COM 427’s Influence on My Social Media

Posted on by Christopher Lauck

Part 1

At the beginning of this course, I had 326 Twitter followers. By the conclusion of the course, I had 337. This gave me a percentage of growth of about 3.37 %.

What worked for me following those 11 people was when I tweeted about Syracuse related topics. I gained a couple followers that are Newhouse alum  and some that are still at Newhouse, including the new dean, Mark Lodato. Another thing that worked for me was when I tweeted out an old video of me at Fenway Park. I received a couple follows from using the hashtags: #DavidOrtiz, #RedSox, and #RedSoxNation. It seems that when I tried to target certain audiences, I received a few follows.

What did not work for me was the fact that I had continued using my old Twitter account. I think this prevented some of my tweets showing up with certain algorithms because Twitter wasn’t promoting my content as new content. In addition, I think I could have done more research to use more “local” hashtags. For example, when I was posting about Syracuse, I could have used more Syracuse-friendly hashtags like #Orange or #SyracuseWeather, when I was tweeting about the snow in Syracuse. If I did that, I think I could have gained more followers from the Syracuse area.

My top ten tweets were based off of the impressions they received. Impressions are “the number of times users saw the tweet on Twitter”, engagements are the “total number of times a user has interacted with a tweet”, and engagement rate is “the number of engagements (clicks, retweets, likes replies, and follows) divided by the total number of impressions. These are analytics that are viewable only to the user of a Twitter account at the Twitter analytics website.

Here were my top ten tweets based off of impressions.

Part 2

Tweet 1

Impressions: 1,607

Engagements: 14

Engagement Rate: 0.9%

I was honestly surprised that this tweet received the most amount of impressions. For regular viewers, you would see that there are no likes or retweets on this particular tweet. But obviously using the #CNNTownHall and linking it with #ntoagainsu, there were a variety of different people that saw the tweet. Since this tweet was in February, it was right around the time the #notagainsu protests started in the second semester. Since the whole protest was based off of that hashtag, a lot of people were viewing it. In addition, I took advantage of the fact that this was a very intense Democratic primary election. A lot of people were following the Town Halls on Twitter, so people were probably clicking on my tweet to see if #notagainsu was being mentioned during the Town Hall.

Tweet 2

Impressions: 1,218

Engagements: 3

Engagement Rate: 0.2%

I was glad to see this tweet earn some traction because Mookie Betts was one of my favorite players before the Red Sox traded him. Instead of tagging the Red Sox and Mookie Betts, I decided to use hashtags because I think hashtags get a little more traction than tagging someone. If you click on a hashtag you see more tweets that use that hashtag as opposed to tagging someone that only brings you to their profile. I also quote tweeted Jared Carrabis, who is a pretty big face of the Red Sox fan base because of the work he does at Barstool Sports. I think quote tweeting Carrabis’ tweet helped earn more traction because now I was appealing to not only Red Sox fans, but stoolies (Barstool Sports fans) as well.

Tweet 3

Impressions: 1,099

Engagements: 111

Engagement Rate: 10.1%

Out of my top 3 tweets, two of them have had some sort of political affiliation. Since this has been a pretty exciting and heated 2020 election, it does not surprise me that my political tweets are getting a lot of traction. In addition, I used Google Trends to show trends between Donald Trump and a favored Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders. I decided to use Bernie Sanders to compare to the President in stead of Joe Biden because the younger people are more technically savy, which was the demographic Sanders appealed to. Therefore, I figured his name would be mentioned more than the older demographic that Biden appealed to.

Tweet 4

Impressions: 655

Engagements: 112

Engagement Rate: 17.1%

This tweet received the highest engagement rate due to the ten likes it received. The only technique I used for this tweet was the class hashtag. I think if I used more hashtags like #Bool or something related to Spongebob, or even memes IRL, which was the assignment, I could have gained even more traction on this tweet. Ten likes is the most amount of likes I received on a class tweet, so I was pretty proud about that one.

Tweet 5

Impressions: 548

Engagements: 28

Engagement Rate: 5.1%

Once again, I used the hashtags #MookieBetts and #RedSoxNation as opposed to tagging their profiles because I think I would have gained more impressions since more people view tweets with hashtags. I used some emojis to add a little flare to this tweet. The red heart because he was one of my favorite players and the baseball since that is the sport he plays. I hashtagged #RedSoxNation because when this trade happened, a lot of Red Sox fans were pretty upset, so if they were searching that hashtag, it would have hopefully brought a smile across a Red Sox fan’s face to remember some of these moments.

Tweet 6

Impressions: 399

Engagements: 14

Engagement Rate: 3.5%

This tweet earned some impressions because I used a meme that was similar to the action Shakira did during the halftime show. The hashtags that were specific to the Super Bowl also helped it gain traction among sports fans. I think if I used more Shakira friendly hashtags then I would have gained more impressions since I would be appealing to her fan base as well as sports fans viewing memes about the halftime show.

Tweet 7

Impressions: 322

Engagements: 46

Engagement Rate: 14.3%

There were a couple techniques that helped me earn the impressions that I did. First off, a video makes people click on the tweet so they can watch the entire video. In addition to just filming a video, I used twitters camera so that the text shows up blue. When the text shows up blue it helps draw attention to the tweet and more people are likely to click on it. Also, I used a Syracuse friendly hashtag (#Syracuse) which made the tweet viewable to the Syracuse community. I also used a “fun” hashtag (#Babyiswarmoutside) to use a play on words to relate to the tweet which talks about the lack of snowfall in Syracuse this year.

Tweet 8

Impressions: 304

Engagements: 0

Engagement Rate: 0%

This tweet was a fun one. I used a video of David Ortiz hitting a double at Fenway Park that I personally filmed. The hashtags were relevant to this tweet because every Red Sox fan loves watching David Ortiz swing the bat. The hashtag #DontCancelBaseball is relevant as well because baseball season is on the cusp of being postponed due to COVID-19. I also used the hashtag #BostonStrong because this is a personal tweet for Boston fans and members of the Boston community that was created after the Boston Bombing in 2013. What would have made this tweet earn a little more engagement would have been tweeting the video directly instead of tweeting a link to my instagram page. Linking my Instagram, however, obviously draw attention to another social media platform that I use.

Tweet 9

Impressions: 303

Engagement: 2

Engagement Rate: 0.7%

This tweet was relevant for late March. This is when COVID-19 was really starting to hit us as a serious threat and postponed the Spring Semester and brought every state into quarantine. Because of that, this tweet was relatable for almost everyone because everyone is enjoying time with their pets right now. I saw a couple posts on Instagram (and a Snapchat filter) that said “cuddle your pets” so I figure I would use that as a hashtag because it seemed to be trending on other platforms. I also hashtagged #quarantinelife because that is a reality that everyone is facing with the pandemic. Lastly, I mentioned that I used a VSCO filter so that the VSCO community would be able to see it as well.

Tweet 10

Impressions: 281

Engagements: 15

Engagement Rate: 5.3%

This tweet earned the impressions that it did because of the topic, Oreos, and the fact that it was a poll. Everyone loves Oreos no matter what and I think it is a common debate between Golden Oreos and regular Oreos for which is better. Because of that debate, I decided to do a twitter poll. Using the hashtags and tagging @Oreos helped in the fact that I was hoping they would retweet the tweet, but they didn’t :(. I also used the hashtag #twitterpolls because everyone loves a good Twitter poll and I think people search that tag just to look for polls to do when they are bored. Personally, I was surprised about the results because everyone always raves about wanting GOLDEN Oreos…but my assumption was wrong.

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