A look back at the semester’s 10 best tweets

Posted on by Connor Grossman

This semester in Newhouse Social Media Class we were challenged to look at our social media output through a new lens. We were exposed to new technologies that measure the influence of certain trends and topics, shedding light on truly how big of a reach social media has around the world. Aside from more advanced reports, we learned the value of including various types of media in tweets and its subsequent effects on engagement rates. Here is a collection of 10 tweets over the course of the semester I feel best encapsulate my social media development.

Impressions: 256 — Total engagements: 19

This was one tweet used in my personal Viral Content Challenge campaign. This was one of the first times I ever included two forms of media in a tweet, and per Twitter’s very specific and exact dimensions of displaying pictures in timelines, I was nervous of its presentation. Both pictures proved to be relatively title safe, with the meme text in the left picture getting cut off. I think the picture of the puppy’s face is the primary selling point of the picture, so I don’t think it’s too much of a detraction.

I think where this Tweet primarily falls short is additional branding. The usage of #BlackFridayPuppy is extremely niche and nearly unsearchable as an infant piece of viral content, so to expand my reach I should have touched up the voice of my tweet to include #puppy, at the very least, in it.

Impressions: 328 — Total engagements: 26

One of the areas I feel I made the biggest strides in this semester was the voice in my tweets — finding a way to blend personality and information into my social media posts. In this instance I was able to easily weave in my primary subject’s Twitter handle (with a period in front of it so it would appear to all my followers, not just my followers who also follow him). I think was able to provide a decent one-sentence tease of my story, complemented nicely by the embedded picture from The Daily Orange website. I wish I had gone to greater lengths this semester to include the class hashtag in my Daily Orange story tweets, which I feel have incrementally gotten more exposure.

Impressions: 636 — Total engagements: 49

This was a good example of the pure power of visuals. With a nice follower base of friends from home, I was able to rack up 10 likes for this tweet, showcasing me and my two good friends (and former coworkers) working at The Sandwich Spot. I think engagement was also higher on this tweet because of the usage of the popular hashtag #WorkWednesday, and could’ve been further boosted if I clumped #NationalSandwichDay together as a hashtag. In terms of the composition of the tweet, I think the phrase “… here’s a tribute to the first paychecks of my life,” worked very nicely. I think ideally, it’s more clear in the picture that we make sandwiches and don’t point sharp knives at each other.

Impressions: 322 — Total engagements: 27

I really liked the personal voice I was able to include in the composition of my tweet. But I did feel handicapped by the character limit of Twitter as I struggled to include any relevant context such as #Yankees, #Diamondbacks, #WorldSeries or even #GaryThorne, the broadcaster behind the microphone of the favorite call I reference.

I think even being in the wake of the World Series ending when I tweeted this on November 9 helped it gain a little more traction than it would of another time of year — especially with a New York team involved in this year’s matchup. Unfortunately Twitter does not include YouTube thumbnails by default on timelines, so no followers likely caught wind of the video’s inclusion unless they expanded the details of the tweet.

Impressions: 491 — Total engagements: 20

This was my first use of the Twitter polls feature, and think I did OK in response rate relative to the niche audience of my follower base I was touching. Unless a follower of mine is a Syracuse resident (via SU or otherwise) or knows me well enough to realize its my temporary home, there’s little other incentive to participate in this poll. Seeing as Twitter doesn’t allow for media to be attached to poll tweets, I think the best way to spike further engagement would have been to include relevant hashtags about winter and even “#Syracuse.”

Impressions: 863 — Total engagements: 469

This was one of the more creative pieces of context I was able to dig up at a very relevant time, with Jim Boeheim on the doorstep of coaching his 40th season at Syracuse. Clearly the engagement numbers reflect the timeliness of the tweet, because the composition of it seemed to lack any real support for it. In hindsight I wish I included more relevant context such as mentioning this paper was from nearly four decades ago when Boeheim was hired, and here he is going for head coaching season No. 40. I tried to hard to play of the irony of Boeheim’s quote about stressing defense, as he’s trademarked a very specific defensive scheme that only more intense college basketball fans could pinpoint.

Impressions: 435 — Total engagements: 92

Even in the mass chaos of a big social media event such as a championship sporting event, timely tweets in the heat of the moment so to speak seem to spike higher on engagement charts. Even with a relatively bland image to complement my tweet about the Royals winning the World Series, I still nearly hit the century mark in total engagements. To further increase engagement I should’ve thrown hashtags on my Royals references and mentioned the World Series for search purposes.

Impressions: 334 — Total engagements: 41

Admittedly I underutilized the social media measuring technology we had at our disposal. I did like how I was able to include it in this tweet as a complement to my own personal hashtag campaign for the Cubs (#curbthecurse), as well as Twitter-sponsored hashtags #LGM and #FlyTheW. This was perhaps my best hashtag usage of any tweet in the semester, and I think my chart cleanly enough showed that just slightly more people on Twitter were talking about the Cubs than Mets.

Impressions: 560 — Total engagements: 11

This potentially was my best composed tweet of the semester. The title safe image is complemented nicely by the use of our group’s customary #MakeASplash hashtag and inclusion of the charity organization’s Twitter handle. The image might be slightly misleading with the “read more” button pasted on top of it, with clearly no button for a Twitter user to click and receive more information. Overall, I was pleased with the voice and media usage in this tweet.

Impressions: 297 — Total engagements: 5

Even though its not visible through this embed, I was interested to utilize the SoundCloud integration Twitter allows for with their links in tweets. I was able to use the “In Case You Missed It” (ICYMI) tool to draw attention to a well-known sporting event of the past few days and redirect attention about it to a more little-known facet of the game — the student radio station’s final call of the most exciting play. I don’t think people are particularly fond of being reminded about something obvious days after it happened, but find it intriguing when new details surface on news or an event that was once relevant. I definitely could’ve further helped my engagement cause with hashtags around “Miami and even “miracle.”

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