While a majority of my time at Newhouse was spent honing my journalistic skills, I also put effort into increasing my influence on Twitter. Prior to entering grad school, I did not consider this to be important. However, I discovered that an active, influential Twitter is a journalistic tool that is just as powerful as knowing how to conduct a good interview or edit a story.
Since the first day of fall semester, a 91 day period, my Twitter grew from 243 to 271 follows, a 28 follower increase. While this wasn’t as many followers as I had hoped for, I discovered that I had a high engagement rate with the followers that I do have. In this time period, I earned 12.7 thousand impressions, a much higher number than expected. This equated to 140 impressions per day, with a 2.8% engagement rate. In addition, I earned 65 link clinks per day, 118 likes and 19 replies.
My “top tweet,” according to Twitter Analytics, was one using the class hashtag #NHSmtp at the start of the semester. It gained 685 impressions, 26 engagements and had a 2.3 engagement rate.
Today’s #followfriday goes to the women behind the social media of @Fredonia_Leader – @naomiblynch @meggyguat and @xoSLFuller #NHsmtp
— Maggie Gilroy (@MaggieGilroy) September 5, 2015
On reflection, my future Twitter activity should focus on growing followers while continuing to maintain and increase my engagement rate. However, having awareness of how to calculate numbers will be valuable to show to my future employers — despite how many followers I have gained.