Personal Influence on Social Media: Marita Perez Diaz

Posted on by Maria Perez Diaz

INFLUENCE

I started with 79 followers on Twitter by January 18 and ended with 100. That means a 26.6 percent of growth.

From my personal experience, the best techniques were using media-rich posts, multimedia content that engaged better with people.

Something that didn’t work for me was sharing random personal posts (like I use to do on Facebook or Instagram), so I learned that for Twitter I need to share another kind of stories and participate in a different way on the conversations. For example, I should not share a photo of a new recipe (more adequated for Instagram) and do share a more “news-style” post.

In this sense, I discovered that sharing links, news articles, photos or retweeting about topics related to Cuba and USA gave me a lot of engagement and followers from the Cuban-American community.  I feel that despite I never used Twitter before (only occasionally), I had a lot of activity. Still small numbers, but big for me. Most of this activity grew when I shared content related to Cuba, or Latin culture in general.

Also, the fact that I kept doing the #FollowFriday post for the most of the semester, gave me an incredible opportunity of interacting with influencers in the media industry and in the Cuban-American community. That was the case of the CubaOne Foundation leaders, that retweeted and commented my tweets, so I got followers from their community.

I also understood that for growing the followers on Twitter I must tweet regularly and with more consistency. I know that because of my follower’s number variation: if I only tweet twice per week I start losing followers or engagement.

In the case of Klout, the score changed a lot during this period of time. I started with 44 and I had 59 once, but at the end of the class, I only had 49.  This may be due to my activity on Facebook, where I have my larger community, so when I received a lot of likes my score grows on Klout, but if I stop sharing content on Facebook my score goes down quickly.

Overall, my most important takeaway is that I learned the importance of hashtags and how to use it properly. It could sound obvious to many people but I really understood that in our classes. For example, I started looking first for the most common hashtag related to my post and using it, instead of creating my own or using another random one that has less importance. That helped me to be more visible to other people around the world and get some followers sometimes.

EXECUTION

My top 10 tweets for the semester are really different between them. Here they are:

Top 1

My top 1 tweet is not a media-rich one, but using the handles of these important Cuban American influencers attracted people to engage with it. I received replies and retweets from both, as well as several likes. After this tweet, I gain several followers from the Cuban American community and also from Cuba. As you can see, I got many profile clicks, so people wanted to know who I was. Also, the tone of the tweet is positive, talking about how young people from this side want to engage with people from Cuba and build bridges, so I consider that the content also helped to spread the word. Something interesting is the hashtag clicks, not usual in my other tweets.

Impressions
1,907
Total engagements 63
Detail expands
21
Likes
17
Profile clicks
17
Retweets
4
Hashtag clicks
3
Replies
1

Top 2

It is really interesting to me that this is my top 2 because I only got 2 likes, but it seems that people got to watch the video and that the hashtags made it spread more. However, if it reaches many people but only got 2 likes, it does not look to me like a “win”. In this case the most important hashtag was about the spring break and the snow storm that was happening during those days.

Impressions
841
Media views
66
Total engagements 15
Media engagements
9
Likes
2
Detail expands
2
Profile clicks
2

Top 3

I got my first troll with this tweet about a trending topic. This is a sensitive topic that makes people to be polarized in the debate. It got more link clicks than likes, but the engagement was not as expected. I used several hashtags and I mentioned the protagonist of the story, but I couldn’t get a response from her.
Impressions
686
Total engagements 32
Link clicks
12
Likes
7
Profile clicks
7
Detail expands
4
Retweets
2

Top 4

Media-rich content helped me to get this tweet as my top 4, even when it was the last tweet of that period of analysis. The use of the hashtag referring salsa helped me to get one follower and some likes from people that I didn’t have any contact before. I also used as a strategy to asnwer right away to some replies I received from a Professor of Newhouse who was interested in salsa classes and on my video. Even when I got only 4 likes, I am really happy with this tweet, because I did it really conscious about what I wanted. I used some emojies too.
Impressions
588
Media views
74
Total engagements 25
Media engagements
15
Likes
4
Detail expands
4
Replies
1
Retweets
1

Top 5

In this case, all the engagement came from my personal friends that I mentioned with their handles. This was more like a Facebook post, so I got answers only from them. I learned that it is better not doing this kind of posts on Twitter and keep it more “news-related” and professional. However, I could see that some people were interested on knowing who I was, because I got some profile clicks.

