Influence Growth

Posted on by Meghan Maniccia

Influence

Social media has always been my creative outlet. I have enjoyed taking photos and expressing myself through Instagram, as well as speaking my thoughts and sharing humorous memes on Twitter. Over the course of the semester, I have been able to learn and adapt new skills to enhance my social media platforms through my experiences in this class.

Twitter, in particular, has always been more of a humorous and fun outlet for me rather than a place for me to share more serious and carefully curated content. The assignments to tweet using specific criteria each week, forced me to get out of my comfort zone, and try new things. I started a brand new account for the class so I could develop a professional Twitter aside from my personal account. By the end of the course, I gained a total of 16 followers. Although I would have liked to gain more, I think that starting from scratch was tough. I know now the helpful tools and strategies that I can use to build my following in the coming months. 

Execution

In order to build influence, you need to execute by actually producing content and trying out various strategies. Listed below are my top 10 pieces of content from this semester and the analytics behind their success.

 

According to Twitter Analytics, this tweet gained 1,065 impressions and 194 engagements. I believe that the richness of the media gave my tweet a boost in the algorithm. I think having three photos that are cohesive and mesh well, with a mix of some emojis, gave this tweet its success. In order to gain even more impressions and more engagement, I would have edited the tweet to include more hashtags relevant to NYC to draw in those audiences.

This tweet gathered a total of 444 impressions and 27 engagements. I believe that utilizing the Newhouse Network with this tweet gave it an advantage. Melanie Deziel had just released her brand new book and I was able to receive a retweet and a reply from her, which ultimately led to more impressions.

This tweet gained 274 impressions and 5 engagements. For this tweet, I wanted to promote a podcast that I often listen to and share one of my favorite episodes. Although I think tagging the podcast itself was a good strategy, I would definitely edit this tweet to tag the guest of the podcast as well as the podcast host, Guy Raz, to try and increase my engagement.

This tweet was a fun way for me to practice cross-promotion. I published a BuzzFeed quiz for another class and used my Twitter to help promote that piece of content. This tweet gained a total of 439 impressions and 21 engagements. The rich media with a link directly to the quiz helped users easily understand what I was talking about in the tweet and provided an easy way for them to take the quiz if they wanted to. If I were to change something about this tweet I would have tried to come up with more relevant hashtags around the BuzzFeed community to draw in a wider audience.

This IRL social media tweet was one of my first tweets from my account this semester! Although it gained 474 impressions and 37 engagements, there is a lot I would change about the tweet now having learned various techniques and strategies. First I would add more hashtags pertaining to Syracuse University. I would also add some emojis to spice up the copy of the tweet, and lastly, I would tag some Marshall st businesses to try and get some engagement from them and their audiences.

This tweet was another example of an opportunity for me to cross-promote a separate platform of mine. I chose to promote my personal Instagram account and include a photo that previews my grid and what my page looks like. This tweet gained 194 impressions and 15 engagements. I’ve noticed that when including a link to a tweet, its important to ensure there is a form of rich media along with it whether that is a photo or a video. Due to Twitter not automatically including a preview of my Instagram page, I took the initiative to still attach a photo which I think helped to increase my engagement.

Switching gears to Instagram, I am only able to see the number of likes and comments I received on my posts. If I could re-do this part of the semester, I would have chosen to make my account a business profile so I could have access to more analytics.

For this post, I wanted to create something simple, to match my aesthetic, but also very meaningful to what is going on in the world currently. I decided to create a graphic that just said the words “STAY HOME”  to show my support behind everyone doing their part. I received 4 likes and 3 comments. This was my most commented on photo so I think the fact that the content was relevant and timely really helped.

The IG post below is my most liked photo on my account with a total of 10 likes. I definitely think posting a photo with a cute fur friend will get you more engagement because people naturally tend to like photos with animals in them. If I were to go back and edit this post, I would absolutely add more hashtags as I only included the class hashtag, #NHsmc here.

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Got to see my favorite pup this weekend! 🤍 #nhsmc

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Similar to my post above, this post gathered 9 likes and only used the hashtag, #NHsmc. I would have definitely used more NYC centered hashtags if I could revise this post as I think it definitely would have drawn more people in. I also think tagging the brand of my shopping bag would have helped as well.

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Missing my fav city…🤍 #nhsmc

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For this post, I was more conscious of my hashtag use and utilized popular Brooklyn hashtags. Because the post only received 5 likes, I think the timing of my post could be further analyzed to help it perform better.

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Reminiscing…♥️ #nhsmc #newyork #bk #brooklyn

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Overall, I have been able to learn valuable skills to develop a more efficient social media presence. Learning the importance of a well-thought-out strategy has helped me to focus in on things that I would have otherwise looked right over. I think this course forced me to take risks and post certain content that felt a little out of my comfort zone, especially on Twitter. I now feel more confident and more skilled to produce meaningful content that will resonate with an intended audience if executed correctly.

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