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.

Analytics

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

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