Considering the fact that my Twitter presence was almost non-existent before this class began, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made with my account.

On the first day of class, I had 163 followers. As of today, I have 218. That’s an increase of 55, or about 25%. This has been encouraging. When we first began, I asked myself, “How will my followers increase when I feel like no one cares about what I post?”

I’ve discovered there are a number of answers to that question, the first being: if you aren’t engaging with other people, how can you expect them to engage with you? I started participating as a follower myself–liking more posts, seeking out people or accounts that interested me, and in general providing more response to the things my friends posted.

Another answer to that: post things that people WILL care about. Post media music links, video, humorous memes or well-written articles.

I followed these guidelines, and although my average engagement rate didn’t increase, I found my followers increasing steadily throughout the semester, with a significant bump after my social issue campaign posts.

My posts about the misnaming and dangerous nature of synthetic marijuana garnered a lot of attention from marijuana accounts: legal marijuana businesses, legalization activist accounts and a few general “Weed is my Life” accounts. Every day, my phone buzzed with a new bud-loving Twitter follower. In total, I gained seven weedcentric followers:

@THEMMEXCHANGE – The Medical Marijuana Exchange

@CultivateJobs – Cultivate: a professional network for jobs in the legal marijuana business

@CannabisSeminar – Twitter presence of a cannabis group in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

@RWwholesale – Rockwool Wholesale: A provider of mineral insulation sometimes used in hydroponic farming (a la growing marijuana.)

@420 – 420 by WeedClub, “A Professional Cannabis Network”

@NuggDeals – Nugg Deals: An app to order/deliver medical marijuana from various stores

@CannabisNews – Cannabis News: Retweeting marijuana related news in the US and Canada

As for my Klout score, it’s wavered around the same place all semester. I began at around 26, decreased at one point to 24.4, increased at my peak to 28 and am now at 27. Not the most successful numbers.

Despite my unimpressive Klout score, I did gain a few influential followers with better Klout scores than mine, including @BenVereen (64), who favorited one of my retweets yesterday. Yay 😀

I didn’t grow as much as I should have, but I’m in better social media shape than I was in September.