@AsMichelleSaid: A Twitter Journey of Influence Growth

Posted on by Michelle Hernandez

PART 1: INFLUENCE

Even before taking this course, I was always fascinated by the way Twitter works and all it has to offer as a platform. Over the past four months I have been able to truly learn the ins and outs of the platform’s affordances and how to use these capabilities to better my personal and a professional social media presence. Here are my benchmarks stats:

  • Start Followers: 266
    End Followers: 305
  • Start Klout: 37
    End Klout: 35

I was able to gain 14% of my follower base, which is more than I had been able to do over the past couple of years. Additionally, although my klout score did drop by two, I believe I can attribute this to the fact that I tweeted less towards the end of the semester. Perhaps the biggest three takeaways I gained were the following:

  1. Rich Media is Your Best Friend – As will become more evident in part two of this blog, the use of rich media is a fun yet powerful tool when trying to build an audience and create engagement within a post. Whether it be by posting a Twitter Collage, video, or gif, accompanying the written content with a visual creates more excitement and draws your followers in.
  2. Put a Ring on Engagement – Yes, you want your followers to engage with your tweets, but what is truly going to help is the reciprocity of those engagements. In order to build a follower base you actually enjoy, it’s important to commit an actually reach out and interact with those influences, brands or casual Twitter users whose content you enjoy the most. Tweeting at someone publicly can seem a bit scary (what if they don’t reply?!), but if I learned anything, it’s that it is usually worth it. Additionally, you have to use hashtags and tag people! How else will Netflix know you’re trying to reach out to them?!?!
  3. Like in Karaoke, Use Your Voice – Honestly, the most important thing I learned is to really stay true to your IRL life persona. Figure out who you want to be online, who you want to reach, and how you want to reach them – and the rest will make sense.

View post on imgur.com

In the image above, we have a comparison of my Twitter Analytics before this course started (December 2017) and at the end of the course (April 2018). My biggest takeaway from this comparison is that despite tweeting half the amount of times in April, I still managed to get 5x the amount of engagement. I believe I can attribute this stark difference to having learned to use rich media, engage, and use my voice in a way that really speaks to my audience. By using the proper hashtags, curating my voice, and tagging brands/influencers, I have been able to create content of higher value.

PART 2: EXECUTION

Impressions: 683
Total Engagements: 83
Media Engagements: 60
Likes: 7

One of the first things we learned in class was the importance of using rich media in order to build engagement within our tweets, something that is made evident by my very first tweet assignment. Using the images of people’s laptop stickers not only catches people’s attention while scrolling down their news feeds, but it added an element of relatability and curiosity (Do they share any stickers? What does that person like? Should I get a “steminist” sticker too?). The use of this rich media clearly worked; for media engagements amounted to 72% of all total engagements and led to relatively high impressions for my first tweet.

Impressions: 458
Total Engagements: 37
Likes: 8

I dare say that this tweet may be one of my personal favorites. By encouraging and allowing us to use our personal voice, this assignment had me truly think about the audience I had/wanted, and who I wanted my online persona to be (not much different from the #IRL me). Although it was not as successful as the previous tweet, tagging Netflix and using the class hashtag did stir up a pretty good amount of engagement through written content alone. As I have curated my voice and gotten to know my audience throughout the semester, tweets like this one and this one have garnered much more engagement.

Impressions: 621
Media Views: 155
Total Engagements: 40
Likes: 10

My first attempt at using Twitter Video was fueled by the pure desire of having my first snow day at Syracuse (which did come a couple weeks later). With over 150 media views, it is safe to say that posting a video does drum up follower interest and tweet viewability. Moreover, the relatability of the content within Syracuse (@SyracuseU) and all throughout the North East (#SnowDay) made it something that people would understand and identify with.

Impressions: 1,160
Media Engagements: 94
Total Engagements: 146
Likes: 20
Retweets: 1

Arguably one of my most successful tweets in terms of engagement, here you see an example of using the collage feature within Twitter Pics. By tagging and using rich media (again!), I believe followers really felt the need to engage, share or at least click on the tweet.
Twitter Analytics Awards: Top Media Tweet for February

Impressions: 708
Total Engagements: 38
Likes: 20
Retweets: 2

Honestly, who doesn’t love a good Haiku? Add in the love for the Orange and nostalgia for Chucks (#RIP) and you have a winning tweet. Although I did use multiple hashtags and even tagged @SyracuseU, the humor behind the tweet (voice) is what I really think prompted people to engage and share on their timelines.

TWITTER BREAK

Views: 950
Likes: 16
Shares: 1

Having never used LinkedIn as a posting platform, I was very surprised and excited by the successful results. I started out the semester with a little over 200 connections and have been able to grow that connections count to 472 within the past 3 months. With the use of hashtags I was able to get double the amount of views on my post, and it is definitely a platform I will continue to explore in terms of creating content. Check out the post here!

TWITTER BREAK OVER

Impressions: 1,624
Total Engagements: 53
Likes: 8
Retweets: 3

This tweet was extremely successful, largely because I honed in on the #ContentStrategist community within Twitter. By using the hashtag and tagging the industry professional I wished to engage with not only did I rake in the impressions, but I managed to get a retweet and reply (which only lead to more impressions) by Margot Bloomstein herself.
Twitter Analytics Awards: Top Tweet for  February (it was a good month for my tweets!)

Impressions: 660
Total Engagement: 26
Media Engagement: 14
Likes: 5

Despite using five very relevant/timely hashtags and even tagging Twitter, sadly this tweet did not perform as well as many of my others. I admit, it’s a bit lengthy for short form content and perhaps just the fact that it’s about analytics didn’t really appeal to many of my followers. Considering the topic the tweet was about, I did expect more engagement or at the very least impressions.  That being said, using Google Analytics was definitely very useful and a skill I have already transferred to my other classes.

Organic Impressions: 5,884
Link Clicks: 74 organic
Likes: 14 organic
Retweets: 9 organic

Having already written a full blog post on this tweet, I will touch on it briefly. To me, the most amazing part of this tweet is that TwitterAds and paid promotion aside, I was able to amass nearly 6,000 impressions organically. I partly attribute this to the 9 organic retweets; for my tweets are usually only exposed to 2 or 3 additional timelines.  

BONUS TWEET

Impressions: 2,366
Total Engagements: 78
Likes: 32
Retweets: 4

Outside of class assignments, this is my most successful tweet to date. By using the quotes tweet feature, I was able to add my own side commentary to one of Rakeem Christmas’s tweets. Moreover, by using the #Sweet16 hashtag I was able to harness that March Madness audience and appeal to that Syracuse pride we all know and love. (AND it even got a like from Rakeem Christmas himself!)

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