SPOTIFY FOR PODCASTERS IS OFFICIALLY HERE: With 70 million monthly podcast listeners across the U.S., there’s no doubt podcast-hosting platforms like Spotify sit on a gold mine of user data. Recently, Spotify announced it would be taking its Podcasters dashboard out of beta and into the mainstream, officially giving podcasters listener data that is likely the most detailed of any other podcast platform on the market. From listeners’ music tastes, to age, gender, location, and even podcast engagement statistics, Spotify plans to share these metrics with podcasters through a dashboard, all for free.
Why you should care: If you haven’t jumped on the podcast bandwagon yet, you should. In higher education, podcasts provide great opportunities to deliver fresh, timely content and stand out as a thought leader in subject matter related to your programs. If you need another reason to start a podcast, Spotify just gave it to you. Reporting metrics on podcasts can help enrollment marketers reach and create better target audiences (think demographics, music preferences), and even potentially open up advertising opportunities.
3 BRING-YOUR-OWN-DATA (BYOD) TO TWITTER: The social media platform recently announced it will no longer allow businesses to use third-party data sources offered by Twitter for ad targeting. Twitter follows Facebook after its removal of third-party data integration sources in 2018. Now, businesses will need to use their own lists of contacts (known as “first-party” data sets) via a Twitter API to target users on the platform.
Why you should care: Enrollment marketers advertising on Twitter will now have to use their own data sources and student lists to advertise on the platform. While this step seems to be Twitter’s fearful response to data privacy concerns, it will ultimately help enrollment marketers focus their time, attention, and dollars on ads targeted to people who are more likely to engage with them. Twitter’s change does, however, pose some challenges for advertisers looking to attract brand new contacts.
LINKEDIN-LIVE — IS IT A FIT FOR YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY?: LinkedIn Live allows an organization’s base of LinkedIn followers to live-stream conferences, meetings, public announcements or events in real-time no matter their location. Real-time engagement can create powerful connections with leads, clients, and prospects without the need for them to attend an event in person. Although still in Beta, popular brands like Cisco, National Geographic, and Workday have already kicked the tires on LinkedIn Live.
Why you should care: Enrollment marketers will find ample opportunities with LinkedIn Live to connect with prospects — including live-streaming enrollment events or graduate/career fairs, showcasing a new program offering, or even starting a weekly live video series highlighting current students. On average, live broadcasters generate 7x more reactions and 24x more comments on live streams than regular video. LinkedIn Live can help teams better engage with the prospective students who prefer to consume content on LinkedIn.