Higher Ed Storytelling University

John Azoni (01:12.438)
Okay, my guest today is Liz Gross. Liz is the founder and CEO of Campus Sonar, a higher ed strategy firm that partners with campuses to enact changes informed by digital and social intelligence. She's an award-winning speaker, author, and strategist with nearly 20 years of experience in higher ed and strategic social listening programs.

She received a PhD in leadership for the advancement of learning and service in higher education at Cardinal Stritch University, a master's degree in educational policy and leadership from Marquette University, and a bachelor's degree in interpersonal communication from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. Liz, thank you for being here.

Liz Gross (01:57.81)
Very excited to be here and represent all those Wisconsin institutions.

John Azoni (02:02.542)
Yes. So we like to start off with by asking what's something that people might be surprised to know about you.

Liz Gross (02:10.338)
So I say a lot of stuff about me online, so this might be a surprise for people who...

have not been like a regular Instagram or Twitter follower or something like that. But my work is all about technology, right? But for over a decade, my biggest hobby has been gardening, specifically vegetable gardening. There's a really large garden, some people call it a farm in my backyard, and we grow nearly all the vegetables that we eat in a year back there because I can and dehydrate and preserve.

And that's led to like interest in sustainable and regenerative agriculture, six years of service on a related nonprofit board, moving to a rural area where for a while I struggled to have good internet connection while running a company based on what happens on the internet. I read textbooks and farm manuals for fun.

John Azoni (02:58.427)
Hehehehe

John Azoni (05:51.89)
Well, we're gonna be good friends Liz, because I like all things like, like gardening, like do it yourself. Like I make kombucha at home. I like to ferment like stuff. My, me and my kids make a sauerkraut and all this stuff. So

Liz Gross (06:14.158)
I've got a special fridge just for my fermented foods.

John Azoni (06:19.699)
It got pretty out of hand at one point. We had like, we had like, like beans growing in our on our porch and then we would ferment those and there'd be like jars all over the place, stuff like that. So yeah. Yeah. I would love to have land. That's like one thing. So I love my house because we're in the suburbs here in.

Liz Gross (06:31.808)
I don't hear a problem in that statement. So.

John Azoni (06:45.422)
Detroit area and it's and we're on a corner lot and so it's kind of it's kind of got like a farm vibe like we got big backyard and stuff like that compared to the houses around us in the in the neighborhood but like I'm like always so jealous of like people that just have like four wheelers and like just acres and acres of land

Liz Gross (07:03.886)
I'm not there yet, but I have a Zillow search running, so we'll see.

John Azoni (07:07.926)
Yeah. Cool. Okay, so let's jump in here. So this is a higher ed storytelling podcast, obviously. So you're in the social listening business and there's quite a big connection between listening and storytelling. So tell me what you think about that.

Liz Gross (07:28.318)
Yeah, so social listening, which I consider to be a research method, right? I, the shortest way I've ever referred to social listening is the world's largest always online focus group. So I just want folks to know that's what I think about when I think about social listening. It can really connect storytelling opportunities and outcomes to really key.

campus priorities like reputation, enrollment strategy, program development, because it's really key to recognizing that as a marketer, right? You're not the only storyteller that matters when it comes to your brand. So I think about the rise of social listening as a need to have, to be an authentic storyteller is tied with

the rise of peer influence just in general, which happened at the same time that we started to see the public trust in higher education decline precipitously. And that's what all of the headlines continue to be about in 2023 is low public trust in higher ed. And students, current students, alumni, prospective students, they are...

building their thoughts, feelings, opinions, perceptions based on what they see talked about online. And if that conversation is all about economic instability, inflation, student loan repayment, tough job market, layoffs at tech companies, all those sorts of things, that is their narrative. Not you will make more than a million dollars extra over the course of your lifetime with a college degree wage premium. Instead, colleges just assume that we're the next step.

This is what you should do. And it's just about what choice do you make? And I think that for far too long, too many colleges haven't been listening in the place where consumers were actually talking and building their opinions. They've decided to tell stories that are perceived as telling consumers what's good for them, using statistics or a defense of like the liberal arts or flashy marketing campaigns, while the regular folks who are...

John Azoni (09:22.503)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (09:30.198)
the target of those ads just like remain confused and defensive about the role of education in their lives and they don't feel heard. So social listening is a way for brands, campuses, institutions, organizations to make sure they are actually hearing the people that they serve and that they really understand what their brand is. Like one of my favorite brand quotes is brand isn't is what they say it is, not what you the marketer.

John Azoni (09:35.261)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (09:59.602)
says it is. And we know at Campus Sona from six years of researching higher ed online conversation that 75% of what is said about an institution online is not coming from campus sources. And a lot of campuses are completely unaware of what that looks like. And that's where the value proposition and the storytelling is happening in spaces that a lot of teams currently aren't in or paying attention to.

