Influencer Growth Analysis ; Top 10 Tweets

Posted on by Matthew Bosworth

Part One

 

To begin, I’d like to share an explanation of what I see as my own “personal brand”. For the most part, I feel frustrated with the content on social media, and appreciate when people use their social media accounts to deliver truly interesting or entertaining content. This can come in the form of humor or any number of compelling photo and video based content, like a GoPro video of a base-jumper, or a video from inside the Crayola crayon factory. Anything can be compelling, but it’s when users and content creators keep in mind that even small things that might seem insignificant can inspire a huge amount of interest. Case in point, “soap cutting” has become a subculture in itself amongst the online “ASMR” community.

All that being said, what I try to deliver with my twitter account is humor. During the entirety of my time as a student at S.U. I have been an active member of The Kumquat, a student-run satire news organization that publishes tweets, videos, and a publication each semester. Through this and my own personal twitter, I put forth what I deem to be my only remotely worthwhile product: humor. The only exception is my personal instagram account, which is for interesting photos that almost never feature myself as the main subject.

Now to analyze my “growth” on the twitter platform. I began the project at the end of August with a paltry 117 followers.  At the end of the project, and for the last few weeks, I have sat at 121 followers, an extremely modest gain. At one point however, I did reach 123 followers, before I lost a few followers for what I would guess to be unusually frequent posting. One notable facet of my Twitter account is that it was active from 2013 to late 2015, after which I largely abandoned the platform, save for a few sporadic tweets from the end of 2015 to the beginning of this COM 427 project. As a result, the people who follow me are largely not still people I am in contact with now, and hadn’t experienced my twitter presence for a significant period of time. For this reason I think my tweets received engagement only with the very small number of people who followed me in the last two years and with whom I am still in contact.

In terms of how I intended to grow m audience and what was successful, again I refer to humor. Many of the tweets I feature in my top 10 are humorous in some way, and I feel that the tweets where I was able to deliver on that premise were the ones that recieved the highest engagement and the most impressions. Despite this, I have to admit that the kind of content I was producing isn’t often what becomes “viral” or even easily sharable content. The jokes I made were sometimes difficult to decipher, and some of the other content was largely irrelevant to a non-Newhouse based audience. In the future, I think tailoring my content to a wider audience would greatly increase my chances of growing my reach on Twitter.

Part Two

Top 10 Tweets and Posts from the Semester (From Least to Greatest Engagement)

     1.  Bird Library Instagram Gallery Post

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neat #nhsmc

A post shared by Bosworth (@b0sw0rth) on

This post takes the number one spot simply because Instagram does not offer the same kind of analytics data that Twitter does. My Instagram account is more active than my Twitter account, though Instagram’s lack of a native “retweet” feature means that my posts cannot achieve any sort of virality without promotion. This isn’t an issue for me, as my Instagram is only for showing friends the most interesting photos i’ve taken. This post specifically is a few photos of a part of the fifth floor of Bird Library currently being renovated I stumbled upon while looking for a study room. I thought it was a really interesting space, and I always enjoy exploring places beyond where the public is normally allowed.

I think this post exemplifies the kind of content I feel qualified to put into the world and stand behind somewhat proudly as being my “voice”. I can’t say I could offer a novel opinion about a certain political issue, but I was able to find an interesting part of campus most would never be able to see, and showcase it to the Syracuse community. The entertainment value of the post isn’t huge, but it is a unique perspective that’s both visually appealing and unusually close to home.

2. Twitter Poll

(Analytics data coming soon!)

This post was my most recent attempt at finding engagement on Twitter. It serves as yet another example of how stagnant my presence on the site has become amongst the vast majority of my follower base. I do think, however, that the content of the tweet is funny and would have garnered more support and engagement had it been released on a larger platform. One aspect of the lack of success of my own personal twitter is the huge success of the twitter account I have ran in part since 2014, The Kumquat. This account has captured the majority of my (comedic) creative output for the last four years, and left my personal account with little reason to exist, until its resurgence at the beginning of the semester.

Though the tweet is certainly underperforming, I would consider it to be good content for my brand, as it is (in my opinion) not a bad joke, and somewhat accurately describes the state of many posts on twitter: meaningless, self-referential, and promising something that can’t be delivered.

3.  Twitter “Tweet Storm” Post

This post was again an attempt at using humor to satisfy the posting requirements of the week, in this case a “tweet storm”. This meme template, that for any famous person known by three initials instead of a first name, those three names are exactly the same as the last name except for the corresponding first letter, is one that is simple and absurd yet just stupid enough to be hilarious.

After reviewing my engagement numbers, I was surprised to find one of my least successful tweets of the top 10 receiving so many impressions, given that some of my followers are likely bots and others have little interest in my posts. One favorite is not atypical for one of my posts, and it is another reason I don’t often look to my own personal twitter for validation of my joke-writing abillities.

 

4. Real-Life Social Media Twitter Post

This post was another surprising contender in my top 10 list. I think the main reason the post recieved the relatively significant engagement it did is simply that it was rich media. The photo on its own isn’t very impressive, but a club fair on the quad truly does represent one of the most social and communal in-person gatherings we still have on campus that aren’t based solely around academics or sports. The club fair is also a big event for many students on campus, so this post does give my perspective into a topical and somewhat newsworthy event in the S.U. community.

The post didn’t recieve any favorite, predictably, as it doesn’t do much to stand out in a crowd, or really draw the reader’s attention in any way beyond “hey, this is interesting.” In the future, a more intriguing (or “clickbaity”) caption might have earned me some more engagement.

