Funding Cuts and Fading Relevance? Take Your Brand’s Emotional Temperature

Summer can offer a much-needed pause for many workforce and education organizations. With the usual hustle temporarily on hold, there’s finally space to step back and reflect, especially in today’s uncertain environment where funding cuts are rampant. The million-dollar question in today’s workforce and education space is: Does your brand have relevance, value, and impact in the eyes of your many target audiences? Are people enthusiastic about your mission, raising concerns, or simply unaware that you even exist? If you’re not sure, maybe it’s time for a brand check-up.

From funders and policymakers to students, job seekers, employers, and community partners, your mission requires ongoing, effective communication with a wide range of audiences. Each of these groups has distinct priorities, communicates differently, and engages with your brand in various ways through a multitude of communication channels. 

Is your messaging resonating with students exploring career pathways or job seekers navigating training options? Do employers view your programs as strategic talent solutions? Are funders and decision-makers clear on your impact or does funding continue to dwindle? Summer offers the perfect window to assess how your brand truly is being perceived across all of these relationships.

A brand sentiment analysis can uncover valuable insights—helping you strengthen engagement, sharpen messaging, understand the right communication channels to use, and step into the busy fall season with clarity and confidence.

What Is A Brand Sentiment Analysis? The Ultimate Brand Check-Up

Brand sentiment goes far beyond likes, shares, and website traffic. It’s about understanding the emotional tone people associate with your organization when they engage with your brand across digital platforms. Whether you’re leading a workforce initiative, running a community college campaign, or coordinating outreach for an adult education program, knowing how people feel about your mission and organization is essential for long-term impact.

According to Hootsuite, brand sentiment analysis uses AI to interpret language in comments, mentions, and messages to determine whether they carry positive, negative, or neutral emotion. Think of it as taking the emotional temperature of your brand—are people enthusiastic about your mission, raising concerns, or simply unaware you exist?

But sentiment analysis goes beyond social media. It encompasses the full digital ecosystem: articles covering your programs, blogs mentioning your efforts, forum discussions, and even gaps in visibility where your organization should be part of the conversation. Whether you’re a workforce or education organization, the real insight often comes from seeing where your brand does—or doesn’t—show up in key digital spaces.

Why Sentiment Analysis Matters for Mission-Driven Organizations

Workforce and education organizations are in the people business. The mission is driven by elevating lives and companies in your community. Tracking brand sentiment isn’t just a marketing exercise. For mission-driven organizations that must earn the trust of job seekers, students, employers, partners, funders, and policymakers, it’s a strategic necessity.

According to Sprinklr, sentiment analysis offers early warning signs of communications gaps or public perception issues. It also helps organizations refine how they speak to different audiences and build stronger connections. For example, if learners are confused about how to enroll in a training program, or if employers feel unclear about the value of a partnership, that’s not just a communications issue—it’s a missed opportunity to fulfill your mission and expand market penetration.

However, the process requires care. Sprinklr warns that inaccurate or incomplete data—caused by things like unfiltered content, industry jargon, or misspelled keywords—can lead to misleading conclusions. This makes human oversight essential. Context matters deeply in both workforce and education spaces, where specialized language and nuanced messaging often shape public perception and understanding.

Good sentiment data tells two stories:

• Quantitative data shows what people are saying—mention volume, topic trends, and visibility across platforms.
• Qualitative data shows how they’re saying it—whether employers are excited by new partnerships, or students are unsure where to start.

Together, these insights help organizations craft messaging that truly resonates—and drives action.

Case Study: How SkillsUSA Used Sentiment Analysis to Strengthen Its Brand Strategy

Full Capacity Marketing (FCM) recently partnered with SkillsUSA, a national career and technical student organization, to uncover how their brand was perceived across different audiences and digital platforms. Like many workforce and education organizations, SkillsUSA faced the challenge of needing to communicate its value to students, educators, employers, and policymakers—all at once.

The objective was three-fold:

1. Understand how SkillsUSA’s brand messaging was landing across platforms.
2. Compare this perception against similar organizations in the workforce and technical education space.
3. Use the research to help reposition the organization and highlight its unique value proposition. 

The Strategic Approach: Combining Data with Human Insight

In May 2024, FCM was engaged to conduct a baseline brand sentiment report for SkillsUSA. The analysis included:

Media Monitoring via Meltwater Explore: Using AI-powered search terms, FCM tracked digital conversations related to SkillsUSA, its competitors, and broader workforce development topics, collecting data from blogs, social media (Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube), news outlets, and industry publications.

Communications Audit: FCM analyzed SkillsUSA’s website, reports, social channels, and publications—alongside competitor content—to evaluate message clarity, consistency, and resonance.

On-the-Ground Interviews: At the 2024 National Leadership & Skills Conference (NLSC), FCM gathered qualitative insights from students and state chapter leaders to add depth to the data and validate emotional tone.

Key Findings: Visibility, Gaps, and Audience Perceptions

The sentiment analysis revealed both significant strengths and clear opportunities for growth in how SkillsUSA’s messaging appears online. While the organization demonstrated solid presence around major events like NLSC, there were missed opportunities in day-to-day digital engagement, particularly around messaging clarity, consistency, and audience-specific targeting.

Competitor organizations showed stronger visibility in several keyword areas, highlighting the need to better position SkillsUSA as a leader in workforce readiness and technical education. The analysis also revealed gaps between how different audience segments perceived and engaged with SkillsUSA’s mission.

From Insight to Action: How Sentiment Data Drove Strategic Change

The insights gained from the brand sentiment analysis directly influenced the next phase of SkillsUSA’s communications planning, providing a roadmap for more effective audience engagement:

Tailored Messaging Recommendations: Designed to bridge perception gaps and amplify key brand values across different audience segments.

Target Audience Personas: Built using sentiment trends, keyword behaviors, and qualitative feedback to guide future outreach strategies for students, educators, employers, and other stakeholders.

Strategic Marketing & Communications (MarCom) Guidance: A comprehensive blueprint to ensure consistent messaging across all platforms and channels while maintaining relevance for each audience group.

Transform Your Organization’s Brand Strategy This Summer

Summer offers more than a break in programming—it’s a chance to reflect, realign, and make intentional choices about how your brand is showing up in the world. For both workforce and education organizations, brand sentiment analysis provides a meaningful way to understand public perception, identify messaging blind spots, and build trust with the audiences who matter most.

Whether you’re preparing for fall program launches, the next grant cycle, or long-term reputation building, sentiment data gives you the power to act with clarity—and connect with confidence.

Set up a consultation with us to help you understand how brand sentiment can support your mission. 

Stay tuned for our follow-up blog this November, where we’ll dive deeper into how audience personas, built from sentiment data, can shape even more targeted and effective communications for workforce and education organizations.

Image Source: Booknetic