My COM 427 Journey: From Start To Finish

Posted on by Ilyssa Rudman

Part 1: Influence

At the start of the semester, I had a whopping 8 followers. I was very familiar with Twitter as I had used it throughout my Middle School and High School careers, but it was mostly used as a social platform. For that reason, I decided to deactivate my old account and start up a new one for my ADV 307 class last year. Entering the Twitter world from an advertising perspective is very different than the perspective of an eighth grader! The 8 followers that I had were a bunch of my friends from my 307 class as well as my professor and TA. Needless to say, my network was relatively small. I now have 29 followers, having gone up 27.6%. A lot of these new followers are my friends that also had to re-enter the Twitter world for other classes, but I actually did grab the attention of some people that I do not know! Most of the followers that I gained were in the beginning of the class, which is interesting because as the semester went on our Tweets got more and more advanced in terms of using different types of content and hashtags.

Much to my surprise, my Klout score actually decreased from the start of the semester. I am not sure why this is so, as I did gain a bit of a following on Twitter. I started with a score of 60 and went down 10 points to 50. Taking a closer look at the fluctuation of my Klout score, I see that it began to decline in late October. This could be due to the fact that our class started to focus more on other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. I also noticed that Twitter only makes up 7% of network contribution towards my score while Facebook makes up 11% and Instagram makes up 65%.

It is interesting for me to see what worked and what did not work in terms of receiving high engagement numbers on Twitter and also on Instagram towards the end of the semester. Before this class I had not truly understood the importance of a hashtag, and I now understand that it brings in eyes from all over the world which is one of the interesting parts of social media as a whole. I find it mind boggling that one could type in #sunset and pictures of sunsets from all over the globe will be surfaced for you. My use of different hashtags and buzzwords are what I feel drove in the most engagement. I also noticed that when I took the humorous route I received more engagement rather than just bland, boring tweets.

Part 2: Execution 

Above is one of my tweets that received the highest engagement of nine likes. To execute this tweet, I made use of Twitter Lists on Tweetdeck and decided to take the humor route. I think that this could be the sole reason for my high number of engagement. A bunch of my friends even texted me about this Tweet and told me they were “cackling!”

Here is another one of my Tweets that received a high engagement number of five likes. It is a little risky to include someone who has a mass amount of controversy surrounding their persona, however it did not seem to matter here. The assignment was to get a gauge for who my follower base is made up of and to tweet something that they can relate to, and I think I did a great job in doing so as I found that my following was almost entirely made up of college students. I included the hashtag #college so as to make sure that college students were drawn to it.

The tweet shown above received a high engagement, relatively speaking, of 2 comments and 4 likes.  I think that, again, taking the humor route really helped me out here. If I could do one thing differently it would be to include more hashtags to draw in more eyes because I happen to think this is really funny!

The above tweet that was sent out on #FollowFriday, which is a hashtag that has a lot of buzz around it. That could explain why I got a lot of engagement (5 likes). I also think it was good that I hash tagged #socialmedia and that the person I am recommending for people to follow is someone who is super relevant to my followers.

The above tweet received 3 likes. This was for the assignment of creating a video and tweeting it out. I decided to make use of the repetition of the word #blessed in different variations because this is a word that is used a lot in this day and age because of its direct correlation with one of Drakes songs.

This assignment was to send out a tweet in the voice of someone who we aspire to be like. I chose to emulate the voice of Wildfox Couture, one of my favorite brands, because I admire the way that their social media accounts come across. I think that they have a very edgy and risky attitude and I love that about them. I also happen to think that my emulation of their voice is particularly funny and relatable to my follower base. I feel that this could have gotten more engagement if I maybe tagged Wildfox and got their attention, but I will take the 3 likes and 1 comment!

This tweet was essentially a follow up to the one before it. It got 2 likes. I think it was smart of me to bring in the hashtag #ThursdayThoughts and this tweet is also one that is very relatable to my follower base.

This tweet was placed into the large conversation around 9/11 that happened on the day of. The hashtag #neverforget had a lot of traction, and I decided to insert myself into that conversation. I received 3 likes and although I was expecting more I am pretty impressed with myself!

I think that my execution of this tweet was very creative. The picture is actually from a ruin bar in Budapest, which looking back – I should have included. That would have probably drawn in more eyes as compared to the 2 likes I received.

This is my all-time favorite tweet because it is a little shameless self promotion! It received 3 likes, which I accredit to the hashtag #iphonephotography. This is a very up and coming thing and I happen to have been a proponent for its existence since the day I got my iPhone 7! I think that the pictures that I take are extremely high quality and that paired with my eye for a great photo is what lead me to start my iPhone Photography instagram. Twitter is a great place to promote this and I actually found out, through the hashtag, that this is actually a real thing! (Engagement: 3 likes)

This class has taught me the power and importance of social media. Not only do I have a better understanding of what social media can do for a brand, but I have a better understanding of how exactly to leverage a brands social media presence to their advantage. Hopefully my engagement numbers will continue to creep up as I will continue to apply my knowledge acquired in this class to my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook use.

 

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