Enhancing the social media presence of the Lasallian Student Ambassadors for Graduate Education (SAGE)

• Main Author: Mallari, Grazielle A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2020
• Subjects: Self-help groups—Public relations; Graduate students —Societies, etc.—Public relations; Social media in education; Marketing
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6196; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/13268/viewcontent/Mallari_Grazielle_11695242_1Edited.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

This action research explored various ways to enhance the social media presence of a student support group Facebook page. With the help of Guo & Saxton’s (2017) framework on the factors affecting the level of attention in social media, the researcher together with her collaborators started the first cycle of action research by enriching their communication strategy. This is by increasing the frequency of the post, setting the ideal time of the postings, making the post more visual by using photos or videos to capture the audience’s attention, as well as targeting the posts to a direct audience. The result of the first cycle was indeed promising. The level of reach and engagement increased drastically, however, it does not translate to an increase in the group page’s followers – which is the main goal of this action research. Using the action research tools in the first-person, second-person, and third-person inquiry, the researcher was able to identify the root cause of the problem – that it is not clear to the graduate students on what the group is all about. With this, the second cycle in this action research focused on improving the group page’s network characteristics, profile and description. This was done by restructuring the Facebook page to make the purpose of the group more visible and understandable. It was also designed to make it clear what the acronym of the group is all about. As a result, the group’s percentage of followers compared to the total number of graduate students increased which will eventually help the group to increase the student participation rate in their events.