Being an influencer is not as easy as it looks like

Posted on by Julian Schonbohm

Analysis of Influence

First of all, I did not have had a Twitter account before the beginning of the Social Media Class. Since the platform is not that common in Germany, there was no real need to have a Twitter account for me so far. I have the feeling that Twitter is still a platform, that is mainly used in the United States as opposed to its competitors Facebook and Instagram.

Like with every other platform before, I had to get a feeling for Twitter first, its features and for what purpose I will use it. I think everybody has this specific, personal purpose he uses a platform for and how he uses it.

Additionally, I have to admit that I use Social Media more as an observer than a heavy user. This applies especially to Facebook. I actually do not post anything on Facebook and do not have any pictures uploaded besides a profile picture and header image. I use Facebook mainly for staying in contact with friends via the messenger and getting information about events etc.

In contrast, I do use Instagram a lot to share my photography work mainly. I think it is a nice platform, but do not share anything that happens in my personal life, except in stories. When Instagram introduced their stories, I didn’t pay that much attention to it at the beginning, because I used Snapchat for this purpose. After a while though, I figured out that it is a very nice way to separate my photography content from more personal daily life, sometimes even goofy, stuff in the stories. As I just said, everybody has to figure out his own way how and for what purpose to use a platform.

So, it took me a while to get a feeling for Twitter and how I am using my handle, which is probably one of the reasons why my influence was not big.

I also think that one of the main reasons for my low influence was the inconsistent content I posted on Twitter. Sometimes I would post business related articles, but also stuff about global warming. Trying to reach different audiences, I believe that this mainly resulted in the audience getting confused and my handle seeming unattractive to them. Whenever I tweeted something out about a specific topic, I got some new followers related to that topic. As soon as they realized that my handle is not really focusing on that specific topic, they unfollowed me again.

Another thing I realized is that occasional posting won’t result in success on social media unless you already have a huge and loyal follower base.

My final Klout score was 21.75, although the highest was 24.69. It dropped a little bit, after I didn’t tweet that much anymore when we started to use other platforms in class. My follower growth was 16, from 0 to 16. Also, I have had more followers earlier in the semester. The already mentioned unfollowing happened when we started to use other platforms in class.

There are 3 major things I learned during this semester, which I am going to further explain.

I learned for myself that one of the keys to success on social media requires consistent and, even more important, constant providing of new content. This doesn’t just apply to Twitter, but also Instagram as I realized.

I think consistency in your provided content is important because it also results in focusing on one specific audience, which is why you will be able to better understand and therefore engage with them. Another important thing to keep in mind is, that the use of hashtags is essential. Instagram just announced that they are testing a new feature with which you can follow specific hashtags instead of just profiles. I think this also reveals the importance of hashtags.

Of course, these are not the only things I learned during this semester. Different features platforms offer as well as the huge variety of 3rd party applications you can make use of are a very nice way to make your content special and stick out of the mass.

Making use of these possibilities can definitely add something to your posts, make them look more appealing and boost engagement. Regarding the continuous success however, sticking to the 3 mentioned “rules” has a bigger impact on your influence on social media I believe. This is at least how I experienced it.

 

Successful Tweets

So, how do you consider a tweet successful? The first 8 tweets are my Top-Tweets according to Twitter Analytics – based on the amount of impressions. The last 2 tweets are successful in my opinion, since I could engage with other Twitter handles I mentioned in the tweets.

 

#1

Surprisingly one of my first tweets was the one with the most impressions. For this one, I shared a blog post about the advantages of social media monitoring. I think the reason for its success was the current topic as well as the use of specific hashtags. I also added a link to that tweet, so that users could get to the article directly. Even though the tweet got a lot of impressions (1139), it didn’t get that much of engagement (5).

 

#2

My second most successful tweet was the first of my Viral Content Challenge Twitter Ad campaign. And this, without consideration of the promotion. It received a total of 1074 not promoted impressions and 17 engagements. The reason for that many impressions were probably the use of many hashtags related to the topic. Additionally, almost all of the engagements were link clicks to Imgur. It also got 1 like and resulted in 2 profile clicks. The use of the web card is probably what made the audience curious about this tweet. I also cropped the meme in a way that it was not recognizable before actually clicking on the link. The tweet was also done in form of a question to increase engagement with the audience.

The total impressions and engagements including the promoted ones were 2669 and 34.

 

#3

This was the most successful tweet regarding the engagement. When Tasty visited Newhouse School to show how they produce their videos, I tweeted out a picture of the event. I also asked people to join the event and added information about the exact location. I believe that, besides the fact a lot of people know Tasty and are interested in it, the high engagement of this tweet was the result of using the right and many hashtags and including rich media.

The total impressions of this tweet were 676 and the total engagement was 27.

 

#4

This tweet was also one of the very earliest in the semester. I found a picture of me when I was about 8 years old. We had this face painting event for kids in town every summer. It reminded me a little bit of what Snapchat filters do today, which is why I tweeted it out as a picture for social media in real life. The tweet got a total of 416 impressions and an engagement of 10.

 

#5

For the in-class periscope heart challenge, I used this tweet to promote the upcoming live stream of my group. I used rich media of Keith, the dog who was the centerpiece of our live stream. The tweet got a total of 368 impressions and 6 engagements.

 

#6

I used the gallery feature for this tweet. Before coming to Syracuse, I travelled the west coast of the United States. I tweeted out some of the photos I did along the west coast. I also used many related hashtags of different places I’ve been to. Trying to get some more engagement, I also mentioned some related photography profiles in the tweet.

I actually thought, that this tweet could get some more impressions and engagement but the total were just 339 impressions and 12 engagements. However, this tweet got 3 likes which is more than the average of my other tweets.

