“I Know Everything About Social Media”

Posted on by Ellen Greene

… or so I thought.

Over the course of this semester, I’ve been able to learn the tricks of the trade and apply them in real-life executions on my social media accounts. While much of the traditional “learning” was done in the classroom, I also gained a lot of insight from my hands-on trials and successes. As someone who thought they knew everything about Twitter beforehand, trying out new applications and strategies forced me out of my comfort zone within the platform, and helped me grow my overall audience.

Here, I’ve curated a list of my Top Ten Posts this semester and analyzed what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes the best way to learn is just trial and error, and learning from your experiences.

Top Posts

1. This is one of my favorite tweets I’ve posted, mostly just because it’s ridiculous and that it’s based off of a true experience (unfortunately, for my financial situation). The various pictures I added created visual interest and just made the underlying self-deprecating joke a little more over-the-top in the best way for Twitter. This tweet garnered 1,865 impressions and was my top performing tweet of the semester. It received close to 400 engagements, which I think was in-part because people were clicking on the individual pictures within the collage. Nonetheless, I’m very happy with the performance of this tweet with an engagement rate of 21.1%. I think my favorite thing about this tweet was that it came very naturally, it was just a funny coincidence I noticed on a cold winter day between classes– I never thought it would have the success rate that it did.

2. This is the tweet I posted to promote my meme. At this point, I hadn’t tweeted out the Webcard yet, but just tweeted this as a “trial” to see how the meme would perform on a smaller scale within my follower-base. I was surprised and very pleased with the engagement that it received, bringing in 1,400+ impressions and 156 engagements, in addition to 5 retweets, 17 likes, and 13 profile clicks. I think this tweet performed so well because of its relevancy to college students, which makes up the majority of my followers. This, in addition to the fact that it’s not often that you see someone you know make their own original meme. I think that alone helped increase the engagement rates as a way to “support” someone for doing something that not many people do on their personal accounts.

3. Next is something I quote tweeted from Professor Grygiel’s appearance on CBSN Live during the Zuckerberg testimony. This tweet received over 850 impressions and 16 total engagements. I think that this tweet received so many impressions because it was a quote tweet which allowed me to piggy-back off of the other user’s follower-base. But, I think it received a lack of engagement because I didn’t add any new media to the tweet. I think that in the future, if I want a quote tweet to garner more engagement, it would need to be a more witty/interesting response, and bring in other types of media or hashtags. But, I really enjoyed the simplicity and bluntness of this tweet.

4. This was a live tweet during the Oscars, which received 764 impressions and 30 total engagements. I think that this tweet was so successful because it was very timely and relevant, since I was live-tweeting. I think that bringing in rich media like the gif caught the eyes of more people as well, and helped bring in more engagement. Like my first tweet, this tweet was created from my own experience, watching the Oscars and obsessing over how well-crafted each tribute montage was. I think that picking up on a small detail during such a large-scale event can help differentiate yourself in the conversation and bring a unique voice to the timeline– which helps boost the success of your tweet.

5. Next, is a tweet from a class assignment where we discussed social media activism and selected a cause to advocate for in a tweet. I think the quote tweet method was executed better than my previous one above by bringing in an emoji and an additional hashtag. Overall this tweet garnered over 680 impressions and 6 total engagements. I think the low engagement count could be because I didn’t select an interesting enough tweet to quote or that this is simply a cause that doesn’t grab the attention of my audience. Perhaps if I tweeted a more “shocking” fact or included richer media, it would have resonated more.

6. This next tweet was another live tweet, shared during the Zuckerberg testimony (#NHsmc hashtag replied in). This tweet received 830 impressions and 28 total engagements. Again, I think that live tweeting adds so much relevancy to your content that its performance will be boosted. I was able to bring in a larger audience especially by tying in the #ZuckerbergTestimony hashtag. The Zuckerberg testimony was slightly difficult to live tweet because of the lack of an overarching hashtag to jump onto. I did my best with what I was seeing on my feed, and chose to go with #ZuckerbergTestimony, which luckily ended up being one of the key hashtags used to unify tweets on this topic.

7. Below is another successful live tweet from the Zuckerberg testimony, which received 447 impressions and 20 total engagements. For this one, I used a different strategy, where I took a standout quote that resonated with me while watching, and added a screenshot of the scene as it was happening. In addition, I tagged Mr. Cramer in the hopes that he would engage with the tweet as well (unfortunately, he didn’t). I think this tweet could have been improved if I had taken a clip of video from the encounter, rather than just a static photo, but unfortunately I didn’t know how to best execute that while maintaining quality of the picture and avoiding the violation of any copyright laws.

8. Here, I tested out my skills on Instagram. This picture was from Spring Break, where I ordered a Florida Keys specialty: a blackened grouper sandwich. This specific meal has a bit of a cult following in South Florida, so I thought I could bring in some people from that audience to engage with the post. To bring in as many people as possible, I tagged the location of the historic restaurant and added their handle in my caption. In addition to this, I added the hashtags “#foodie”– for the large following behind that hashtag on Instagram, “#cudjoekey” for the specific community I was visiting, “#floridakeys” for a more general appeal, as well as the class hashtag.

9. My next Instagram post played with a #WishICouldGoBackWednesday hashtag, with rich video media. I tried to bring in an audience by tagging the location of the brewery that hosted the concert, in addition to tagging the handle of the band that was performing. I think I could have improved this post by using a better quality video and adding more concert/music-specific hashtags.

10. Last but not least, at #10, we have one of the first assigned tweets I posted at the beginning of the semester. I still really like this idea of “social media IRL”, and the creativity behind it is what helped it make my Top Ten list. Overall, it received 542 impressions and 93 total engagements. This assignment forced me to think about social media from a different perspective, and may have been one of my favorite assignments all year because of its simplicity. One way I could have executed this better is by doing a thread of several “social media IRL” tweets, featuring different interesting examples.

 

Overall, I increased my Twitter following by 5, finishing the semester at 931 followers. Although I did gain more than 5 followers over the course of the semester, I had to shift my Twitter from more-personal to more-professional, which caused a few followers from my high school days to drop off. But, by shifting towards a more professional tone, I increased my Klout score by 1 point. I hope to continue to apply the skills I learned this semester by continuing my Twitter growth and developing an authentic tone and voice.

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