Impressions
472
Total engagements 20
Profile clicks
7
Likes
6
Detail expands
5
Replies
2

Top 6

I used as a strategy during the semester to keep posting about Newhouse and Syracuse University in general, so I could be involved with the “orange” network around the world. But it seems that I still need to be more visible before expecting more answers from this community.
Impressions
437
Total engagements 13
Link clicks
5
Likes
3
Detail expands
3
Retweets
1
Profile clicks
1

Top 7

I really liked this tweet, that was actually a reply to a tweet of a Cuban-American artist involved with art in Cuba and USA. This time again the topic of how to build bridges through culture and human relations between the two countries made me part of the community. I got some followers after this and I would say that several likes (for being only a reply it was a lot for me).

Impressions
307
Total engagements 13
Likes
6
Profile clicks
5
Retweets
1
Detail expands
1

Top 8

Here I am trying to get involved with the orange community again. The strategy was to mention the game that was trending topic that day. I loved using emojis of flags and the little orange. Despite the result, I think this was a good tweet, expressing personal emotions about a national trending topic. In this case, maybe the hour of the tweet was not the best for sharing it. The game was already over, but it was too late at night and less people could be on Twitter at that hour. My guess is that if I would have tweeted before, I would have had better results. Also, using some kind of media would helped, like a photo of the TV watching the game, etc.
Impressions
258
Total engagements 5
Likes
4
Detail expands
1

Top 9

I got a poor engagement as well in this tweet. Only one of the people I tagged responded giving me a like. But the other one lives in Cuba, where it is really difficult to access the internet. Although they are pretty close to Cuban-American topics, they are older than the people I tagged on my Top 1 tweet. That could explain also the lack of activity on Tweeter while mentioning them, being really different while mentioning the millennial Cuban-Americans.

Impressions
250
Total engagements 8
Profile clicks
3
Likes
2
Hashtag clicks
2
Retweets
1

Top 10

This was one of the first tweets of the class, and even when I used the handles of Syracuse University and Newhouse I didn’t get engagement from them. I understood that I should make a better paragraph or comment that accompanied the photo.
Impressions
240
Total engagements 12
Likes
3
Hashtag clicks
3
Media engagements
2
Link clicks
2
Detail expands
1
Profile clicks
1

Facebook and Instagram

My community is kind of similar on Facebook and Instagram, but not exactly the same. The way of sharing content is different for me. For example, on Instagram, I use a lot of hashtags according to my topic. I got some followers while sharing content about technology, drones, and virtual reality. This is an example.

For this analysis, I will include this post from Facebook (although I didn’t use the hashtag because it didn’t make sense here). The reason for including it is because of the repercussion it had for some Cuban media. It was about the mass shooting that could happen at Syracuse University but it didn’t.

Esta vez tuvimos suerte nosotros, mi escuela se acaba de salvar de un tiroteo masivo. Un estudiante internacional lo…

Posted by Marita Perez Diaz on Thursday, April 5, 2018

It didn’t go viral (about only 74 likes), but other media took it from my page and publish it. That helped me to understand the impact of what we publish in our personal space but as a public post.

Estudiante cubana conmocionada con la noticia de un alumno que planeaba un tiroteo masivo en su escuela

Posted by CiberCuba Noticias on Friday, April 6, 2018

Overall, it was really helpful to understand the difference between each platform and experimenting with everyone. The kind of content that fit better for Twitter is not the same as for Facebook or Instagram. Also, my communities are different on each platform and that makes the pattern of what kind of content I want to share for being more effective.

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