When I was in high school, I took a geometry class. Back then, scientific calculators were all the rage. So it was frustrating when my geometry teacher kept forcing us to learn how to calculate things manually.

At @CampusSonar, I think about him all the time. Yup, it's time.

"Why can't we just use the calculator?" we would ask.

And without fail, he would reply, "Garbage in, garbage out."

In essence, my teacher understood that if we entered the wrong information into the calculator, our answers were going to be wrong, even if the math was right.

So he made it his mission that his students would understand the formulas, even if they relied on calculators to do the heavy lifting.

We hated him for it, of course. Most of us were young and lazy. But looking back on that experience, he was teaching us such a valuable lesson.

And that lesson is, machines and software are helpful. But they're only as valuable as the person using them. Human expertise is still the differentiator. Software, for all its progress, can't overcome poor inputs.

Take a look at this chart featuring conversation volume from the past 30 days for a college in New England.

If you're a marketing director at that college, that chart probably has you feeling excited. Conversation is good! This must be related to admissions decisions. Or a feel-good story.

In reality, a massive portion of that conversation on April 9th is irrelevant. It's noise.

Do you remember what happened on April 9th? That's right, Prince Philip died. And in the surge of mentions related to his death, this college saw a misleading spike in conversations.

If you're in marketing, you now have two (bad) options.

1. Work with wonky data (ill-advised)
2. Manually delete irrelevant mentions. (inefficient)

To be clear, the software I'm using is really good. It's using advanced (and rapidly improving) artificial intelligence to collect its data.

But it still makes mistakes. And because of that, you're occasionally left with insights built on poor data.

"Garbage in, garbage out."

And this is the value proposition of Campus Sonar. Because you aren't buying software with Campus Sonar. You're buying human expertise. More specifically, that of experienced data analysts and strategists.

People who understand how to write advanced boolean queries and rules that capture the highest level of relevant conversation while filtering out noise like Prince Philip.

People who know how to write rules that code conversation for strategic priorities.

People who know how to filter out and separate athletics conversation.

People who can spot that irrelevancy caused by the death of a member of the royal family and write a query that strips that conversation from your data set before you ever see a customized insights report.

Lately, I've talked to people who fit into 1 of 2 camps:

1. People tired of the limitations caused by relying on software alone.
2. People who think software alone will be "enough to get by."

People in camp 2 usually end up in camp 1.

"Garbage in, garbage out."

/end