Can New Online Rankings Really Measure Colleges’ Brand Strength? Unlikely, Experts Say
By Kathryn Masterson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2011
For a college, what’s the value of a tweet? Or a Facebook item and mention on a blog?
In recent months, a handful of companies have introduced rankings that claim to calculate a college’s brand value or online influence by looking at the attention an institution receives online. One ranking found that the University of Wisconsin at Madison has the strongest brand equity among universities, based on its number of mentions across the Internet. Another named Stanford University the most influential college on Twitter.
Marketing experts expect the number of online rankings like these to grow, especially because there’s no single way to quantify a college’s success in online marketing. The question is: Based on the formulas used in the calculations, do rankings actually tell colleges anything useful?
Not really, marketing experts and college leaders say. While rankings such as Klout’s college Twitter analysis and Global Language Monitor’s TrendTopper MediaBuzz—two of those announced in recent weeks—are interesting, they capture a sliver of what colleges are trying to do with their marketing efforts. And they don’t get at what colleges really want to know: whether their brand messages are reaching the people they’re going after.
Michael Stoner, president of mStoner, a Chicago-based communications firm, is skeptical that any such ranking has much meaning and value for colleges. While titillating, he says, “I don’t think it really tells us anything.”
Colleges and marketers are just starting to try to understand how to measure the success of their social-media efforts, says Mr. Stoner. Many are counting “touches”—the number of Twitter followers, the hits on a Web site, the number of friends or comments on a Facebook page. The more difficult question, he says, is, What do these measurements mean? Do tweets, blog posts, and Facebook “likes” translate into someone choosing your college, recommending it to a friend, attending an alumni event, or making a donation?
Internet Buzz
According to Global Language Monitor, a company in Austin, Tex., that tracks language usage on the Internet including the most-used words of the year, and has ranked colleges for three years, the quantity of online mentions can determine the strength of a college’s market position in the market.
Based on the company’s calculations, the University of Wisconsin at Madison had the strongest brand equity last year, based on the number of times its name was mentioned on the Internet, including blogs, social media, and newspapers. The methodology for the company’s TrendTopper analysis is relatively uncomplicated—the rating looks only at the raw number of mentions an institution gets and how that number changes over time, regardless of whether those mentions appear on the front page of The New York Times or inside a small-town newspaper. It also does not differentiate between positive mentions and negatives.
The lack of nuance doesn’t bother Paul JJ Payack, president of the company. He argues that straightforward counting makes his rankings simple to use and more objective than more-established rankings such as U.S. News, which factors in opinions from other colleges and guidance counselors. Those rankings can be “clubby” and favor insiders, he says, while his system is more democratic, spanning a wider range of sources and showing the true value of a college’s brand.
“It really does tell you how you’re conversing with the world at large,” Mr. Payack says.
He has sold only about 80 of the e-books that list the rankings since their release, in January, and last week cut the price from $19.97 to $9.97. He says prospective students and parents could find the rankings useful if they’re deciding between two colleges that vary in price but have relatively equal brand rankings.
Expensive Options
The idea that such a ranking should be used in a college search is absurd, says Elizabeth Scarborough, chief executive of SimpsonScarborough, a higher-education marketing and branding firm. “I don’t even think they’re relevant to prospective students—they’re a distraction more than anything else,” she says.
TrendTopper isn’t a measure of a college’s particular fit for students, or even of brand value, Ms. Scarborough says. Instead, the ratings demonstrate how good a college’s media-relations department is at getting the institution’s name out.
There are better ways to measure brand strength, but they’re much more expensive, Ms. Scarborough says. Her firm’s research, which can cost $50,000 to $400,000, includes surveys of key audiences, such as prospective students, alumni, and business and community leaders, to find out their perceptions of the institution. Several years later, the surveys are redone to see what changes in opinions and attitudes have occurred.
At American University, which recently started a “Wonk” branding campaign, monitoring social-media usage is a good short-term technique for testing the effectiveness of a campaign, says Terry Flannery, executive director of university communications and marketing. For example, on the day it started the campaign, American counted 135 Twitter mentions that used the “Wonk” hashtag in 12 hours (compared with about 10 to 20 that use the “AmericanU” hashtag on a regular day) and 4,100 visits to the “Wonk” Web site in the campaign’s first week. But long term, those kind of numbers don’t tell whether perceptions were changed by the campaign, or if the loyalty of alumni was strengthened. “That would not be something we’d hang our hats on by itself,” Ms. Flannery says. “I’d use it in the mix, but I wouldn’t be justifying my budget for next year on it.”
American’s campaign gained both praise and criticism, the latter from students who found “Wonk” silly or strange. Ms. Flannery says the university expected that range of reactions and has spent time explaining to people why it’s a good label for the institution and those associated with it.
Still, it isn’t enough to just generate buzz, says Larry D. Lauer, vice chancellor for government affairs at Texas Christian University and a marketing expert. Colleges need to go after specific audiences they want to reach. A win in the Rose Bowl earned the Horned Frogs positive media attention. But whether that helps advance the university in its goals depends on what Texas Christian does with that open door.
“We need to walk through it and tell the rest of the story,” Mr. Lauer says.
Measuring Clout
Ian Hsu, director of Internet media outreach for Stanford, which was named No. 1 in the recent Klout rankings, says he looks at outside companies’ rankings methodology. (Klout, for example, measures influence through a Twitter user’s number of followers compared with the number the user follows, messages that are retweeted, and lists a Twitter user is included on.) But rankings aren’t his main considerations when he’s planning strategy for Stanford’s approach on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.
“We don’t try to go out of our way to influence these rankings,” Mr. Hsu says.
Rather, he looks at online surveys that Stanford conducts to try to get at whether its social-media outreach matches its core goals and objectives. Are more people seeing that the university is creating the next generation of leaders, that Stanford faculty are experts in their fields, and that the university is making a difference in solving world problems? Do alumni feel connected to the community?
To the extent he can understand whether outreach efforts are moving perceptions on those questions, Mr. Hsu says, that’s the most useful information. And such research can sometimes be done inexpensively with in-house online surveys.
Given how Twitter followers and Facebook friends can be quantified, he expects more companies to come forward with rankings. As that happens, he recommends that colleges don’t get too wrapped up in them. “It can be very tempting to chase after every ranking or goal that third parties are trying to sell,” Mr. Hsu says. Instead, colleges should “really understand what you’re trying to accomplish” and go after that.
Looking for Data
Dennis Berkey, president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, admits paying attention to the new rankings, including Klout and TrendTopper. As a college, you want to be mentioned, he says. And if you find out no one’s talking about your institution, you have a problem.
But without knowing more about the methodology behind the rankings and what kind of impression is created when people hear about his college in various media, there isn’t much he can—or would­—do with that information.
Worcester recently hired consultants to do research for a branding campaign, including surveys about the perceptions of the college held by students, peer institutions, and institutions that award research grants. Mr. Berkey wants to know if people are aware of the kinds of scientific research on his campus, or that Worcester wants its students to use their engineering and math skills to solve world problems. Over the course of several years, the institution is likely to spend millions of dollars on marketing research and athe branding campaign that will come from that work.
“I want to be very certain I have full, complete answers to questions before I move,” Mr. Berkey says. “We’re engineers. We want to see the data.”