organization supports a more nuanced environmental scan than surveys with pointed questions or hand-picked focus groups. Leaders at the University of ArkansasÐFort Smith and Utah Valley University understand word-of-mouth conversation, news coverage, and the campuses’ content through the lens of strategic plans or brand-messaging pillars. They see what strategically aligned stories take off with their audiences or diagnose the need to communicate better about university impact and community engagement.
Where is the market moving, and how can higher ed transform to serve it?
Social intelligence offers the ability to look back in time while simultaneously assessing the current state to anticipate trends and be future-focused. The Society for College and University Planning is listening to conversations about and from college planners to support organizational transformation as they serve the next generation of members. A private art institute uses social intelligence to expand the market for its existing programs and create new markets as the public understanding of and desire for art conversation changes.
"Higher education can't afford to fall further behind. We must bring social intelligence into the boardroom."
-Liz Gross, Ph.D.
Social intelligence answers key organizational questions and prompts audience-centric conversations with leaders primarily tasked with serving students. It puts student voices front and centerÑall types of students. Airlines, hotels, banks, movie production companies, and consumer packaged goods have used social intelligence to make business decisions for over a decade. Higher education can’t afford to fall further behind. We must bring social intelligence into the boardroom.
"Presidents and boards are getting the wrong information from social media."
-Liz Gross, Ph.D.