My Personal Growth: Am I on the Path of Becoming an Influencer?

Posted on by Taylor Sheehan

Becoming a Consistent Tweeter

For a majority of the semester, we focused on content creation and engaging with Twitter, which I am grateful for. Twitter is the one social media platform that I was not the best with going into this class. A lot of what I did was just retweet others and engage with my Twitter followers, not necessarily be a content creator myself or realize the potential that Twitter can have for my own personal brand. Utilizing all of the strategies discussed in class, I found my engagement levels increasing as well as my followers.

On August 28th, my Twitter followers were at 434. This is a pretty high number, but a lot of them were just friends from high school and college over the years, so they are a given. Over the course of the semester, as I tweeted more, used other hashtags, downloaded apps like Reddit for inspiration, completed a marketing campaign and produced content that was diverse, my followers spiked a little. A few marketing managers from social media companies began to follow me as well, I must be doing something right!

My followers went up by 20 to 454 by November 29th at a 4.6% increase. My Klout score went from 26 to 33. After examining my Klout 90-day-score history, my score went up to a 38 by the end of September until around October 10th, meaning I was tweeting more and receiving more engagement around this time. My score began to dip a little when our class began to focus on other social media platforms such as Instagram and we made a shift in focus, which makes sense. But that also tells me I need to continuously tweet and generate content. I need to be on a consistent schedule, which is where Tweetdeck helps me out and I can schedule tweets, not just tweet when I feel like it.

So what worked?

The biggest success I found was relevance. If I was tweeting out media that was not only relevant to myself, but others could relate in some way or understand me, it got positive feedback. If it was only relevant to me, and didn’t do much for others, the engagement was lower, nor were the favorites or retweets rolling in. I also found that timeliness was crucial. Trending topics and “real-time” conversations as we discussed in class received good engagement, if it was a completely random link that seemed to be a forced tweet, it didn’t work the best. Furthermore, gifs, pictures, and videos were better received than the tweets without, so this tells me that users are more likely to engage with media that are relevant to them.

Take this tweet for example (my very first tweet for the class I might add).

Impressions: 1,227

Total Engagements: 150

This was my online introduction for class and I wanted to be unique and show off one of Syracuse’s best features, which is why I think the engagement was so high and I had 20 favorites, a retweet and three comments. I incorporated a big part of my identity, which was a gymnast, along with a comment about senior year of school. The picture is so engaging, it was received well by my followers–especially those who know my personal sacred history with the sport and that this is my signature pose in front of good back drops. My impressions were off the charts for a first tweet for class, I thought my little dancing emojis added a little flavor as well. I knew this had to be a way to stand out and make a statement.

On September 6th, I tweeted out some IRL social media of abandoned subway graffiti back home in Rochester, NY.

Impressions: 312

Total Engagements: 67

I utilized pictures with various colors, quotes, and very carefully crafted pictures I took the weekend prior when I was home for a day on a little adventure. The way photos are set up, in my opinion, has a direct effect on how well others respond to it. I tried to incorporate the rule of thirds we discussed. I also think that for my Syracuse friends, this gave Rochester some real character and truly defined what IRL social media looked like.

The following day, since we were to try to engage with an existing Twitter moment, I chose to make myself apart of #sheisthefirst and tag one of my favorite gymnasts.

Impressions: 722

Total Engagements: 28

The hashtag was about acknowledging different women who have made history in some way. The hashtag was doing great on Twitter, and me having been a gymnast, of course I decided to point out Gabrielle Douglas being the first African American woman to win the All-Around gold medal (there’s clearly a theme here). I used the hashtag and received some favorites from users I did not know, meaning it was discovered by people going through the hashtag. I need to do this more! It is an effective way to show possible employers and other users that I am aware and not afraid to engage in social media.

On September 10th (I had a lot of successes early on) I tweeted out a gif from the gif keyboard on my phone. The gif was of Joey from the sitcom Friends and I tied it back to Syracuse.

Impressions: 238

Media Views: 125

Total Engagements: 23

When thinking about a gif to utilize, I searched “shocked” on my gif keyboard. Once I saw Joey I was sold considering it is one of my favorite shows. The seven favorites were from one non-Syracuse student and six Syracuse students, implying that my Syracuse friends understood the excitement of seeing Jimmy B in Wegmans and that it is truly a rarity. I also hashtagged Jim Boeheim because for one I never hashtag enough on Twitter, and I wanted to join the conversation around him with basketball season coming up. Using gifs to relate to an experience is a fun and underrated way to generate content.