John Azoni (10:26.006)
Yeah, I like what you said about, I mean, the sentiment of a college degree is oftentimes the narrative they're hearing is negative. And honestly, I woke up this morning and I had a, cause I published little snippets of this podcast to YouTube shorts and things like that. And even someone commented on a previous snippet. That was like, the moral of the story is don't go to college or something like that. You know, it's like.

Liz Gross (10:49.766)
You're like, oh interesting interpretation, but that's what they're being conditioned to think

John Azoni (10:52.535)
uh...

John Azoni (10:55.666)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And if we're not, yeah, if we're if we're not addressing that in our storytelling, I think that's a good point. Because like, you know, we can we can talk all day long about like, oh, this student was successful, and they went off and did this thing. But there is probably a pocket of, you know, opportunity for addressing this, like, maybe the sentiment that college isn't necessary.

um you know in order to get a good job or get a positive experience so I like that.

Liz Gross (11:26.506)
I think it opens up the opportunity for, you know, storytelling doesn't have to just be about publishing, publishing. It can also be about amplifying or enhancing stories that are already out there. So I know on one of your previous podcasts, you had Josie talking about how important it is to empower student storytellers, right? And I think about that, not just from those students who happen to be paid or get internship credit to tell stories on behalf of the university, but...

John Azoni (11:38.595)
Yes.

Liz Gross (11:55.122)
any old student who needs to be equipped to tell their own story for their own benefit to get a job, you know, get promotion, get professional recognition, those sorts of things. Them doing that and tying who they've become back to their institution is a huge storytelling benefit for the institution. And if you're not preparing them to do that and or not being aware of when it happens organically so you can amplify that, then

you're missing out on that really authentic view of what college means and the value of it.

John Azoni (12:31.074)
Yeah, that's a good point. Cause storytelling is not just video, you know, it's not just blogs. It's public speaking. Storytelling enhances public speaking. Storytelling enhances interview, the interview experience and teaching that to students is super important. I think storytelling is a very important like business skill to have. And you're right, like if they are learning how to tell their story and your university is a part of that, then.

then they're going to be naturally amplifying your university. And so then there's this element too, about, uh, where social listening helps anticipate how the market moves. Like what are you seeing happening with how slow higher ed moves compared to how they could move with a stronger focus on social listening?

Liz Gross (13:21.718)
In almost every conversation I have with, I'll start with a marketer, with a marketer, they will say something when I ask, what do you wish you could do better or what do you wish you had more of a focus on? They will say, I wish we were more proactive and less reactive.

to what's happening around us. So from a marketing standpoint, it's like, we want to be thinking about our messaging and being proactive in our messaging, not just responding to what other people say about us. But lately I've been spending more time talking with presidents about what they're thinking about, kind of the future of their institution as a whole. And they're in the same place, but with a different lens. They're thinking, how do we become the institution that we need to be 10 years from now?

If all of our market research and everything is talking to the same people we've talked to for the last 20 years, or we're looking at labor data from five years ago, 10 years ago, like how do we build the degree programs and the student structures for 2035 in 2023 if we're looking at data from 2015? Like that's a challenge.

John Azoni (14:32.5)
Yeah.

Liz Gross (14:35.098)
Social listening can help anticipate market moves because it's a real-time feedback mechanism that also allows you to go back in time historically. So social listening can be in the moment and it's really valuable in the moment. You can also right now decide, I want to understand the changes in this particular topic of conversation over the last three years and then go pull everything that's been stored in social networks and forums and blogs from that sort of time.

So I get excited when institutions want to use social listening. A good friend of mine, Teresa Valerio-Pared at TVP comms, will always say, you can use it to see around corners, right? See what's up there, what's just out of view. So a really good example of this, we just started working with an art school that knows that the problem isn't more people need to hear about us, right? Although that's also what you'll hear from a lot of folks. More people just need to hear about us.

John Azoni (15:14.581)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (15:31.97)
The problem really is, thinking ahead to 2035, we need to articulate the value and the promise of our art and art adjacent education to creative thinkers who might not identify as an artist right now, but who want to pursue careers that we know we can support. Yet they're not looking at art schools. They're not considering a school like ours. So they are using a three-year social listening approach to think, how do we know

John Azoni (15:47.222)
Yeah, yeah.

Liz Gross (16:00.746)
what those students are interested in, where and with whom they interact and engage, and how we can strategically deploy our messaging and resources to reach them. So it goes into recruitment strategy, marketing strategy, even program design, because you're figuring out where you can meet the market as it's going by focusing on people, not a set of labor statistics. And then you start to tell forward-looking stories that capture where your audience's mind is going.

rather than just echoing what they've already heard from every other institution.

