Influence Growth: Finding my voice and falling back in love with hashtags

Posted on by Christine Oser

After benchmarking my Twitter followers and Klout score from the beginning of the Spring 2018 semester to the end, I realized I hit one of my big social media goals. Twitter is my favorite platform and I was able to grow 50 followers, pushing me over the 900 mark. My Klout score has also grown and helps me see how important it is to be active on social media. I started with a score of 43 and currently have a 51. My high was 54, and when I look at the date range when that score was hit, it was when I was most active on social. I can also see where my scores dipped when I put social on hold.

Social Media Theory and Practice helped me develop my online voice. Sometimes there’s a disconnect in the words I type and the voice I present in person. Even though the difference is not on purpose, this class helped me express myself better on social media and create a stronger presence.

Throughout the semester I’ve also learned how important hashtags are on Twitter and how images and emojis help engage the audience. I’d previously been told hashtags and emojis can seem unprofessional or bias but if there is no voice or engagement tools, it’s very hard to grow an audience. Since I’ve started using more hashtags I’ve seen more engagement on some of my tweets and the tweets with images do seem to perform better overall. Images, whether it’s a photo or a gif, take up real estate on the Twitter feed and catches the eye, whereas text alone may fly under the radar when there’s a lot to compete with. This class has helped me embrace the hashtag and pick back up on the emojis without feeling like I’m going overkill.

  • Total engagements: 161
  • Impressions: 2,759
  • Likes: 17
  • Retweets: 0
  • Comments: 0
  • Media used: Photo, emojis and hashtag
  • This tweet performed well because it appealed to both my horse racing audience and my Newhouse School audience on Twitter. It was also timely because the Tampa Bay Derby was trendy in horse racing news at the time. Impressions also went up because it was quote tweeted by the person mentioned in the tweet, who has a large Twitter following.

  • Total engagements: 177
  • Impressions: 1,846
  • Likes: 11
  • Retweets: 3
  • Comments: 3
  • Media used: Photos and hashtags
  • This was one of my earlier tweets in the class but it performed well. The pictures give people something to pause and look at and I received engagement and shares from the accounts I mentioned, which definitely helped. The two mentioned accounts are also smaller organizations who are able to view more mentions than a large company, which might perform better with a hashtag. This tweet also got me 15 profile clicks because of the shares.

  • Total engagements: 9
  • Impressions: 798
  • Likes: 4
  • Retweets: 1
  • Comments: 1
  • Media used: Quote tweet and hashtags
  • While the engagement was low, the tweet still performed better than I thought with the help of a reply, retweet and timely hashtags. This tweet was aimed at the audience from my hometown as flooding was taking over all the news there.

  • Total engagements: 16
  • Impressions: 718
  • Likes: 5
  • Retweets: 1
  • Comments: 1
  • Media used: Quote tweet (with gif)
  • Here I quoted a previous successful tweet. The original tweet had 20 likes and two replies, but picked up a little more engagement with the quote tweet. I made the original media after a big snow and quoted it again when there was snow. Thanks to the quote tweet, the impressions on the original tweet went up to 1,510 with 46 engagements.

  • Total engagements: 30
  • Impressions: 688
  • Likes: 13
  • Retweets: 0
  • Comments: 0
  • Media used: Photo and hashtag
  • This tweet was one of my better ones in class. It performed well because it was very timely to most of my Twitter followers and was tweeted out a couple days before the Florida Derby. Using a picture I took of the 2017 Kentucky Derby winner also seemed to grab attention.

  • Total engagements: 25
  • Impressions: 8,062
  • Likes: 8
  • Retweets: 0
  • Comments: 0
  • Media used: Hashtag
  • This was my first tweet for Social Media Theory and Practice (aka #NHsmtp). As a #FollowFriday, I gave a shout out to two journalists who are also equestrians on the side. Soledad O’Brien liked the tweet, which helped raise impressions. O’Brien is also very active with her followers on Twitter.

  • Total engagements: 55
  • Impressions: 577
  • Likes: 10
  • Retweets: 0
  • Comments: 0
  • Media used: Photo collage and hashtag
  • This was one of my more successful tweets during the class. It was based around an event, used a related hashtag, was built for the majority of my Twitter audience and took up space on the timeline with a photo collage. The pictures were also Valentine’s Day themed, which helped shape the event even more.

  • Total engagements: 13
  • Impressions: 484
  • Likes: 5
  • Retweets: 0
  • Comments: 0
  • Media used: Gif and hashtag
  • Analysis: Here I was trying to use a similar voice to someone I follow on Twitter and find very funny and engaging. I don’t think the media used was as effective as I had hoped. Judging on other tweets sent around the same time, this doesn’t appear to be the time my followers are engaging with my tweets.

  • Total engagements: 22
  • Impressions: 589
  • Likes: 7
  • Retweets: 0
  • Comments: 1
  • Media used: Hashtag
  • Here I used Klout to find the follower who engages with me most and tweeted out to her. I used a related hashtag, which received two hashtag clicks, but looking back I wish I had used an emoji at minimum or inserted a gif.

  • Total engagements: 21
  • Impressions: 485
  • Likes: 5
  • Retweets: 0
  • Comments: 0
  • Media used: Twitter moment and emoji
  • Here I created a Twitter moment with foals born in 2018. The internet seems to love baby animals and most of my Twitter is made up of people in the horse industry, specifically Thoroughbred racing, which is why I used Thoroughbred foals. I also threw in the heart eyes emoji to grab a little more attention.

As the semester went on I learned social media was so much more than finding the perfect wording, being witty or having the best pictures. While those things can help grow an audience, depending on a brand’s voice, I found out engagement, hashtags for visibility and analytics can really help set one social account apart from the next. It’s a combination of timing, audience engagement and appropriate content that pulls people in, and you also have to work to keep them coming back for more.

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