While doing A/B Testing on Twitter (I never knew what this was before but it is so helpful), I chose to interchange tweet wording with a quote tweet about a hilarious high school that dressed up for school pictures as pop culture characters.

Impressions: 624

Total Engagements: 16

My first tweet which brought my high school into context was favorited by high school friends because my high school was notoriously known for being so strict. My followers knew exactly what I was talking about and found it comical enough to show me some favorites. This tweet performed better than when I tweeted out the Buzzfeed link again and tweeted, “Personal favorite: Cher from Clueless: Ugh as if!” The second time around it only got one favorite. Again, relevance.

My personal favorite tweet this semester was making our own gif. Watch it for yourself; I dare you not to giggle.

Impressions: 803

Engagements: 53

I knew I wanted to find something gymnastics related so I began searching gymnastics bloopers on youtube and found the perfect video to record to describe how I was feeling at that time. I wanted to help explain how others were feeling too with a comedic approach. I remembered that #Monday was always trending on Twitter because it is a well-known rough day to get through, so I hashtagged it. I had never created my own gif before, but now that I learned how to (I used image flip) I will do so in the future as another way for content creation strategy.

The next assignment was to tweet multiple pictures and create a visually appealing grid with them. The pictures had to be related in some way. With the weather still surprisingly nice and warm in late September, I took pictures around campus and thought carefully about how they would be seen in a tweet. I tested it by tweeting on another account first, and when I liked the order of them, I tweeted them from my personal account.

Impressions: 626

Total Engagements: 149

This tweet showed the importance of carefully placing photos on Twitter. If they look a little off, maybe my engagements wouldn’t be as high, or I might not have gotten nine favorites. These kinds of tweets can look awkward if not placed correctly, especially if in the future I am doing this for a specific brand.

A few days later, I was to connect/link to another social platform I have. Instead of doing the typical Instagram or Snapchat, I went another route.

Impressions: 269

Total Engagements: 21

I shared my LinkedIn Profile, a social platform that is underrated if you ask me. That’s why I decided to comment it as “showing some love” for my LinkedIn with a little smiling emoji. Since my goal with this class was to boost my professional presence as I get ready for the real world, what better way to do that then incorporate my LinkedIn (with my new fresh professional picture at the time too)! I actually received ten views on my LinkedIn profile when I signed in and checked that as well as three requests.

While away in Boston at the PRSSA National Conference, one of the tweet assignments was to tweet out at an influencer. I took the opportunity to tweet Judy Smith, who is the real life Olivia Pope that the television show Scandal was based off of.

Impressions: 575

Total Engagements: 17

I got to hear her speak while in Boston, an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience. I utilized #PRSSANC, which is what students were using from the conference, and got favorites and retweets from others in Boston. I even had some engagement from the head of the PR department at Newhouse! I had always been a little shy about tweeting during professional situations like this, but really it is a great way to join the conversation in a professional setting and connect on social platforms with others who are just like me.

During the middle of October, I was in South Carolina visiting family. I was in a restaurant surrounded my Clemson fans when Syracuse football defeated the no. 2 ranked team. I have never seen so many fans leave so quickly when they realized they were going to lose. But hey, this was great news for my family and I who were the only Syracuse fans screaming in the place. I took this an an opportunity to create a Twitter moment, which I had never done before.

Impressions: 900

Total Engagements: 82

After creating a Twitter moment, I quickly realized, I could easily be asked to do this at my job wherever I end up. As someone in PR, this is a very useful skill, and I definitely wanted to include this tweet in my top 10 tweets as it has pushed me and allowed me to expand my social media skillset. I received a lot of engagement on it across the board, especially because it was timely and a very shocking event.

WOW, I Would Say this Class was a Success for Me.

From August to December, my knowledge of social media platforms and how to better utilize them has grown exponentially. I quite frequently find myself saying, “Well from my social media class experience it’s best to do this…” The information I have taken away is forever useful, from social media marketing plans with our own memes to testing out new platforms I had no knowledge of prior. Not to mention, can we take a moment to reflect on the fact that Twitter decided to officially update to 280 characters for the first time in years right in the middle of our semester? If anything, I have learned that the world of social media is ever changing, in fact platforms change so much from one time we use them to the next time we sign on. I must adapt with it and continuously figure out ways to become a relevant content creator in this growing digital age.

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