My evolving social media influence

Posted on by Jonathan Mettus

Part 1 – Influence

Twitter Growth

  • Initial Follower Count: 0
  • Final Follower Count: 34

Klout Growth

  • Initial Klout Score: 13.5
  • Final Klout Score: 23

Growth Analysis

Over the course of the semester, I gained 34 followers with a new Twitter account and increased my social media influence. Considering I was only Tweeting regarding the class and most people that would follow me know about my professional Twitter, I think around 40-50 followers was my ceiling. In hindsight, if I varied my Tweets and gave people outside of the class a reason to want to follow me, I could’ve raised that ceiling.

For the first few weeks, I had almost zero followers and my Tweets were plain. I tried following a lot of celebrity accounts and other popular accounts that I relate to, just to see if I could get a follow back or get followers from that user’s community. It didn’t work.

As I started using rich media and creating more humorous Tweets, I earned some Retweets, which turned into more followers. The single most effective method to gaining followers for me was just following everyone in the class and Tweeting more using the hashtag so that people in the class would notice my handle. I did get a few followers by using popular hashtags.

In the month before this class started, I had actually lost six followers on my professional Twitter account. Using some skills, including rich media, the power of GIFs, Retweeting myself and tagging people in Tweets, that I learned in this class, I added 33 followers throughout the semester. (For comparison, I have 596 total).

 

Part 2 – Execution

Top Tweets

*Not including the promoted Tweet from the viral content challenge

Impressions: 509 (Best of semester)
Media Views: 61
Engagements: 15
Engagement rate: 2.9%

Analysis: Some of my best impression counts from the semester came during the Periscope live Tweeting because everyone was monitoring Twitter and interacting with Retweets. This one was only relevant to the people in the class, but it used a funny GIF that a few people liked and wanted to share.

 

Impressions: 226
Media Views: 11
Engagements: 29
Engagement rate: 12.8% (Best of semester)

Analysis: This Tweet had humor going for it with the text, which is why I think it earned such a high engagement rate relative to the rest of my Tweets. On desktop it was title safe and you didn’t need to expand the photos, but on mobile I think the text was pretty enticing to make people want to see the photos.

 

 

Impressions: 353
Media Views: 49
Engagements: 39 (Best of semester)
Engagement rate: 11.0% (Third best of semester)

Analysis: The video in this Tweet wasn’t incredibly interesting but it was weird enough to get people to click on it and watch. The analytics were helped out by the fact that Paul Schwedelson replied to the Tweet with the Twitter handles of seven of our friends and former coworkers that know Matt, the subject of the video.

 

Impressions: 398
Media Views: 109 (Best of semester)
Engagements: 20
Engagement rate: 5.0%

Analysis: Hashtags are an effective way to reach an audience. I hopped on the debate hashtag with this Tweet to reach a larger audience than usual, as well as tagging several Twitter handles. The humorous GIF that was relevant to the event enticed people to view it.

 

Impressions: 227
Media Views: 4
Engagements: 24
Engagement rate: 10.6%

Analysis: This Tweet earned a decently high engagement rate for me and several likes. But the biggest thing that stands out is that I forgot to crop the screenshot. On the desktop Twitter feed the image is actually cropped perfectly by Twitter. But when someone clicks on the photo or views it on mobile it doesn’t look good. The low media view count is probably a good thing considering that.

 

Impressions: 121
Media Views: 0
Engagements: 15
Engagement rate: 12.4%

Analysis: Even on social media, people can be genuine and they appreciate recognition of their work. I interacted with the editor in chief of The Undefeated and he replied to thank me. It was the only time I was successful at getting someone with a large following and/or verified account to reply or interact with a Tweet. I probably should’ve tried to continue the conversation.

 

Impressions: 347
Media Views: 21
Engagements: 30
Engagement rate: 8.6%

Analysis: What worked for this Tweet is the number of images and the fact that two of them took my followers behind the scenes of the Carrier Dome transition process — something they likely normally wouldn’t get to see. The unique aspect earned me some Retweets and favorites.

 

Impressions: 79
Link clicks: 9
Engagements: 10
Engagement rate: 12.7% (second best of semester)

Analysis: All of my Twitter card Tweets for my meme got a pretty good engagement rate with a low number of impressions. That shows that the cards make users want to interact. I also think it was a result of people in the class wanting to help me out and reach the virality goal.

Impressions: 276
Media view: 48
Engagements: 18
Engagement rate: 6.5%

Analysis: This Tweet uses a good GIF and some humor, which earned five likes. I should’ve used the GIF when I Tweeted it out from my professional account last year, instead of a 20-second video (that got 1,600+ impressions and 650 engagements).

 

Impressions: 195
Votes: 17
Engagements: 19
Engagement rate: 9.7%

Analysis: People from my hometown freak out about Shamrock Shakes so I thought this Tweet would do a little better analytically. But my followers are almost all Syracuse University students so it did not resonate with them the way I thought it would. I got a decent vote count. The weird part is that most people voted for “Who cares?,” which isn’t a strong sentiment that would drive interaction. The call to action at the end was important.

 

Overall Twitter Analysis

As I mentioned before, initially my Tweets were just simple text. I thought they were easy to read and less intrusive on my followers’ timelines. As the course went on, I realized that photos, videos, GIFs and other media are the way to go. Unless it was a quote Tweet, all of my Tweets since Feb. 1 have included some form of media. That boosted my engagement, which then boosted my follower count. I can’t be as funny as I want on my professional account, so I pushed that with my class account. That voice helped my influence. My best Tweets all employed some type of humor, whether it be in the photo, text or GIF/video. With the help of the strategies learned in this class, I increased my impressions from 21,000 per month to 40,000 per month.

My biggest downfall with my class Twitter account was not Tweeting enough. I tended to Tweet for assignments with a few others sprinkled in. That lack of consistency likely made my followers forget about me and didn’t foster an environment for them to be continually interacting with me.

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