It was pretty interesting to experiment with photos on Twitter. Although I used a couple of hashtags, the engagement was very low compared to other platforms like Instagram for example, where the engagement gets pretty high when using the right hashtags. And that even without many followers.

 

#7

The purpose of this tweet was to mention a profile and possibly engage with. Since Hurricane Irma was pretty present at that time, I wanted to thank Leonardo DiCaprio, who uses his popularity to make this world a better place and for his commitment in being an environmentalist. The tweet received 326 impressions and 3 engagements.

 

#8

After Apple introduced their new products in September this year, everybody was discussing about the iPhone 8 and why they made the back of this phone glassy. I wanted to tweet something funny related to this. I quote tweeted a moment that summarized the worries of the people right after the Apple event. The tweet got 314 impressions and 12 engagements.

 

#9

When I received my Moo business cards, I was pretty fascinated by the quality, especially because I used an own design. I have made some bad experiences with printing services when you’re not using their presets before. So, I tweeted out to thank them and posted a photo of my business cards. I received 3 Likes for the tweet, of which one was @MOO’s. The total impressions of the tweet were 278 and the engagement 15.

 

#10

Since I’m an international exchange student, I don’t have a car. This of course makes a lot of things difficult, like grocery shopping for example. But fortunately, in the US there exists online grocery shopping. I started using the service instacart and was fascinated by it. We don’t have anything like that in Germany which is why I tweeted out that Germany could learn from the States how to make good use of the digitalization. Germans are some kind of behind in that way. I also added a short video to the tweet, that shows the process of ordering groceries online via instacart. They replied to my tweet and thanked me for “sharing the love for their service”.

Although the tweet only got 85 impressions, it got 6 engagements which resulted in a comparatively high engagement rate of 7.1%.

 

What I will use Twitter for after this semester:

I always had the feeling that Twitter is more a text based platform, where short notes are used to get to the point quickly. It always felt wrong for me to use it for sharing photography for example, since I used Instagram for this already.

But, since I learned about the different features Twitter offers, like galleries, moments etc., I will keep on using it for photography work mainly. I also had a little success story just recently.

I went to New York City for Thanksgiving break and tweeted out a behind the scenes (#bts) shot of my camera capturing the sunrise at Brooklyn Bridge Park. With just the right hashtags, the official Canon USA twitter handle replied to me and encouraged me to share the final product with them. I wish more of this would have happened earlier in the semester, because that actually encouraged me to use Twitter as a second platform for photography, besides Instagram.

 

Difference between Platforms:

I also noticed throughout the semester that there are huge differences between platforms. The first thing that I noticed pretty early is the value of a like. I have the feeling that the value of a like is much higher on Twitter as opposed to Instagram for instance.

This also shows the analysis of my Instagram profile via squarelovin.com. The average engagement rate on Instagram is over 15% whereas my highest engagement rate for a tweet on Twitter was 9.9%.

In the next paragraph, I also want to show some Instagram posts and reveal a couple of differences between the 2 platforms.

 

Instagram Posts:

#1 – Golden Gate Bridge

For this post, I used the gallery feature of Instagram to make an A/B comparison approach. I posted 2 versions of the exact same photo, but with a different shutter speed. I asked the audience which version they liked better to boost engagement. It actually did work and I got 6 replies in the comments. In addition to the actual post, I also added a poll in my story with the exact same purpose and to support the new posting. I also added the maximum amount of 30 hashtags related to landscape photography. The post got 74 likes, which makes a total engagement of 80.

 

#2 – Alcatraz

I posted a picture of Alcatraz, where I’ve been to before coming to Syracuse. As opposed to my other posts on Instagram, I added a kind of experience report in the description. The post got a total of 4 comments, although none of the replies were related to the actual report, but just the photo. The likes reached a total of 79. I also added the 30 landscape photography related hashtags to this posting as well.

 

#3 – Buffalo Lighthouse

#Buffalo #lighthouse #NHsmc ⚓️

A post shared by Juli Weinhofen (@juliweinhofen) on

I actually don’t post photos made with my iPhone on Instagram, but just those made with my DSLR camera. Since Instagram compresses the pictures anyway, I wanted to experiment with that and see, if the engagement would change if I used “just” an iPhone photo. I also added an Instagram preset filter, which I actually don’t do as well, but edit the photos in Adobe Lightroom before posting. In fact, the posting got comparatively high engagement. The likes reached 81. This taught me that it does not necessarily matter, which camera you’re using. This also shows the next posting of the Niagara Falls. The same hashtags as in the previously mentioned posts were used here as well.

 

#4 – Niagara Falls

majestic #niagarafalls #usa #nhsmc 🇺🇸

A post shared by Juli Weinhofen (@juliweinhofen) on

I did pretty much the same like for the posting of the Buffalo Lighthouse. This posting however got an engagement of 98, 95 likes and 3 comments. This is way more than the average engagement of my postings. It just also supports the fact the success of a posting depends more on the content itself than the features you use.

 

#5 – Syracuse University

#syracuseuniversity at #night 🌙 #NHsmc

A post shared by Juli Weinhofen (@juliweinhofen) on

This post showed me that the success of your posting depends more on the photo itself than the features you use. I posted a picture of the illuminated building on SU campus and used the location tag of Syracuse University. I wanted to know if the location tag can boost the engagement or reach a specific audience. In fact, the posting did comparatively bad. It just got a total of 49 likes. Another reason for this could be the missing of the previous mentioned hashtags. I did use a couple of hashtags related to Syracuse University, but not as many as usually.

 

I could achieve a growth of approximately 40 followers on Instagram throughout the Semester, from 160 to 200.

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