David Onoue’s Top 10 Tweets & Analysis

Posted on by David Onoue

Over the past semester, I’ve attempted to grow my personal influence on Twitter by posting various types of tweets and was met with mixed result.

At the beginning of the semester I had 763 followers and set a goal for myself of 800 by the end. Initially, I thought it was going well. I saw a lot of people following me after I posted various tweets especially in the technology and marketing sector. However, those “follows” were deceiving. Many followed me and then unfollowed me soon thereafter, perhaps in an attempt to get me to follow them. All told my Twitter follower grew by a meager 2.10% or 16 new followers.

On the bright side, my Klout score saw a jump from 40 to 56, with a 90 day high of 58. The pivotal date to remember is March 3, 2017.  This was the first of three spikes in my Klout score and largely due to Newhouse alumni Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare retweeting my post. Other factors in the growth in my score can be attributed to me committing to posting one tweet each day during the week.

Through analyzing my tweet activity I noticed that the tweets for class (#NHsmtp) did not receive as much engagement as the other tweets I posted as part of my brand. However, I did apply the best practices I learned to those tweets which helped engagement. Hashtags were huge for me. I explored different times to tweet and posts around noon performed the best. Surprisingly, emojis didn’t seem like it made any difference.

Looking back one thing I should have done more of is replying to people. I didn’t engage in that type of conversation nearly as much as I should have.

So without further ado, here’s my Top 10 tweets for the semester using #NHsmtp.

#10.

Impressions: 320. Engagement: 4. Engagement rate: 1.2%

Our objective was to engage with an influencer in our network using Klout. I came across a post from Bob where he mentioned fake news and saw an opportunity to ask him a question. I did get a reply from him where he asked people in his network to answer the question, which one did. I did miss an opportunity to use hashtags and I’m kicking myself now that I am looking at it. Hashtaging blockchain and fake news probably would have increased my impressions.

#9.

Impressions: 343. Engagement: 2. Engagement rate: 0.6%

I attended the Race and Media event held by Newhouse and live tweeted a quote from Michelle Marsh along with an image. I made sure to use the hashtags for the event and referenced her Twitter handle. There wasn’t a whole lot of engagement but it was retweeted once.

#8.

Impressions: 347. Engagement: 17. Engagement rate: 4.7%

In this tweet, I used the Twitter photo collage feature when I attended a Syracuse basketball game. Louisville was a top 10 team and this was an important game so I knew a lot of people would be looking on Twitter for updates. The engagement was decent. Two likes and 15 media views. I’m not sure how much a difference it would have made but I could have included a basketball or crying emoji since we lost.

#7.

Impressions: 361. Engagement: 30. Engagement rate: 8.3%

A late-winter storm swept through Syracuse during spring break that derailed my plans of going to Las Vegas to see the Backstreet Boys in concert. I saw this as a good opportunity to use video to show people what I was stuck in, and tell them a little story. While this tweet did not get many impressions, it did have high engagement. It’s probably due to the richness of video and people watching it.

#6.

Impressions: 369. Engagement: 3. Engagement rate: 0.8%

I tried to do a little bit of newsjacking here taking advantage of the Oscars fiasco. There were multiple themes I was trying to incorporate. The “feud” with Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel, to which I used a gif from one of Damon’s movies. And then the whole envelopgate. I honestly thought this post would have done better considering the multiple themes I had going. I did wait until the next day to post the tweet which probably hurt the impressions and engagement. Had I done it when Twitter was blowing up right after, I probably would have seen better numbers.

#5.

Impressions: 418. Engagement: 12. Engagement rate: 2.9%

The assignment was to tweet something positive about yourself or someone else in class and I saw the perfect opportunity when Rachel was named a finalist for a Syracuse Press Award for an article she wrote. I retweeted the Newhouse Mag departments post and added a positive comment for Rachel. It was a very simple post but did manage to get decent engagement compared to my other posts. Lesson, never underestimate the power of positivity!

#4.

Impressions: 470. Engagement: 8. Engagement rate: 1.7%

This one baffles me a little. It’s almost exactly like the Michelle Marsh tweet: There’s a quote, picture, and the same hashtags. The difference is I didn’t include Jesse’s Twitter handle. Yet it got 127 more impressions and six more engagements than the other post. The only reason that I can think of as to why this post outperformed the other is the quote. With live tweeting the hardest part is knowing which quote to use, so that could pose a problem.

#3.

Impressions: 583. Engagement: 32. Engagement rate: 5.5%

With the help of a friend, I was able to create my own gif which performed well. I can’t remember exactly why I was wearing my suit and tie, but I saw it as a good opportunity to incorporate a little bit of pop culture and music into the tweet. And it worked. 12 likes and two retweets. Not to mention it had the third most impressions, engagements, and engagement rate.

#2.

Impressions: 1,691. Engagement: 108. Engagement rate: 6.4%

Never underestimate the power of the WWE universe. The WWE came to Syracuse and I went with a fellow WWE fan and classmate. Sasha Bank’s developed one of the stronger characters and is one of my favorite female wrestlers. So I saw this as a good opportunity to incorporate video, emojis, hashtags, and the WWE universe. With 18 like and five retweets, this tweet was the most engaged tweet of the semester.

#1.

Impressions: 3,118. Engagement: 57. Engagement rate: 1.8%

The top tweet of the semester came from a Medium article posted by Newhouse alum Dennis Crowley. What I love about Medium is you can highlight a passage in the article and it creates a tweet for you. The highlighted passage becomes an image while the title of the post and attribution to the author automatically populates the tweet. I just added two hashtags. The large impressions number are due to Crowley retweeting my post. The post managed to be my second most engaged with tweet but the engagement rate was the sixth best. So if Crowley didn’t retweet the post, I’m pretty sure it would not have been in the top 5. But this just goes to show the power of the Newhouse network and perhaps a best practice to look into.

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