I Just Might Be An Influencer In The Making (Cause I SLAY)

Posted on by Nguatem Nzengung

Part 1: Influence

Looking back on the past three months, I am so proud of how much I have grown in my social influence. On Twitter, I gained 49.09% growth in my Twitter followers , rising from 55 followers to now 82 followers. In a 91 day period from Jan. 27th to Apr. 27th,  my Twitter account earned 36.7K impressions, with an average of 411 impressions per day. Some other engagement statistics over this time period include:

Engagement Rate: 1.3%
Link Clicks: 171 (average 2 links per day)
Retweets: 1 (average 0 retweets per day
Likes: 65 (average 1 like per day)
Replies: 11 (average 0 replies per day)

Throughout this past few months, I utilized a number of strategies to attract audience engagement on Twitter. I did my best to embrace the Media Richness theory by adding more emojis, pictures, and videos to my tweet. As we’ve learned in class, people are more likely to engage with tweets including richer media than text-heavy tweets. Another strategy that I used was mentioning specific individuals or companies in my tweets when necessary to get their attention. I found when applying this strategy that for the most part, the people or companies that I would mention would typically engage with me. The final strategy that I  used was including my own personal commentary while quote tweeting. By adding my own commentary to original tweets that I quote tweeted, I was able to bring in my own unique point-of-view which I think my followers appreciated.

I found that the tweets that I typically received the most engagement were related to fashion or beauty with the exception of my Glamour Magazine tweet. I think that this has a lot to do with how I have branded myself as someone who is highly interested in fashion and beauty.

With Klout, I gained 50% of growth in my Klout score, rising from 38 to 57. According to my 90 day score history, I had a spike score around Apr. 24th which is when my Glamour Magazine article was published and I started receiving a lot of engagement. Prior to that, my score was at a stable 40. I think it’s interesting to point out that the social accounts that contribute the most to my Klout score are Facebook (69%) and Twitter (27%). I don’t think that I am even that active on Facebook  compared to my other social accounts so that really surprised me.

Part 2: Top 10 Tweets

1. A Little Self Promotion

Impressions: 19,201 (and counting)
Total Engagements: 329
Engagement rate: 1.7%
Link Clicks: 144
Likes: 58
Profile Clicks: 56
Detail Expands: 45
Retweets: 23
Replies: 3

As many are probably aware, Syracuse University is in the midst of a huge scandal involving one of its fraternities, Theta Tau, after two videos were released involving many of its frat members showcasing extremely racist and homophobic behavior. I was given the amazing opportunity to share my thoughts/reaction to the incident in an article for Glamour Magazine. Given that this was my first article to be featured in a national publication, of course I had to tweet it out to share with my followers. The tweet wasn’t just a simple link to my article. The link was media rich, thanks to the addition of the corresponding photo from the article and I made the tweet more personal by adding some commentary, thanking Glamour Magazine for the opportunity.

The amount of support that I got was insane for which I was so appreciative. I had a number of friends, classmates, professors, and other journalists retweet my article and as a result, I even received a couple new followers. Since I made sure to tag Glamour Magazine (@glamourmag) in my tweet, they actually ended up retweeting my tweet to their 1.4 M followers as well which was really cool and helped to increase my tweet’s impressions. I think this tweet was so successful was because not only was I sharing some of my work with my followers but the subject matter was so personal to my experiences as a woman of color. Overall, this is my most successful tweet to date.

2. #ICYMI

For this tweet, I utilized the hashtag #ICYMI (which stands for In Case You Missed It) to recycle some older content. I knew that the Met Gala (pretty much the fashion equivalent of the “Oscars) was coming up on May 7th and that people may not know what the theme is or even who is co-hosting the event this year, so I used advanced Twitter Search to find some old tweets. I ended up finding this tweet from Time Magazine about how Rihanna is one of this year’s co-hosts, so I did a quote tweet and added some of my own commentary, since I’m a huge Met Gala fan, as well as the hashtag #metgala to draw in the crowd of people that may be discussing the event.

While I think my engagement for this tweet was okay, I think that it would have been better if the Time Magazine tweet included a picture of Rihanna to make it more media rich. As we’ve learned in class, people like visuals and are more likely to click on a tweet that includes some sort of image, GIF, or emoji.

Impressions: 1,627
Total Engagements: 36
Engagement Rate: 2.2%
Link Clicks: N/A
Likes: 3
Detail Expands: 31
Hashtag Clicks: 0
Retweets: 0
Replies: 0

3. Tweeting with Tweetdeck

Impressions: 1,230
Total Engagements: 11
Engagement Rate: 0.9%
Link Clicks:  N/A
Likes: 4
Profile Clicks: 2
Detail Expands: 2
Retweets: 0
Replies: 1

For this tweet, I used Tweetdeck to schedule a tweet about one of my favorite fast food chains, Chick-fil-A. I knew that Chick-fil-A would be opening on Feb. 22nd in Syracuse, so I planned out my tweet a couple days in advance to make sure that I didn’t miss my chance to tweet about the grand-opening. My engagement was pretty decent, with a few people liking my tweet. However, I think the most exciting engagement that I got with my tweet was a reply from the official Chick-fil-A account about how they hope to serve me soon! I think the reason I was able to garner a response from their account was because I made sure to tag their account in my tweet as well as use some popular Chick-fil-a associated hashtags like #eatmorechicken and #chickfila. I’m sure the official Chick-fil-A account uses these tweets to engage with fans and potential customers.