John Azoni (16:34.498)
Yeah, imagine a story that was like, you know, a student that's like, you know, I didn't feel like I was an artist at all, you know, until, you know, I came to this school and really developed these, the set of skills that I didn't think you could get in art school or something. I don't know. But I think.

Liz Gross (16:47.701)
And one of...

One of, I don't even know what generation I'm supposed to be talking about these days, but the young ones, whatever we've named them, right? The biggest concern a lot of them have entering the workplace is like getting sucked into something that doesn't matter, losing their ability to make an impact on the world, like all that sort of stuff. So if you can help someone infuse their identity as a creative into what they're doing in their education and then ultimately their career,

John Azoni (16:55.435)
Alpha.

Liz Gross (17:18.78)
that even if they're gonna go into what traditionally might be seen as like a bit of a soul-sucking job in business or something like that. If you come into it with a design thinking mindset and like doing all of these things from a creative and you've been told you're a creative who does this for work, that's a different way of approaching your life than thinking, oh I gotta go make a paycheck and then maybe I'll have some time to do something other than watch Netflix later, right?

John Azoni (17:35.543)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (17:45.486)
Yeah, for sure. And like the creator economy is the playing field is being leveled so much. And I think about like, I was just thinking about this the other day where it's like, you know, you have a traditional stand up comedian, you know, and they're a comedian. Like I'm a comedian. Like I'm not saying I am. I'm saying like, you know, someone that is identifies as a comedian is like, I do stand up comedy. But like, then you go on TikTok, and there's so many

just hilarious people that are just normal people. And they're being given this platform to be funny. And now it's like the comedy landscape has been spread so horizontally to now where normal people are like, you know, what do you do for a living? Oh, I guess I'm kind of a comedian, you know? And I can see that.

Liz Gross (18:33.514)
And with good business and entrepreneurial prep, like they can monetize that in so many different ways. The other thing I was thinking about sharing of what might surprise people about me isn't actually about me, it's about my younger brother. He and I took very different life paths. He went into the trades, he did HVAC stuff, he oversees project management for construction now. He's also a nano influencer in Florida and has an entire side business built around

John Azoni (18:59.469)
Ooh.

Liz Gross (19:02.878)
audiences on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and he's figured out how to monetize them through like real estate and marketing and it's fascinating and when I tell people on a stage right you know this was also mentioned in one of your earlier podcasts one of the emerging desired careers for young people is to be a creator whether that's a YouTuber or whatever.

It doesn't have to be just, I'm an influencer, come get ready with me. Like there are so many ways to influence an nation. My brother is doing that by helping people figure out how to move to and have fun with families in Florida. Cause that's what he did. So we're on a bit of a tangent, but it's a, you gotta think more expansively about how are your prospective students thinking about their future? And it's probably not major job all of the time. So learn more about them so you can better connect with them.

John Azoni (19:40.766)
Yeah, for sure. And there's so many. Yeah.

John Azoni (19:54.583)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like especially for an art school, like I, I've never thought about that before. But like, like reaching people who might not even think they're going to be an artist or a graphic designer or a industrial designer or whatever, but like have a creative streak. And that's something that they could develop in a, in a more formal atmosphere. Cool. Well, so talk about, let's talk about brand reputation. So when we do tell stories or they're being,

stories told about our institution, what strategies can we employ to know the effect that's having on the brand's reputation?

Liz Gross (20:34.61)
So if these stories are told with some bit of intentionality, and that's an if, but I hope a lot of your listeners are telling stories that align with a strategic plan or focused research pillars for an institution, goals, whatever that might be, you can start to think, you know, what are, my team uses the phrase pillars all the time. You could also say themes or topic areas, right? But what are the pillars?

that we are trying to tell stories on, to be known for, to differentiate on, and then understand, what is the impact, what is the influence, what does it look like? And you can do that for really any storytelling strategy. I've talked about it with law schools, I've talked about it with regional public institutions, and an example that I think really brings it to life, again, that other people might think is a little more boring, is a business school.

that we've worked with. So they welcomed a new dean and that dean wanted to launch her new vision and a refocused research agenda for the school on six key areas of business that and a lot of them are future focus.

John Azoni (21:29.613)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (21:46.458)
areas of business that this school wanted to be known for. So they're using social listening to understand the public perception of their work related to all of those pillars in social media, in news, and in forums. And we've been working with them now for almost two years and it's been really great to see the evolution. So some things you can learn that you wouldn't learn just from say looking at the views on something or the engagement rate on where you're telling the

John Azoni (21:47.162)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (22:15.738)
So this school, like I think a lot of them, feel like they know who their top, I'm talking about faculty, so like who their top faculty influencers are, or most prestigious, or whatever you might call that, right? So they have a list of their top 25. This is a large school, so there's a lot more than 25 faculty. They've got the list of their top 25.

