Konrad Twitter Growth/Analysis

Posted on by Mac Konrad

@MacMcKonrad

Followers prior to COM 427: 5

Followers gained from August-November: +8(160% increase)

Total Current Followers: 13

To be perfectly honest I didn’t know how to grow my network for most of the semester. I came into this class with very little experience with social networks let alone successful ones. Frequently I was flying blind just doing the daily assignments with little direction of how effective my posts were.

That being said, now looking back I know what I was doing was at least marginally effective. Prior to August my account had around 7 or so followers but I quickly lost those as the semester was starting. So my 160% increase in followers also included ground I lost before I had begun using the COM 427 strategies.

And while I don’t particularly enjoy using social media in some of the ways this class advises (e.g. hashtags, reaching to random people, twitter ads), I do see the quantifiable value in doing so. I may not want to curate the posts themselves but understanding these strategies gives me a greater appreciation for social networks and how to interact with them.

–Engagements: 21; Impressions: 105

–This was my most engaged post with 21. Which is a little understandable because I directly call out people in the class in accordance with an assignment about engaging with people.

–Engagements: 18; Impressions: 3101

–My furthest reaching post was about battle rap. I didn’t know this one was so visible until looking back for this assignment. In retrospect it makes sense because battle rap is a niche but dedicated community and the people I mentioned are giants of the subculture.

 

–Engagements: 10; Impressions: 397; Media Views: 85

— This one did all around solid. This is probably the most comedic my twitter voice ever got during this class. Not really my thing in retrospect however.

 

–Engagements: 8; Impressions: 192

— I posted up a lot of news articles that got a lot of consistently got a good amount of attention from my small audience.

— Engagements: 6; Impressions: 162

— This was my first post for COM 427 and looking back is also one of the most visually interesting. This fridge has a lot to look at and I  should’ve used it for my meme challenge since I think people would find this more comedic and interesting than what I chose.

–Engagements: 6; Impressions: 108

— Another news post that got good engagement. A lot of the attention these kinds of posts got likely came from the class I was posting them for (e.g. IST 486, #486Social).

–Engagements: 7; Impressions: 208

— This news post got more attention than the one it was replying to which I found curious. I figure it’s because the Kaepernick story was still fresh then and people were looking actively for content about the signing.

— Engagements: 2; Impressions: 409

— I did this post along with the one about battle rap. This one is tagging a popular gaming critic on YouTube. I didn’t expect this to get any engagement at all so seeing that 409 people saw it makes me feel like it was a success.

–Engagements: 2; Impressions: 15

–Gabriela is a popular tennis player at SU and someone I’ve met through class. I figured she was an influential student at Syracuse and would be a welcome addition to my network.

–Engagements: 3;  Impressions: 126

–This was my meme for the viral content challenge. Technically the engagement and impressions should be up about 33% but I accidentally posted the wrong version of this meme initially and split the attention it received. Also as I said earlier, I should’ve used the fridge picture for this meme since I think more people would want to look at that picture. This meme appeals to my sense of humor (and only got likes on Imgur) but I know it’s not for everyone and virality is about appealing to the masses.

View this post on Instagram

What’s Up, Fall #nhsmc

A post shared by Mac (@mmkonrad2018) on

— This was my most popular Instagram post and I can’t tell you why. Most of my posts got 0 likes or comments. Only three or four have any engagement at all. I did have 19 followers by the end of the semester but I used this account with another class’s project and likely sapped some my audience from there.

 

Summary:

While looking back over my posts I realized how directionless my feed seemed. I didn’t have a consistent voice or theme that my content would take (except that the posts were always related to class). While I don’t fault myself for not knowing how to utilize the affordances of Twitter or Instagram effectively, I do see now where I was going wrong.

My posts were also fairly superficial unless they were about the news. The photos I posted also lacked a bright visual appeal which I would blame on me not understanding photography. But my biggest gripe about my posts is that I didn’t use video enough. I only had a few GIFs or videos and they consistently performed above my average metrics.

I am happy with my use of links however. I posted a lot of news stories and while the numbers weren’t huge, I could always count on a news story post getting me a like or two and a few link clicks.

The biggest issue for me was reminding myself in real life to check my social medias. I’m not great about checking social media and I let dozens of notifications stack up on me across platforms at multiple points during the semester. While this problem wasn’t solved by the end of the semester I did become cognizant of how often I checked social media and made an effort to do it once a day.

Overall I definitely had a rocky experience with social media. I started with a small network and struggled to find my way early on. I followed the lead of the class but in the end it worked nicely for me. I absolutely feel like I understand social media better but more importantly the numbers prove that point.

160% increase in followers is a big margin. Also in the last 4 months I’ve gotten nearly 10,000 total impressions which dwarfs the -1000 I had gotten in the previous year. Even over the last 28 days while I’ve been fairly inactive on Twitter, my impressions and profile visits are still in the positive.

If I had to describe the last 3 & 1/2 months on social media in one sentence: A successful learning experience.

Leave a Reply