4. Replicating My Top Tweet

Impressions: 1,143
Total Engagements: 14
Engagement Rate: 0.9%
Hashtag Clicks: 9
Likes: 2
Profile Clicks: 0
Detail Expands: 3
Retweets: 0
Replies: 0

With this tweet, I did another #ICYMI because I was trying to replicate the engagement of my previous #ICYMI tweet (see #2), which was actually my top tweet of February. This time, I made sure to quote tweet a tweet with a visual component (People Magazine had a video talking about Princess Eugenie’s engagement). While I didn’t get quite as much engagement or impressions as with my first #ICYMI tweet, I did get a lot more hashtag clicks, which I’m assuming came mostly from using the hashtag #RoyalWedding. A lot of people are following that hashtag with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s upcoming wedding, so I think that drew in  a community of royal-obsessed fans. I also used #PrincessEugenie to draw in some engagement from her as well as a couple fun emojis so the post wouldn’t be too text-heavy.

5. Twitter Moments

Impressions: 952
Total Engagements: 23
Engagement Rate: 2.4%
Link Clicks: 16
Likes: 3
Hashtag Clicks: 2
Detail Expands: 2
Retweets: 0
Replies: 0

In honor of Black History Month, I decided to create Twitter moment celebrating the beauty of black hair by putting together a collection of the best hair braiding videos on social media. Though, I didn’t have a ridiculously high number of impressions, I think I had pretty high engagement with 16 link clicks and 3 likes. All of the tweets that I included were media rich because they included really fun braiding videos, so I explains my higher engagement rate (2.4%) compared to some of my other tweets. Also, with the #blackhairisbeautiful, I was able to garner the of Twitter users that would appreciate this kind of post. One thing that I wish I had done was include the #BlackHistoryMonth hashtag because I feel like I would have probably gotten more engagement from that.

6. Targeting An Influential Person in Fashion

Impressions: 952
Total Engagements: 16
Engagement Rate: 2.4%
Hashtag Clicks: 6
Likes: 5
Profile Clicks: 2
Detail Expands: 1
Retweets: 1
Replies:1

For this tweet, I used Klout search to target an influential figure in the fashion industry. I ended up coming across Lauren Eggertsen who is the fashion editor at Who What Wear, a fashion media site (they also have a fashion collection at Target!). Lucky for me, at the time of this assignment, she happened to post a personal essay about how she ended up “making it” in fashion with absolutely no connections. I love reading the success stories of women (and men!) in fashion and I’m sure other people do too because it’s super inspiring for your own career journery. I ended up doing a quote tweet of her article along with my own personal commentary and a relevant hashtag (#girlboss). Lauren ended up liking my tweet, replying that I “made her day”, and retweeting my tweet to her followers. I achieved the Twitter engagement trifecta (like, reply, and retweet) by simply sharing some love to a person in the industry that I admire.

7. Trending Topic

Impressions: 495
Total Engagements: 17
Engagement Rate: 3.4%
Hashtag Clicks: 10
Likes: 5
Media Engagements: 2
Retweets: 0
Replies: 0

For this post, I used Tweetdeck to monitor a trending topic, which just so happened to be #WednesdayWisdom. At the time when I was doing this post, the Oscars were approaching so I decided to tie that into my tweet by using one of my favorite quotes from Lupita Nyong’o’s Oscars acceptance speech. To make the tweet more media rich, I found a GIF of the Oscar moment which helped me to achieve one of my highest engagement rates, 3.4%. I also threw in quite a few hashtags (#Oscars, #Lupita Nyongo, and #WednesdayWisdom) which is why my hashtag clicks is pretty high compared to usual.

8. Twitter Collage

Impressions: 492
Total Engagements: 32
Engagement Rate: 6.5%
Media Engagements: 23
Link Clicks: 3
Likes: 2
Profile Clicks: 3
Detail Expands: 0
Retweets: 1
Replies: 0

For this tweet, I decided to make a Twitter collage of some of my favorite street style pics that featured colored faux fur. Even though I had a pretty low number of engagements (492), I had pretty good engagement with 32 total engagements and an engagement rate of 6.5%. I think because this post was so visually appealing, Twitter users were more interested in engaging with it. Not to mention using the hashtag #nyfw brought in  a good number of impressions from people that were already interested in fashion.

9. Social Media IRL

Impressions: 433
Total Engagements: 27
Engagement Rate: 6.2%
Media Engagement: 15
Hashtag Clicks: 3
Likes: 7
Profile Clicks: 1
Detail Expands: 1
Retweets: 0
Replies: 0

For this tweet, I was tasked with finding examples of how social media is found in real life. I’m a huge fan of platforms like Pinterest and Tumblr where you can collect a number of inspiring images. However, I like to be able to see these inspiring images in real life so I have a bunch of collages around my room which are like mini Pinterest boards. Given how this is a more personal tweet, I can see why it got much higher engagements with a rate of 6.2% and 27 total engagements.

10. Emulating Voice

Impressions: 431
Total Engagements: 22
Engagement Rate: 5.1 %
Media Engagement: 10
Hashtag Clicks: 6
Likes: 3
Profile Clicks: 0
Detail Expands: 2
Retweets: 0
Replies: 1

With this tweet, I practiced voice by crafting a tweet in the style of actress Reese Witherspoon. If you follow her on Twitter, you’ll notice that she does a lot of fun, inspiring tweets that are heavy in their emoji usage. She also does a lot of  #WednesdayWisdom tweets. Keeping all of these things in mind, I crafted this tweet which is centered on this quote I found on Pinterest about being kind. I got a decent amount of engagement which may have something to do with all of the hashtag and rich media that I used.

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