John Azoni (22:28.013)
Yeah.

Liz Gross (22:36.222)
And we looked at these six pillars that they wanted to be known for. We looked backwards again to see like, what is the current state of these pillars in your institution in the public sphere? And those top 25 faculty represented just 10% of the school's research pillars. And that's where they were spending all their time telling stories. It's just like, let's talk about them. Let's talk about them. They're famous. They're well known, but they were focusing all those efforts on some of the wrong people and places. And I suspect also some of their funding.

So we also got to help them find that there were research centers that were really under the radar of administration, but they had really high public interest. They were aligned with one of these six pillars and they had greater opportunities for promoting and furthering research by telling their stories. They also learned that, you know, this is a business school that's been around for a long time. They, you know, value rankings and tradition and those sorts of things.

John Azoni (23:23.743)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (23:35.126)
But they learned that social media was actually responsible for much more research visibility than traditional news media. So then they had to think, like, it's not all about a PR pitch, right? It's how are we either telling our own story or equipping our researchers to tell their story? And then the last thing that I thought was interesting is you can tell, you know, where is their traction versus where do you might need to invest more in getting a story out there? Or

question if it's the story that needs to be told at all. So they had six research pillars that we're looking at. Three of the pillars with the most online mentions over this like historical time period we looked at had about two to three times the mention volume of the other three. So you can dive deeper into that to figure out is it because those are future focused research topics and folks just aren't talking about it yet? Like stories about artificial intelligence today.

have a lot different uptick and resonance than stories about artificial intelligence two years ago, for example. So you can think about it from that way, like are we just ahead of the game and we're moving it? Or is the research under resourced? Or are they just less supported in strategic communications over there? Because we haven't figured out the storytelling. So we like did this very...

John Azoni (24:39.539)
Oh for sure.

Liz Gross (24:55.962)
in depth figuring out where they were at when they started this like Dean's new vision. And then we keep working with them over time to filter through this massive volume of mentions they have because they are well known to figure out what's most valuable in measuring their impact and brand perception and informing their content decisions. So they see what's being shared on Reddit, what's happening on Twitter, what's over on Instagram, and that helps them figure out what they should be talking about.

John Azoni (25:15.843)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (25:25.846)
And then also quantify what's trending around the research so that when they talk to a dean who is not a full-time marketer, right, they can provide better context and analysis of the impact in the greater world. And when someone says, you know, we wanna be a national brand, we wanna go to the national stage, we wanna be known for X, Y, Z, that's what you're looking for. Are people talking about you in these particular ways? And if you're not actually measuring that in real time, you'll never know if you achieved the goal and social listening can help with that.

John Azoni (25:48.515)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (25:55.242)
And so what if you're, you know, some people might be asking what, we're a small school. We, you know, we don't have all of these mentions and thousands and thousands of mentions and stuff like that. How does a smaller school that's maybe a little more under the radar listen?

Liz Gross (26:13.086)
Yeah, so the way you listen is very similar. It's just what you're able to capitalize on looks different. So I had someone ask us a question earlier this week. They said, do you think social listening is quantitative or qualitative? Because apparently other people have told them that it's one or the other. And it is 100%, it is both. It is qualitative at its core.

John Azoni (26:36.377)
Yeah.

Liz Gross (26:39.402)
and there are quantitative ways of measuring it. But we, I'm gonna say we as marketers, really tend to gravitate to anything quantitative. So if the number's bigger, it must be better. Whereas you often wanna look at what is the sentiment of this? Or where is the opportunity within the conversation? And you can do that with a much smaller conversation volume. So for example, on average, a small,

private school in the United States has, and this is an estimate because I don't have this table in front of me, but I think if I can remember, it's somewhere between like five and 7,000 online mentions a year, which some people would be like, that's not a lot, right? Well, if you have an incoming class of 400.

That can be a significant amount of mentions. So I think about a really good example. We are working with a very small, exclusively graduate health sciences university. And that's one of those where people will be like, oh, well, there's no 17 year olds on TikTok talking about their med school education. But they have really great opportunities to identify outcomes based storytelling. And that's why people choose.

John Azoni (27:30.659)
Yeah.

John Azoni (27:50.433)
Mm-hmm

Liz Gross (27:58.266)
why to go to, where to go to grad school, is what's it gonna do for me in my career? So as a health sciences institution, one of their biggest storytelling opportunities, in my opinion, is Match Day. It happens every spring when med school grads find out what residency programs they've matched with. And ever since I learned about this day quite a few years ago, it's like my favorite day in the spring on social media, because you see these people.

