Ogozalek’s reflections on a semester of COM 427

Posted on by Samuel Ogozalek

Between Aug. 29, 2018 and Nov. 28, 2018 my Twitter — which I started for this class, separate of a professional account — gained 19 followers.

Overall, looking at the entire semester, tweets that performed well on my account (@OgozalekSam) were connected to people I knew either at The Daily Orange, where I work, or in COM 427. Over the course of the semester, my following grew 100 percent. (As, I had no followers at the beginning of class.)

What ended up working for me: Posts targeted at journalists, funny tweets, polls, tagging users with more followers than me and promoting D.O. Sports.

What ended up hurting my brand: A lack of video content, not enough static images and few hashtags.

Below, I have embedded 10 of my best-performing tweets and accompanying analysis for each. In each section, I provide further detail on what worked and didn’t work for me this semester.

Oct. 4, 2018

For this post, I thought it would be fun to quote a staffer at The Daily Orange, Jordan Muller, our fall 2018 news editor, complaining about work. It’s a common “journo” joke: “Overheard in the newsroom.” I thought that a lot of friends, either at Syracuse University or elsewhere, would find it funny. Muller retweeted my post, which helped boost engagement significantly. My one regret is that I didn’t add the hashtag “OHnewsroom,” would may have helped boost this tweet’s reach. This tweet had 1,155 impressions, 107 total engagements and a 9.3 percent engagement rate. This tweet was “liked” 18 times. I did not use any media in this tweet, but could have created a meme of Muller’s quote, in retrospect.

Sept. 24, 2018

As part of a class assignment, I acknowledged The Washington Post’s coverage of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s meeting with President Donald Trump, praising the news organization’s work. I used the hashtag “#Journalism” which could have helped draw eyes to this tweet. I targeted friends of mine, especially those at The D.O., who were following WaPo’s reporting and appreciated it. This tweet garnered 806 impressions, 16 total engagements and 3.6 percent engagement rate. This tweet was “liked” three times.

Oct. 13, 2018

If there’s one way to get attention, it’s mention sports at SU. With the highly anticipated UNC-Syracuse football matchup approaching, I created a poll asking people whether they thought the Orange could defeat this struggling North Carolina team and keep bowl game hopes alive. To promote the poll, I tagged The D.O.’s fall 2018 sports editor, Josh Schafer, who helped boost engagement. Like the Muller tweet, I should have added a few more hashtags to this post like “#GoOrange.” In total, this tweet received 527 impressions, 24 total engagements and a 4.6 percent engagement rate. This tweet was retweeted once. There were 13 votes in the poll. As discussed in class, polls provide a good way to draw people into a brand, and I wanted to do that for both myself and D.O. Sports. I think I was successful in doing just that.

Nov. 20, 2018

Gotta love New York City! After traveling to the Big Apple for a day to work on D.O.-related endeavors, I met up with Professor Grygiel and got a tour of the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan. They liked and retweeted my post, which helped with engagement, and many of my friends thought it was a cool experience and were interested by the tweet. By tagging a user, Grygiel, with a much larger following than myself, I was able to leverage their popularity and promote my name. This tweet had 314 impressions, 58 total engagements and a 18.5 engagement rate. It was “liked” five times. This post had a native photo in it, which I took on my iPhone at the Broadcast Center. This was a good way to draw a user into the moment, and show Grygiel in their element, on live TV. Photos like this, as discussed in class, are always good to help build a scene or communicate an event.

Oct. 8, 2018

As part of a class assignment, I reached out to Dr. William J. Ward, a S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications alum, by @’ing them publicly. I thought they were an interesting individual, and wanted to see if they would ever be in town — that way I could ask them to coffee, or try to meet up at Newhouse. Ward replied, saying they teach an online course and could return to Syracuse, eventually. So, mission accomplished! This tweet had 405 impressions, 21 total engagements and a 5.1 percent engagement rate. It was “liked” four times. While this initially seemed like a nerve wracking idea in class, it turned out well. No media was used in this tweet.

Sept. 26, 2018

Another example of how tagging a D.O. sports reporter, and promoting their work, helped boost engagement. For this Twitter thread, I publicly @’d Andrew Graham, a senior staff writer for the student newspaper, and complimented him on his breakdown of player updates following SU football’s dominating win over UConn. To boost engagement, I could have also @’d DOsports, but this was a good way to get more eyes on my tweet, opposed to just retweeting the link to Graham’s article. This tweet had 329 impressions, 12 total engagements and a 3.6 percent engagement rate. In this tweet, there was a link to Graham’s story, which, as we discussed in class, is a good way to make sure there’s no mistake and people can easily access content related to the tweet.

Oct. 13, 2018

Using hashtags really does help. For this assignment, which was to tweet static images of Google Trends analysis, I publicly @’d Google and used the hashtag “#GoogleTrends” to boost engagement. Without those two decisions, it would have been difficult to get much traction on this tweet, which essentially consisted of a screenshot. I could have added a few other hashtags, but overall was happy with what I could get out of this post. This tweet had 372 impressions, 10 total engagements and a 2.7 engagement rate. The importance of hashtags, as discussed in class, was highlighted here: how effective they can be, based off the hashtag “#GoogleTrends” assistance, and the likely fact that, if I had included more hashtags, this post would have performed even better.

Oct. 4, 2018

Ali Harford, my partner in crime. Harford was The D.O.’s fall 2018 managing editor. Just like the Muller tweet, I decided to try for a funny(ish) voice and do a “Overheard in the newsroom” type of post. Harford has a crazy, witch-like cackle. So, via Twitter, I decided that it was my responsibility to make sure everyone knows that. I targeted my “journo” friends with this quote tweet, and it paid off. I tried the jolting usage of periods to emphasis the humorous nature of the post, and think it turned out relatively well. This tweet garnered 316 impressions, 13 total engagements and a 4.1 percent engagement rate. This post did not include media, but looking back, I could have included a video, to show Harford laughing. That might have looked odd, though, with the quote tweet. I think this was a clean post, at the end of the day.

Sept. 3, 2018

Harford is pretty popular. To get some early-in-the-semester traction with my new Twitter account, I sent out a photo of Harford and I hanging out at Cafe Kubal, doing homework. I figured that, if I had to introduce myself on a new account, I should loop her in, because she has well over 300 followers on her professional Twitter account, and that could be to my benefit. This tweet had 275 impressions, 41 total engagements and a 14.9 percent engagement rate. In this post, I used a photo of Harford taking a photo to best communicate the moment at Kubal. I was happy with this media use.

Nov. 16, 2018

In a similar vein to my UNC-Syracuse football Twitter poll, for a “#throwback” post, noting previous engagement, I decided to post another poll ahead of the major Notre Dame-Syracuse football clash in Yankee Stadium at the beginning of Thanksgiving break. Like before, I publicly @’d Schafer, The D.O.’s fall 2018 sports editor, to help boost engagement. Schafer has more than 800 followers on his professional Twitter account. This tweet had 174 impressions, four total engagements and a 2.3 percent engagement rate. There were 16 votes in the poll. This tweet is a great example of using past analytics, and looking over Twitter engagement, to determine brand direction. As discussed in class, it’s important to capitalize on past success, and this was a good way to do just that, based off the UNC-Syracuse football poll.

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