My Influence and Growth on Social Media this Semester

Posted on by Meredith Lewis

Growing up with the rise of social media has meant that a lot of people automatically assume that you are ‘good’ at it. However, while I do know how to tweet and gain a lot of likes on Instagram by posting at the right times, I was not aware of many social media business tools and techniques before I took COM 427: Social Media for Communicators. Enhancing your different social media profiles and overall strategy and production value is a learning curve.

For 3 months, I tweeted 4+ times a week and grew my social media presence on Twitter by 45%. In September, I had only 32 followers and now I have 71 followers. I successfully executed a viral content marketing plan and my meme was retweeted by a major broadcasting company.

I learned that to grow your influence on Twitter, you have to draw upon your interests and professional network. I am a film and TV buff and so I learned how to engage with my fellow fans on Twitter by tweeting about specific moments from my favorite shows like Euphoria and Bob’s Burgers. Also, I started following more media and advertising agencies that I would like to work at in the future. I followed their industry awards and general news and would tweet when relevant. I gained followers at top media agencies and ended up connecting in real life with some of them.

Without further ado, here are my top 10 tweets for the semester:

My meme. My pride and joy. This meme came about after my failed original meme for the viral content marketing plan. Try, try again was my motto for this meme. I created it around the niche audience of Bob’s Burgers fans and the upcoming holiday, Thanksgiving. I used the white surface and black text meme format and an image from the show that matched well with my meme. I also retweeted it right before Thanksgiving which pushed my tweet to over 100 likes.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 19,141

Total Engagements – 1,021

Likes – 113

Retweets – 36

Replies – 5

Twitter polls and chicken debates are always tools for success. I utilized Twitter’s poll feature to execute my Twitter chicken tenders versus chicken nuggets debate. I added a fun chicken emoji as well to add humor and a splash of color to my tweet. Ultimately, chicken nuggets won. Rightly so.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 408

Total Engagements – 9

Likes – 2

Retweets – 1

This tweet was a lesson on how to use the hashtag #ICYMI. A key part of my Twitter growth this semester was consistently engaging with the advertising industry audience on Twitter. This article was written by one of my advertising professors and combined two of my passions: streaming and advertising. Although it was written a couple of weeks ago, I decided to retweet it to support my professor and because the article was very relevant with the launch of Apple TV+ and Disney+. Using #ICYMI was the perfect addition to my tweet to alert to my followers the article’s importance to me.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 384

Total Engagements – 4

Likes – 1

Retweets – 1

Social media has an abundance of cute dogs and I believe it is my duty to share them with the world on my Instagram. For this tweet, I wanted to grow my social media following on Instagram. Cross-platform promotion at its best. I learned later to make it even easier on followers by dropping your Instagram profile url in your tweet. Noted and my future cross-platform promotions will be utilizing personal urls. I added a fun GIF in as well to catch people’s attention while scrolling through their Twitter feeds.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 329

Media Views – 42

Total Engagements – 4

Likes – 2

Retweets – 1

I pulled the Bob’s Burgers fan audience in again on this tweet. It is often a show that can be forgotten about or maintain its small cult following. I wanted to show it some love and throw some Twitter attention to it in this tweet. I added a fun GIF that matched the context of my tweet.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 291

Media Views – 35

Total Engagements – 6

Likes – 3

Retweets – 1

This tweet was for one of our in class exercises. We had to bring attention to an issue by using social media. My group decided to tweet about racial slurs that were written in Syracuse University dorm bathrooms. A few days after we tweeted, the story went to national news and the #NOTAGAINSU movement gained traction. I learned that you can share your personal opinion on a subject when retweeting a newspaper article.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 246

Total Engagements – 4

Likes – 2

In one of our classes, we learned how to use trending hashtags to gain impressions and followers. During the day that this tweeted out, the hashtag #collegeinsixwords was trending on Twitter. I am constantly in need of food and caffeine at college and this was my response to the hashtag. I added a fun Jerry Seinfeld sipping coffee GIF to the tweet for additional media support.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 238

Media Views – 31

Total Engagements – 1

Likes – 1

How can you engage with and talk about your peers professionally on social media? It is easy to tweet memes at each other, but it is another thing to talk about your industry. I chatted with a fellow Newhouse student about social media certifications and thought it would be a great conversation to share on Twitter. To protect and respect her privacy, I did not show her face in the image I had with the tweet.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 202

Total Engagements – 18

Media Engagements – 13

Likes – 2

Replies – 1

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications has an extremely powerful alumni network and I know that engaging with them now will lead to strong future connections later. Also, expanding past your major’s alumni in Newhouse is important too. I tweeted my love for Newhouse alumnus, Michael Weber’s movies. I added a few hashtags as well to note that I know him from Syracuse and that I consider him to be a #icon. While he did not reply to me, I still hope to meet him in real life one day and thank him for his movies!

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 197

Total Engagements – 3

Media Views – 47

Likes – 1

While it would be nice, the GIF you want to use won’t always be on Twitter already. I learned how to create a GIF and put it on Twitter. I love Bon Appetit so I created a GIF of their main video cooking team and tweeted about them.

Analytics for this tweet:

Impressions – 184

Total Engagements – 6

Media Views – 31

Likes – 1

Expanding your social media influence is a journey not a race. I will continue to grow my followers and provide excellent Twitter content. Follow me @meredithrlewis on Twitter!

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