Facilitation of alumni engagement through social media

Abstract

This master’s thesis study is an explanatory study aiming to formulate a strategy implementation plan for alumni engagement through social media communication for Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences Alumni network. The Haaga-Helia Alumni network currently often loses the contact to international graduates without first being able to involve them in the alumni activities. The network, however, would have a lot to gain from having active alumni, as well as a lot to offer to the alumni in terms of career advancement and professional development. The Haaga-Helia Alumni network currently contacts the alumni with an email system, but only approximately 30 % of the recipients currently read the monthly newsletter. As this communication is only one-directional and the response rate is quite low, other alternatives must be considered. This study will investigate how the alumni network should exist in social media in order to better engage especially the international alumni. The study also clarifies the purpose of the Haaga-Helia Alumni network based on the study results in co-operation with the Haaga-Helia Alumni. Haaga-Helia Alumni’s action plan and SWOT analysis have been used as the basic assumptions and statistical data has been collected from admissions registers of Haaga-Helia as well as from the alumni network registers. The main data collection was a survey that was issued to the Haaga-Helia alumni and students. The conceptual framework is based on the basic model of strategic management, which gives frames to what is being done, and the honeycomb framework of social networking, which guides how it should be done. Professional literature regarding engagement and alumni were used to support these frames from the practical perspective. The survey was answered by 557 respondents of whom 20 % originally are from outside of Finland. The distribution of countries was very wide, which is why this survey did not give any results concerning particular countries. Furthermore, there collected data indicated strong correlation between the responses from the Finnish and international students, which could indicate that the all the alumni might respond similarly to any improvement actions, although the data itself suffers from some limitations thus making the conclusions somewhat unreliable. As a result of the study, the alumni network was recommended to carry out monthly virtual activities, such as seminars, blog posts and online interaction within professional themes to keep the interest alive. Additionally creating a Facebook page could be considered. Given that the vast majority of the student respondents were international students and that the alumni network have extremely limited resources available, some general recommendations outside the scope of this study to focus the efforts on increased engagement of the students who effectively will become – more likely still engaged – alumni. While the collected data contain some limitations, overall the results can be considered valid in terms of providing information for development of the alumni activities in general.