John Azoni (28:14.66)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (28:22.53)
who have spent years and years in medical school now figuring out like, this is where I'm gonna go be a doctor first. And everyone finds out on the same day. Everyone in med school finds out on the same day. It's wild. It's a huge moment for peer reputation and influence because schools are celebrating their graduates, medical centers are celebrating the new residents that are coming to practice medicine there and continue their education, and new doctors, the actual like...

John Azoni (28:27.769)
Yeah.

Liz Gross (28:49.526)
protagonists of this story are celebrating their next steps in the future. So when we look at this for this institution, they're small, they've got small programs, they're targeted, but we could still help them identify the students who were featured.

John Azoni (28:55.642)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (29:06.17)
in what we would call their earned conversation on match day. So who was talking about the institution when the institution wasn't talking about them itself. Those students who show up in earned conversation because they're excited and they're bragging or because their future medical center is bragging, they're already prone to sharing their med school journey.

already. So they are likely to be good candidates for storytelling opportunities that highlight their professional journey and their achievements. And that is where you'll get it full circle to show where are storytelling opportunities that relate to value and outcomes for an institution that definitely is not like top of mind national brand recognition for everyone, but is on the radar for medical students that want to study or

John Azoni (29:26.251)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Liz Gross (29:49.966)
pre-med students who want to study specific specializations, right? And it's about finding those stories to tell. And that's just one example of where you can look really targeted for individual storytelling opportunities compared to trends in an audience or a industry, storytelling opportunities. Both are valid depending on the institution and its needs.

John Azoni (30:15.478)
Yeah, that reminds me the match day thing that reminds me of I just talked about this yesterday in my newsletter but this whole rush talk phenomenon of which I just I mean I've been seeing these posts in my tik-tok feed of like Girls like dancing around and like it's in and stuff like that and I'm like, oh, that's Michigan State I'm probably being served it because it's like, you know down the street for me sort of and

And then I didn't realize until recently that that's like a whole thing where it's like people are like rooting for their rush, whatever you call it, hopefuls, you know, to get into a sorority or something. And it's like this dramatic thing. And then since I wrote about it, I got served more and I got served like yesterday, a TikTok of a girl crying because she didn't get into her, you know, desired sorority.

I didn't know that was such a big thing. And I can imagine, yeah, like in a graduate level, that sentiment probably is strong of like people wanting to follow, like, you know, who's going where. And it seems like very benign, like who cares, but people really care. Ha ha ha.

Liz Gross (31:24.83)
Right. Well, and then so staying on the TikTok, which by the way, I'm almost a year clean from TikTok because it became a time suck addiction. And I couldn't do it. So now I see what ends up on Instagram two weeks later after it was on TikTok, but there is a whole subset of medical residency influencers on TikTok. And they

John Azoni (31:35.454)
Hahaha

John Azoni (31:50.627)
Mm.

Liz Gross (31:53.45)
are showing what it's like to be a resident, they're sharing some health information, like they have brand deals, but they're also doing their residency. Like this is a thing in every single niche and knowing how your specialty, your area of program, your institution itself is represented in any of those niche areas is really important if you truly want to understand how the marketplace views you.

John Azoni (31:59.705)
Yeah.

John Azoni (32:17.09)
for sure. Yeah, the rest acting they were talking about, like these girls are getting like major brand deals and like becoming like major influencers and they're like launching entire, you know, social careers, just from being a sorority helpful or whatever. Yeah. So talk about I talk a lot on this podcast about the need to listen.

Liz Gross (32:34.18)
12.

John Azoni (32:42.746)
first for stories. I think when we go to tell stories, especially colleges, universities, we kind of go to the obvious of, you know, someone always wanted to do this thing, and then they went to the school and they did the thing and now they're doing the thing out in the real world. And it's kind of like, okay, cool. You know, but like when you really listen intimately to what people are saying, and the themes that are coming up, you can tell such

greater stories. Talk about that and how that can apply to like, you know, other things like strategic plan launch, you know, capital campaigns, that, that kind of thing.

Liz Gross (33:22.89)
Yeah, this is exciting for me because when you think about...

strategic plan, a capital campaign, who you want to be as an institution, you need to understand the ethos and experience of a large group of people. Like you might choose a couple to tell the individual story, right? But you really need to understand this large group of people. And every strategic planning process that I have ever been involved in higher education looks pretty similar. There's, you know, a set of focus groups with

John Azoni (33:56.356)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (33:59.598)
There's some with faculty, there's some with administrators, there's some with students, there's some with alumni, there's a big survey that's launched, there's a like, what should we look at? And then ultimately the president is deciding what they wanna do anyway, and we create a strategic plan. And in many cases, we don't actually go back until the time it is to make the next strategic plan to think, are we living up to who we said we were going to become in that strategic plan? But even earlier than that, is who we said we're going to become.

