From Unknown to Known: a True Twitter Underdog Story

Posted on by Sean Robson

During my time in Com427 I’ve learned one important piece of knowledge; social media is difficult to produce. Com427 has taught me how naive I’ve been about social content my entire life, in fact, until we began this course I considered myself decent at it. After all, I had over 400 followers and it seemed as if business was booming! But whoa, I couldn’t have been more wrong, particularly when we were encouraged to create our own professional Twitter account that would engage with a niche audience. Over the last 90 days I’ve learned that in order to drive engagement, the content I produced must have novelty and relevancy and it must be released regularly.

When I first began producing content for my sports fan audience (Boston Red Sox, Syracuse sports and professional sports in general) I had only 12 followers. By the end of November, my follower count had spurred up to 41, a 241% increase. I had used my professional account seldom before class had started and for that reason I never experienced any drastic uptick in followers or engagements. My tweet content used to be random and didn’t target any type of audience. My first response was to hashtag more of the words included in each tweet… this was not the answer. Consequently, this method didn’t produce more followers, instead, it made my tweets look less real; as if it wasn’t my actual voice. My Klout score increased from 16 to 33 by the end of November as well, a 106% increase. This is evidence that my tweets gained a greater influence as the class progressed because I began to take social media more seriously; if I didn’t care, why would anyone else? It wasn’t until I started crafting each tweet with a purpose and producing content consistently before I began to experience a larger following. This is the key characteristic that I believe separates top tier content producers from the bottom feeders

The tweet that received the most impressions out of all my tweets was from my twitter campaign which isn’t very shocking considering that it was promoted. It received 11 total engagements and I honestly think that even if it wasn’t promoted, it would have still generated a few engagements just because of the thumbnail of a screaming baby. This tweet was also very relevant to the holiday, considering that Christmas music was playing before Thanksgiving even took place.

This tweet received the most engagements out of any tweet I published: 51. A few driving factors other than my best friend and I jumping hysterically around my dorm room, were the key hashtags. Fans of Syracuse sports or college basketball in general may have clicked on the #beatDUKE hashtag, or #Gonzaga or #Virginia for that matter. But the video stemmed the most engagement above all else just due to its foolishness.

This tweet included a humorous gif that more than likely was appreciated by my Red Sox followers. It generated 26 engagements and it might have been because I tagged the Red Sox social media page. Regardless, the gif captured my fan hood and won over some more Red Sox fans who clicked and watched the gif. We also watched our classmates’ gifs in class the following class which could of been a factor as well.

Perhaps my most surprising tweet that actually received 22 engagements was the one that I tagged Cole in. While he is a fellow classmate, which could have caused other classmates to click on it, I think it was the use of the #FTB (For The Boys) hashtag that really drove engagement. Due to the recent viral sensation hashtag #SaturdaysAreForTheBoys I think my use of #FTB at the perfect time caused for a bunch of clicks.

My tweet about skipping out on morning workouts at the gym earned 12 engagements and I think there’s two reasons it entered my top ten. First of all, I think for college students my age, it is a very relatable tweet because waking up in the morning to go to the gym is not a common activity, (as shown by my gif). Second of all, the assignment for creating a gif I remember to be slightly confusing, so fellow classmates were probably eager to see what their peers were creating so they clicked around.

This tweet referencing Syracuse’s biggest fan, my good friend Tommy Hogan, had 8 engagements. It’s success was due to timing and the fact that I added a Soundcloud interview to make it more appealing. I published this tweet on opening day of the Syracuse basketball season and hash-tagged #bleedOrange which probably played a large role in its engagement along with the embedded audio.

As soon as Dick Vitale’s preseason NCAAB rankings were released I published this tweet, so its timeliness had a lot to do with it earning 24 engagements. The picture was taken at Castle Court during the Final Four last year and anybody associated with Syracuse can relate, making its popularity stand out among other tweets. The #Cuse hashtag was a very popular hashtag during their final four run last year and I tried to use it to my advantage when the new college basketball season started to gain steam.

My one and only Periscope tweet cracked my top ten with 13 engagements. I did a live video from the newsroom at WSYR, so the irony of being up to date both on Twitter and in a newsroom may have driven up its clicks. The hashtag #BehindTheScenes was also critical to its success because a few of my followers and other Twitter goers for that matter, probably wanted to see what goes on in the middle of the day in a radio newsroom.

This tweet garnered 14 engagements and they can be attributed to the novelty of the content. By tagging both the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and Syracuse Men’s Basketball I’m reaching out to a localized community that I’m a part of, (as can be seen by the picture). It is also timely because I tweeted this picture on the morning of game day.

This tweet was by far my most absurd tweet of the semester gathering 11 engagements. I had completely forgot to tweet for our selfie assignment, so on the morning I published it, I thought to myself, What better time to take a selfie than when my roommate was shaving? I hash-tagged #crewlove which ay have also been a source of stimulation seeing that it is a popular Drake song title.

Leave a Reply