Influencer Growth and My Top 10 Tweets

Posted on by Margaret Bridge

As a senior public relations student about to embark on my first job search, I took COM 427: Social Media for Communicators during the Fall 2016 semester with hopes of strengthening my personal brand, building a greater online presence, and learning social media skills to improve myself as a candidate for employment.

At the beginning of the semester, I had a professional Twitter account with 58 followers. My Klout score was 44, and my Klout account had my professional Twitter handle and my LinkedIn page attached.

Throughout the course, I made an effort to follow influencers in the social media space, and I learned the importance of using relevant hashtags to join online conversations. Those two practices helped me gain followers. I also followed various accounts during the course, so some of my new followers were users following me back. I did lose a few followers during my Viral Content Challenge, which I think can be contributed to promoting a meme when my typical Twitter presence is more professional. I tend to share more news than funny content, so some of my followers may have been caught off guard by that particular campaign.

Despite some fluctuation in followers, I ended the semester with 101 Twitter followers, a 74.14% increase. My Klout score increased by 6.82% – I ended the semester with a score of 47. The smaller increase in my Klout score is likely because I did not attach any more professional platforms to my Klout account, so the growth was completely based on how my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts performed over 90 days.

Below, I’ve curated and analyzed my top 10 tweets of the semester (in no particular order).

This tweet received 74 total engagements. To create this tweet, I took a photo of Syracuse on Snapchat, added text and a filter, saved it to my camera roll and posted it to Twitter, tagging the Syracuse University Twitter account and using hashtags related to Syracuse. This tweet garnered 11 likes, which was a relatively high number for my account. I think it was most effective because the photo was engaging – 54 people clicked on the photo, which constituted most of the engagement on the tweet.

This tweet received 30 total engagements, including 16 media engagements, six likes and five link clicks. To create this tweet, I took a simple screenshot of a webpage to add media to the tweet. In the tweet copy, I included the link to the site. I also used hashtags relating to social media, and I used the emoji mentioned to draw attention to the tweet. This tweet worked because it had many elements, including the website link, the photo, targeted hashtags and emojis. Viewers were able to engage in several ways.

This tweet received 54 total engagements, including 37 media engagements and ten detail expands. I took a picture of my new iPhone and used a trending hashtag to talk about it, which helped enter me into the conversation about the new phone. I also followed this tweet with a blue line connected tweet, so it was brought back to the top of people’s timelines after I originally posted it.

This was the only tweet of the semester that I promoted via Twitter Ads, and it received 105 total engagements. Of those 105 engagements, 61 were link clicks, and of those 61 link clicks, 25 were organic and 36 were promoted. Other engagements on the tweet included 27 detail expands and 14 profile clicks. This tweet helped me reach the goals of my Viral Content Challenge, and the ad spend definitely helped get more engagements on the tweet.

This tweet received 65 total engagements, including 40 media engagements, six likes, five profile clicks, four link clicks, three retweets and two replies. In this tweet, I posted three pictures I took in NYC last summer at popular restaurants, and I tagged those restaurants in the post. I thought this tweet was successful because three of the restaurants I tagged liked the post and retweeted it, while two of them replied to the tweet.

To create this tweet, I screenshotted a collage of all the media I posted on my Twitter to use as the image. I also included a link to the media section of my Twitter account, and used hashtags to target both food lovers and those interested in public relations. This tweet received 35 engagements, 22 of which were link clicks. Those 22 link clicks took people to my profile, so this tweet was successful in the sense that it got people to my page to see what I am interested in and posting about.

I posted this tweet to promote a speaker event being hosted by the Syracuse chapter of PRSSA. By tagging the Newhouse and Syracuse handles and using Syracuse-related hashtags, I targeted the community that would be likely to attend the event. I also included a photo of the poster, so people would have all the information necessary to attend. This tweet only received nine total engagements, three of which were likes, but I think that had to do with the fact that all of the information was readily available on the timeline without expanding the photo. There were also no links in the tweet for people to click, so there was no opportunity for users to engage that way. Although this tweet was not as successful as some of my others in terms of engagement, I liked promoting an event that was important to me, and I though the media was interesting.

To create this tweet, I made my first ever Periscope live video and discussed five facts about me that my followers would not have known otherwise. The Periscope video itself received 134 views, which I thought was great, considering I have no followers on Periscope itself. The tweet got 38 total engagements, including 24 media views, ten media engagements, three likes and three link clicks. Creating this tweet definitely put me outside of my comfort zone, but I thought it was successful.

For this tweet, I had my friends help me create a playlist on Spotify and shared it out with several hashtags related to music. This tweet only got six total engagements, the least of any of the top tweets listed, but it was by far my favorite tweet that I put out during this course. Creating the playlist took a long time, but I thought creating content from scratch in that way was really fun and challenging. I wish this tweet would have performed better, but sharing out a curated list was something I had not done before. I would like to try this again and see if I could change something to make the tweet perform better.

To create this tweet, I used GIFBoom to make a GIF of my friend Dilsia and tweeted it out with a funny caption. This tweet got 98 engagements, consisting mostly of media views. It also received nine likes, eight media engagements and two retweets. I think this tweet was successful because people love GIFs, and the content was funny and easy to watch. I will definitely be using GIFBoom to create GIFs in the future and share them out.

By taking COM 427: Social Media for Communicators, I learned about content creation, techniques to increase engagement on my tweets, and the importance of engaging with others online to build relationships. I am happy with how my Twitter presence has grown throughout the course, and I plan to continue growing my following and attempting to increase my online presence as I finish my education and start my career in public relations.

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