John Azoni (34:11.577)
Yeah

John Azoni (34:23.671)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (34:28.758)
serving the people we say we're going to serve? Like, is there alignment there? And I am really energized by some institutions and organizations that are taking more of a holistic look into planning for these big institutional efforts and saying we need to know the marketplace. We need to know what's happening now. We need to know what was happening the last few years, and we need to listen to everybody.

and we need to be open to seeing what bubbles up as well as assessing if what we expected to be there is already there. And I think a really good way to describe this is an organization that serves a lot of higher education institutions. Their acronym is SCUP. Higher Ed loves an acronym. It stands for the Society for College and University Planners, right? So they serve the people who build all of

John Azoni (35:16.308)
Oh yeah.

Liz Gross (35:26.05)
is using social listening as a long-term strategy to help them center their work and their future initiatives and programs in the insights they get from current and future.

members, customers, whatever you want to call them. And they're using social listening to inform their strategic plan, to monitor its effectiveness, and over time, develop their business goals and tactics along the way. So this is an example where, of course, they're looking like, who talks about our organization and our events and what's happening there? But they're also looking at, how is the concept of all the various types of strategic and institutional planning talked about across higher ed? How is it covered in the media?

And then they think, well, where are the students showing up in this? Like ultimately, all of these plans are to serve students. So then what's some of the biggest issues, you know, facing higher education as we move into the next 10 and 15 years and it all coalesce around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. So they are going to use social listening research to understand.

How are people talking about DEIB in higher ed? What does it actually mean to different groups of people, administrators, students? And one of the questions, or two of the questions that they have that I think are most interesting are how do the first person narratives, so students, faculty, staff, talking about DEIB issues in higher ed, how do those compare to media narratives?

about this issue in higher ed. How does it compare to official campus narratives in higher education? Is there a gap? Is there a conflict? Is there opportunity? And what narratives are most strongly associated with positive or negative sentiment? Because these are the things that this organization needs to wrap its mind around and that its member campuses that it serves need to wrap its mind around. And they're taking this audience-centric approach

Liz Gross (37:33.622)
to guide an entire organization, which then helps guide dozens and hundreds of campuses around the country. And this can be translated to a campus as well, but it's thinking like everyone, most, many, not everyone is fully online, but lots of folks are sharing their experiences, their frustrations, their hopes, their failures, their associations, all of those things online all of the time.

John Azoni (37:53.1)
Yeah

Liz Gross (38:03.37)
it's related to who we serve, what we want to achieve, what our brand is, et cetera. Why would we leave all of that unexamined while we go send a survey to the easiest to access alumni and make our decisions based on that?

John Azoni (38:03.876)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (38:14.743)
Yeah.

John Azoni (38:20.49)
Yeah, wow, I don't have the answer to that.

Liz Gross (38:26.003)
I think it's an important question to consider and there's room for both, right? But it's a massively, massively insightful and valuable data set that's out there that is, it's hard to gather and understand and accomplish, but I mean, I built a team that does only that. And that's why we want to help higher ed be better and more audience centric.

John Azoni (38:30.328)
Yeah.

John Azoni (38:42.595)
Yeah.

John Azoni (38:47.246)
That's awesome. How can someone, and this is something I've always struggled with, because I've heard a lot about social listening over the years and stuff like that. And I know there's like social listening, like if you're on Hootsuite or something, you can do some, or I think, I don't know, a lot of these social media platforms have some sort of listening component, but like how can maybe a smaller school...

at least like dip their toes into this. Maybe they're not at the point where they're going to completely outsource this entire listening campaign, but maybe they want to start just kind of seeing what's out there. Like, where would they go?

Liz Gross (39:22.634)
Yeah, so a lot of what you could have in a platform like Hootsuite is what we would call social media monitoring. It's like where are we mentioned in things or where is our name show up like very clearly. And that is a place to start to see where things are out there. There are not a lot of free ways to do it anymore. The API's of most of these platforms have changed. It's also really high value intelligence. So that's a reason that it's not free anymore.

John Azoni (39:51.534)
For sure, yeah.

Liz Gross (39:52.498)
I would say a really good first start of just, I'm curious, I have no idea what's out there. Of course I think you should call me, but if you wanna be on your own. If you, right, if you wanna start really, really dipping your toes in on your own, two places where you should search.

John Azoni (40:03.034)
Oh, that's a given. Yes, call Liz. But if you don't have a phone for some reason and you can't call Liz.

Liz Gross (40:18.05)
for the name of your institution or a popular professor or your acronym or whatever that might be, would be Reddit and YouTube. And see what comes up that is particularly in the comments, but whatever comes up that's not officially affiliated with your institution. And you will likely find...

John Azoni (40:32.075)
Yes.