5.  Mimicking Voice Tweet

This post satisfied a homework assignment that required us to tweet in the voice of a twitter account we followed. As a longtime fan of The Onion and a writer of satire news myself, this tweet was a no-brainer. I have saved a great deal of the ideas for tweets I’ve pitched at Kumquat writers’ meetings, and this one seemed like a good fit to use for the project.

The Onion is for me a perfect example of having a twitter presence worth following. The consistency and quality with which The Onion puts out content is incredibly inspiring and a good reason why they’ve been able to gather more than 11 million followers. In my opinion, websites like the Onion, which produce their own creative content on a daily basis and release it for free, are exactly what I imagine to be the perfect kind of twitter account to follow. This is in contrast to many accounts which either recycle the content of others or offer their own spin on topical news events, which, when the user has expertise can be hugely relevant and compelling, but as is often the case, those voices can be hard to parse from the louder and less coherent voices that fill twitter discourse.

6.  Quote Tweet

This post was my first attempt at using an extremely famous celebrity (and twitter account) to garner more impressions than my content otherwise would. For this assignmnent, we were asked to quote a tweet and respond to it in some way. For this, I chose a particularly short and cryptic tweet by megastar rapper Kanye West, wherein he tweets “enhance structure” and I respond with Trump’s now infamous follow-up tweet to his meeting with the rapper in question, “Thank you Kanye, very cool!”. Kanye’s antics have puzzled millions of pop-culture focused young people, and his fascination with (and seeming love for) Trump has infuriated many beyond repair. I had hoped to illustrate this by mashing the two magnanimous celebrities tweets together.

The post again recieved modest engagement and a few likes. Not indicative of a growing twitter account but not below average for a comedic post on my account. I believe even mentioning Kanye in the tweet brought about most of the engagement, as interest in Kanye West far outweighs any interest one might have on my take on the world.

7. Introduction To the Class Tweet

At first glance, it seems odd that this tweet received as much engagement as it did. On the surface, there isn’t much rich media or interesting content to draw the reader. I think it was successful, however, for two reasons. First I think my interaction with Professor Grygiel significantly increased the reach I was going to receive. Because they’re such a significant figure within both the S.U. and overall social media communities, Professor Grygiel’s presence in my tweet boosted its appeal and therefore its overall engagement.

In addition, the link I’ve provided is another piece of useful and interesting content that might serve to make the tweet more broadly appealing. /r/FellowKids is still one of my favorite subreddits, and in my opinion, contributes an extremely useful viewpoint to the advertising/branding industry: that often brands are wildly inaccurate in their idea of what a young consumer wants to see in a brand identity, and that sometimes brands are better off acting like themselves than like a teenager who loves Burger King.

 

8. Periscope Challenge Winner Photo Tweet

This post was the first of those from the semester that received significant engagement. For this post, I was excited to announce to the world that our team had won an in-class activity based on an idea I created. The winning idea was to bounce a tennis ball between two of us continuously, while a third group member read aloud an especially emotional section of Othello in-between us. Originally, the reader would become louder and more emotional each time the ball was accidentally dropped, but this was dropped from the act moments before it began.

In terms of engagement, I can understand why this tweet gained as much traction as it did. It’s one of the few times my own face has been present on a social media post of mine, and it was also tweeted during a time when many other accounts were tweeting about the same activity, which I believe spiked engagement during that moment, despite not continuing past the relevant time of the tweet itself.

9.  Periscope Activity Promo Tweet

This post benefited largely from the same factors that caused the previous tweet to have the engagement that it did. There are a few small differences between the two posts. First, this post features more students and the class’s professor, Jennifer Grygiel. For this reason, I think at the time the tweet was posted, it was slightly more appealing to those looking through the class hashtag than my previous post.

Another reason the post was more successful was because of the existence of a call-to-action. A call to action means that I suggested the reader click on some link or visit another website at some point during the tweet. I think that referring the reader to the actual live periscope page boosted the tweet’s success, though providing an actual hyperlink would probably have been more effective in driving clicks to the periscope page and for increasing engagement on the tweet itself.

10. Drake Meme Promoted Tweet

The winning post of my semester of posting, not surprisingly. Though it was certainly boosted by a paid ad-spend, the number of organic impressions it received far outweighed any of my other totally organic tweets.  There are a few reasons to unpack as to why this post performed so well. I think first of all, the post was the only post of the semester that was created in a format designed specifically for virality. Because the meme is not only an easy to understand joke that’s relatable and topical, but its also a very rich and attractive piece of media, making for a piece of content that is both highly engaging and easily spread.

In terms of the meme itself, I chose the format because it is instantly recognizable and understandable to a meme-ready audience. The Drake Meme template has been around for a few years, and there are few people who don’t immediately recognize the format. The topic used within the meme is one I have significant experience with, and one I know many students of all ages struggle with. Because the meme was created mainly to appeal to certain communities on reddit, it is slightly less suited to the overall twitter audience, but only barely, as there is a massive collection of twitter users in high school and college who are just as receptive to a meme like this as those same kind of people on reddit.

In all, this assignment gave me a huge wake-up call into how I approach delivering content for my own personal brand, and for any brand I might work with in the future. I was extremely uncomfortable with the idea of using my own personality, my own image to promote anything, but by the end of the semester, i’ve grown much more acquainted with the kind of online personality I can put forth to an audience. It also taught me to try to enhance my own personal brand instead of attempting to augment it to serve a different purpose. I think my most successful content was the content where I was able to channel myself, my personality and perspective, into the content on my social media, instead of simply using my accounts to spread an empty message. I think this idea can certainly be taken and used in many of the jobs i’ll likely have in the future, and i’m grateful for the opportunity I was given to improve my skills in this constantly changing field.

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