How To Personalize Course Delivery And Increase Alumni Engagement
Business programs live or die long-term based on the results they see after learners have left their programs. Grads get hired, or increasingly get busy hiring others for their fast-growth startups – and that’s where the bragging rights begin. Alumni engagement for business schools with those walking success stories translates into large endowments and boosted brand at a time of heightened competition.
“When you ask people like me (business education administrators) about the ‘new’ way to do that alumni engagement, the conversation soon turns to LinkedIn Groups,” says one of our business education clients. “But as much as we’ve tried to make it work, results are hard to measure.”
Don’t get me wrong; LinkedIn can be an amazing tool for students to connect, network and help each other seek opportunities. The problem is essentially one of leading a horse to water and getting them to drink when you want them to.
Many alumni LinkedIn group administrators struggle to get any engagement at all; they have trouble ensuring that the groups are even made up of actual alumni rather than business mavens addicted to online networking; and ultimately, there’s no real link between the people who are participating on LinkedIn groups and their performance in the business world or their contributions as alumni.
The problem with LinkedIn Group management for universities and colleges goes to the usual problem with opt-in programs: getting people to opt in. Indeed, even closing in on 60 percent participation for alumni in a given college LinkedIn Group seems to be a challenge. Of 100 US colleges, University of Notre Dame topped the rankings with just 57 percent alumni participation in their LinkedIn Group (as measured just by being a member, not necessarily any actual engagement). The same research suggests strongly that endowment giving rates are tied LinkedIn engagement in ways we may not fully understand – but which colleges can certainly benefit from financially.
With no change to how alumni engagement is managed, opt-in rates are always going to be less than 100 percent; often, administrators struggle to get into the double digits. That’s just to get people to sign up; engagement is a whole other story. Unless learners are also top-ranked social media mavens, they are typically too busy to get involved in a meaningful way in the Group, much less as active participants with their school after they graduate.
But what if business learners could be linked together instantly, as soon as they’re onboarded into a course at their college or university? That seems like a no-brainer – and it’s something Stekio can help with.
Learn how Stekio onboards students automatically connecting them on LinkedIn
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