Liz Gross (40:40.342)
people comparing you to others, people talking about they're good, they're bad, they're ugly, they're wonderful experiences. You might find some student influencers you didn't know existed, but at least show you that there is something out there. And then if you wanna dip a little bit more, like that's just looking about your brand, right? You can also look at what are these things we want to be known for and what is out there about it. So...

where my personal and professional overlapped last week, I saw a VP of marketing communication talking about their institution's small private colleges work in regenerative agriculture. And I was like, ooh, that's exciting to me. I love this. But if you search for regenerative agriculture on YouTube, you will find...

that it is part of the fastest growing, one of the fastest growing niches on YouTube for content creators that are taking this like home setting, gardening, small scale, regenerative agriculture, mashing it up into a category. And it's full of hundreds if not thousands of individual content creators that are doing things and that's influencing how people think about regenerative egg now. So like a quick search in YouTube and Reddit will give you a glimpse.

John Azoni (41:53.571)
Yeah.

Liz Gross (41:59.346)
of what's out there. To get these, you know, consistent and high level institutional strategy informing insights, you should be looking at more than one site with more than just like a list of what comes back. But to get an idea of what's out there, that's a great place to start.

John Azoni (42:19.298)
I love Reddit. I mean, if I'm up in the middle of the night, which is usually at some point every night, I wake up in the middle of the night and then I'm scrolling Reddit for half an hour till I go back to sleep. But that's where I get so much of the real information. If I want a real comparison between two programs that I'm thinking about investing in or people's opinion about something, that's like my silver bullet is type in like.

you know, opinions on this whatever blah reddit, you know, and then it's, and then you go to the Reddit threads and I'm like, you get like a really more honest look at this is like what people are really saying versus a blog that's saying, you know, that has affiliate links, you know associated with, and then that's why they're comparing one or the other and, but yeah, that's, that's good. The regenerative ad.

Liz Gross (43:11.318)
Yeah, Reddit is like, it's where the vast majority of admissions intelligence is for higher ed. And I recently spoke about Reddit with college presidents and I was like, many of you might not know what Reddit is because I think the stat is something like folks under 30 or 30 times more likely to use Reddit than those over the age of 55. Like

John Azoni (43:32.281)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Gross (43:35.514)
It is a constant. We go search. We go try to figure out what's gonna happen there. I have an issue with my doctor. I go find the community of everyone else that's had that same issue and figure out what they're saying. Like that's our pure town square now.

John Azoni (43:50.018)
Yeah, yeah, there's so many good communities on Reddit, like that I follow things that I'm interested in that you can just, and then it's updated daily and just, yeah, just constant stream of information and conversation going on that you can stay abreast of that I really like. So, and then, you know, so there are stories everywhere. And one of the things you mentioned to me, you know, before we recorded was

those departments might not have all the resources to tell those stories. And the listening component could maybe help level the playing field with resources and things like that. And I thought that was really interesting. So talk about how that could work. So, I think that's a great question.

Liz Gross (44:36.906)
Yeah, so we spent a lot of time in this conversation talking about how you use social listening to listen externally to what is being said about you by a bunch of other people, but interestingly enough, one of the problems that it is being used to solve on a lot of campuses is internal and it's about how fragmented is our brand, who is telling stories aligned with the messages that we want, who is not, how many folks are trying to tell their stories.

And so often, you know, it starts with what someone will just refer to as a social media audit, right? They're like, let's go do an audit and see who's out there telling stuff about us. And we have seen audits go into four digits of numbers of accounts that are out there representing an institution. And you know, some of them are full time marketers, and some of them are a professor, and some of them are someone who has a

John Azoni (45:18.595)
Wow.

Liz Gross (45:29.234)
very different job and then they were like, but you're also in charge of social media for our department and you have to do our thing. So they, the resource allocation is very different. And what we like to do is look at all of that conversation and put it into two categories. We have, it's all owned conversation, right? It's coming from the institution. We'll call it owned core.

meaning those central marketing offices, which might be central marketing, might be development, might be admissions, might be athletics, right? These owned core folks who are expected to have marketing as a part of their job and have resources, whether it's human resources, financial resources, better cameras, more time, whatever that might be. That's the core owned conversation. And then we look at the owned institutional.

conversation, which is anyone else who's created a digital property to communicate on behalf of the institution. And then we look at the full like owned and earned conversation, we see where it's at. And we've seen some institutions where owned core, which is all those resources are, is 3% or less of the conversation about the institution. And then owned institutional, all of these others.

John Azoni (46:26.746)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (46:42.521)
Wow.

Liz Gross (46:46.474)
might be 15%, 20%, 25% and they're all doing it with you know paper clips and duct tape and trying to figure out what's going on. So often one of the first things that will help our partners do is get their own house in order right? So we'll do the audit but we'll also look at what are these folks posting, is it aligned thematically,

John Azoni (46:55.776)
Hehehe

Liz Gross (47:10.61)
Are they posting? Are these dead properties that folks aren't going to be able to help with? And then figure out how can we support the people who have really good intentions of telling stories? And then how can we support those who just don't have time to do it but need a story told every once in a while, perhaps from a different platform? And a really good example of doing this recently, and I love to shout this woman out whenever I can.

