My Journey as a Social Media Influencer

Posted on by Viveca Ortiz-Torres

Before COM 427, Social Media for Communicators, Twitter was already my favorite social media app and I was proud of the following that I had. Before I began to learn all the different engagement strategies that 427 would teach me, I had 398 followers. Now as I write this post, reflecting on the techniques I learned throughout the past semester, I have gone up to 457 followers. I gained 59 followers and had a 14.8% growth.

I actually cannot believe that I gained 59 more followers, but I do have to give credit to the 5-8 people that followed me from the COM 427 class. I think I gained followers because of my increased use of hashtags and tweeting about relevant topics that would totally land on someone’s newsfeed who does not follow me. Usually I tweet about bands and music that people don’t know or haven’t heard, so sometimes people do not engage with that. Therefore adding more tweets that people who are not that into music can relate to I think also increased my following. I also posted more rich media. I still like to post my few words that I think are funny, but one of my highest performing tweets that we’ll analyze later ended up being a photo gallery, which is something I do not really post on Twitter. I also continued to engage with bands and artists, so that increased my following by default due to artists seeing that other artists follow me, and are just trying to get noticed. In order to keep gaining more followers, I will post more rich media, relevant hashtags and make my tweets about music that people have not heard of, a little bit more relatable.

My Klout before #nhsmc was 40, and my Klout by the end of the semester is still 40. My Klout was mostly consistent only increasing a point .5 every so often, but from April 14th-April 20th, my Klout was at 36. I investigated my own Twitter profile and found that during that time I actually did not tweet and only retweeted other tweets, therefore I did not attract too much engagement those 6 days. I keep a pretty consistent Twitter, mostly only tweeting about topics that I personally care about, and sometimes that does not get the most engagement.

Klout

#1 My top tweet with #nhsmc was about Dilly Dilly. The Bud Light commercial’s new phrase was still confusing a lot of people at this time and people were tweeting Dilly Dilly in preparation for the Super Bowl that was coming up. So this tweet was very timely and a lot of people felt the same way.

I ended up with 1,112 impressions, 51 engagements, 11 likes, 1 retweet and 3 replies. The replies came from people I personally know and were people either agreeing with me or telling me where Dilly Dilly came from.

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#2 This tweet came from tweeting live about the Zuckerberg hearing. The tweet was posted in a timely manner and had the relevant hashtags that would draw people to the tweet. I decided to post it with a poll because I wanted to see what people were thinking about this topic.

I ended up with 478 impressions and 8 votes. For some reason, Twitter analytics says I only got 1 vote, but my tweet says I got 8.

Zuckerberg is asked if

#3 This tweet also came from live tweeting about the Zuckerberg hearing. The tweet was posted in a timely manner and contained the relevant hashtags that people were using to follow the hearing. Since the hearing is on because of security and privacy, I felt that tweeting about that topic would be relevant as well.

I ended up with 647 impressions, 5 engagements, 2 replies and 1 like. The replies added commentary either agreeing with me or that Facebook should expand its offices across the country.

#Zuckerberg says #Facebook

#4 This is my one tweet that I’m proud of but does not have the #nhsmc hashtag attached to it. However, if I posted this tweet before taking the class I would not have hashtagged it with #Syracuse because I did not really know the power of the hashtag before the class. I tweeted this because I was so done with the cold weather at this time and it was so nice in the morning, so I was truly offended by the snow at night. I think some people agreed.

I ended up with 769 impressions, 19 engagements, 9 likes, 5 profile clicks and 1 reply. The profile clicks mean a lot to me because it increases the chances for people to actually hit that follow button when they come to my profile.

Okay so it was

#5 I tweeted this because I am actually in love with Timothée Chalamet and Sufjan Stevens’ performance at the Oscars was actually angelic. So I had to tell everyone how emotional I was watching my favorites onscreen. My friends definitely voted on this poll because they are right, I cried 10000000000000 times.

I ended up with 346 impressions, 14 engagements, 9 votes and 1 reply. My reply referred to how Call Me By Your Name was a great film.

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#6 The Mat Magazine actually followed me on Twitter so when we used the social app that tells us who our most influential follower is, I decided to tweet at them because I love this Valentine’s Day card and King Krule. His new album “The OOZ” had just dropped so I felt like that part of the tweet was timely, because the rest of it was not since I did not post this tweet on Valentine’s Day, which could have given it more engagement. The Mat Magazine did not respond but they did like the tweet.

Since The Mat Magazine liked my tweet, it landed on other people’s newsfeeds, giving me 719 impressions and 74 engagements. I ended up with 67 media engagements, 2 profile clicks and 1 like. The profile clicks are important here again because at least The Mat Magazine is a music magazine and I would want its followers to click on my profile.

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#7 This is one of my favorite tweets because Chicago is my favorite place ever and these pictures are pretty funny. I had just come back to Syracuse from spending the semester in London and my friend and I decided this was the best way to document my homecoming. I posted this tweet on my laptop because that is where my pictures are, and the last picture got cut off on mobile which did not look as good. A lot of my followers are my friends from Chicago so this definitely helped to boost my post. It is also one of my tweets that has the most likes, and that would not have happened without the rich media aspect.

I got 765 impressions, 162 engagements, 120 media engagements, 17 likes, 2 profile clicks and 2 retweets. One of the retweets was actually a quote tweet and I did not know the person who quote tweeted it, so I felt famous.

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#8 This tweet was created because our assignment was to use someone’s voice in our tweet. The Grammys had just happened and DJ Khaled had just performed his set. He says a line similar to this in one of his songs, so I decided to try to emulate that voice and apply it to the Grammys. I was surprised to have 10 likes, but I think that the hashtags and the timeliness of the tweet really helped. Plus, almost everyone loves DJ Khaled.

I ended up with 423 impressions, 18 engagements, 10 likes, 2 replies and 2 profile clicks. Lillion actually commented on my tweet, asking if I had seen Asahd, DJ Khaled’s son.

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#9 This was one of my favorite tweets to post because of the first picture: “My Fiancé sucks, who wants him?”

It was so timely that I had just spent winter break traveling and capturing all of this latrinalia and Professor Grygiel had just taught us the actual word for it and how it relates to “in real life” social media. Once again, the rich media aspect of this post brought in the engagement, and none of the important parts of the pictures were cut off when it was posted.

I ended up with 609 impressions, 66 engagements, 42 media engagements, 7 likes, 3 profile clicks, and 1 retweet.

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#10 This was my very first #nhsmc tweet! In class, we had talked about emojis, hashtags, staying away from using all 280 characters and introducing ourselves online. Mayonnaise and ranch are the best, Chicago is also the best and Eddie Vedder is the best of all -so I think some people related to this.

I ended up with 888 impressions, 38 engagements, 10 profile clicks (!!!!!!), 9 likes and 2 replies. One of the replies wondered why I did not include ketchup in my “condiments that matter”, and that is because ketchup is gross. My friend who has previously taken COM 427 also replied as she recognized the #nhsmc. So in this tweet I saw first-hand the community that is #nhsmc.

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Overall, I learned several strategies and techniques to get the most engagement on my tweets, but adding rich media to my tweets is something that really helped my tweets perform. When Instagrammers made it tacky to add hashtags to their posts, that same sentiment transferred over to Twitter, and I really stopped using hashtags with my tweets for a long time. So having Professor Grygiel explain the importance of hashtags and how you can engage with people that way, I began using them more. Finally, I truly enjoyed the community that is #nhsmc and have this class to thank for the 59 followers gained.

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