Rachel Plutman at the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith, has been thinking about how do I get my hands around this and for them it's very much like lots of good intentions but not a lot of resources in all these other places. So did an audit, did an assessment, figured out where the brand was being diluted unintentionally and then invited a lot of those account holders together to talk about brand equity and brand alignment and...

how their work is contributing to the overall voice of the institution and the representation of campus. And then they'll figure out like what accounts have the right resources and the right kind of strategic orientation to keep representing the brand and which ones could be better represented through collaboration with the offices who have that account. And the ultimate goal then is a cohesive storytelling approach on digital.

that's aligned with the strategic plan of who the campus wants to be. And that is something that she'll be able to talk about quantitatively and qualitatively. When a trustee asks, like, what stories are we telling and do they matter? She can have all of that at her fingertips because listening has been core to figuring out just like what's going on in our space as well as outside of us.

John Azoni (48:41.98)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (48:49.078)
That's really interesting. Just, I mean, what you said about the internal core, it's like 3% of, you know, the, the conversation. And I think a lot and, you know, we can, um, kind of connect that to like the need to, the need to kind of get out of the marketing office and talk to other stakeholders, um, who are on the ground level with students and have maybe a platform.

to understand what the brand is about, understand what the marketing objectives are, and that really helps the story submissions, like finding the right kinds of stories. I've said, we've said this a bunch of times on this podcast, but if you go, if you were to say, hey, we're marketing team, hey, we're looking for stories, and you reach out to professors and things like that, they don't know what you need, and they're not aligned on the...

the conversation that you want to have and the stories you want to tell. So they might just pick stories that's like, hey, I had a great experience with this school and that kind of thing. But when they're really aligned on what really makes a good story, maybe a journey, someone having a journey that they've gone through or just something unique, that's so valuable and it's so valuable to rope all of those stakeholders into the marketing conversation,

Yeah, it's interesting to think about like, you know, market, the marketing team is not the only one amplifying, you know, amplifying the voice of the school.

Liz Gross (50:24.006)
Right. And often when you do that sort of a look at like what's inside the house, you'll find that there are some surprise, excellent storytellers, and they could be student organizations that you didn't know you could be leveraging.

John Azoni (50:35.575)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Cool, yeah. All right, so final thoughts. What would be main takeaways here for people listening?

Liz Gross (50:50.766)
I think you can.

John Azoni (50:51.146)
If you had to pick like, I don't know, two or three or so.

Liz Gross (50:54.05)
Yeah, so I mean, I'll go back to what I said at the beginning, right? Like social listening gives you access to the world's largest, always on focus group that you can search for. Whatever is strategically important to your institution and allows you to center your audience. And I have been talking about this for six years now. And I think it is time for higher ed to recognize that it it's not a social media thing.

Right? Social listening is about serving your market. It's about anticipating rather than reacting. It's about understanding alignment between institutions and the people it is meant to serve or could be serving in the future. It's not how do I get a better social media account? It's how do I be a more sustainable and centered institution that meets the needs of the marketplace I'm trying to serve? And I don't think we can ignore that anymore.

John Azoni (51:22.906)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (51:52.286)
Absolutely. Wow, this has been just an awesome conversation. I've learned a lot. That's, you know, part of why I have this podcast is like the free consulting, you know. So, yeah, I mean, so tell people where can they connect with you? How can they connect with Campus Sonar? That kind of stuff.

Liz Gross (52:02.041)
Hahahaha

Liz Gross (52:11.37)
Yeah, absolutely. So Campus Sonar is at campussonar.com. I strongly recommend subscribing to our monthly newsletter. We'll actually send two emails a month. One is a letter directly from me and then one is some insights from my team and that's a way to get an idea of what are we thinking, what's coming, what's next. I am on most platforms as Lizgross144 because 144 is a dozen dozen, which is a gross.

and I needed to find a way to figure that out. Yeah, so if you ever ordered from Oriental Trading Company back in the day, like I did in student activities, you had to order things by the gross, and it was a package of 144. So Lizgross144 on, I guess it's called X now, Instagram and Blue Sky, and then I'm really active on LinkedIn. So slash Lizgross on LinkedIn. No numbers on that one.

John Azoni (52:41.425)
gross.

John Azoni (52:52.034)
I've never heard of that. All right, cool.

John Azoni (53:07.35)
Yeah, awesome. Cool. Well, thank you so much for being here. This was a wonderful conversation. Yeah, this has been great.

Liz Gross (53:13.846)
Great, thanks so much, John.