My personal Twitter influence

Posted on by Marlena Tuskes

Part One: Influence

When I first started this semeter, my Twitter account was only up to 40 followers. Because this was my second Twitter (I created a news one right before I went to cover the election in New York), I wasn’t surprised my account wasn’t as popular as the one I made in 2012 was. But my mistake was thinking that I would automatically garner the same following as my other account without doing anything besides announcing I created a new Twitter. I had the expectation that my other followers would find my new Twitter account and be inclined to follow me first.

While this worked with some people here and there, I wasn’t gaining the following I expected or wanted. It really wasn’t until I began putting myself out there that I found my ratio of followers-following getting to a comfortable level. Because I followed so many news or verified accounts (without the expectation of a follow-back) it was no surprise I was following so many more people than the amount following me back.

I finally began using hashtags when tweeting about trending topics, especially when it came to breaking news situations. Instead of automatically retweeting something, I began to quote the tweet and adding my own take or knowledge on the subject. And ultimately, I learned the importance of following people first to get the follow-back as opposed to waiting around for someone to follow me. These factors ultimately lead to a gain of more than 20 followers within the past few months, and more interactions with those followers.

These interactions with my followers not only helped me gain even more, but also helped my Klout score go up. I started at 16 for my Klout score, which was so embarrassing as an aspiring journalist hoping to reach the masses. After interacting with my classmates and other people in my network, my Klout score went up to 34, a huge jump from the start of the semester in my opinion.

Part Two: Execution

 

For this tweet, I decided on what I was going to poll my followers after many discussions between myself and my fellow Broadcast & Digital Journalism students about where our favorite places to get groceries are. Growing up in Western New York, I am among the many who belong to the Wegmans cult, but so many of my friends from other states feel the same way about Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Publix, etc. I figured I would leave it up to Twitter!

I used our class’ opportunity to hear Terron Moore, social media director for Teen Vogue, speak as a way to interact with him on Twitter. Plus a picture always helps a tweet look nice in this case.

I was surprised at how many interactions this tweet got, but by using the event’s hashtags more people were able to find the tweet as opposed to me just tweeting out the picture with our class’ hashtag, which would only get our students.

This tweet was fun for me. While a lot of my fellow students were tweeting about their fun in the sun over spring break, I figured I had the opportunity to tweet about my opposite experience – a massive snow storm in Buffalo, N.Y.

While this didn’t get as many interactions as I was expecting, I still really liked this tweet. This Oscar Wilde quote is one of my favorites, and truly exemplified how I feel and worked really well with the quoted tweet.

I found this picture and quote to be really inspiring that day, especially as a student who continues to go after their dreams.

Standing Rock was trending at the time, so I figured I would get the news about what was going on out there while using the hashtag to get more interactions with it, and it worked! I had people who didn’t follow me retweet it.

This is one of my favorite op-eds and Katy Tur is a huge role model of mine. I figured I would use the opportunity of hashtagging ICYMI to give the piece a shout out for my followers to see.

I’m really passionate about journalism, so whenever someone – especially our country’s leaders – question the work journalists do everyday, I voice my opinion. This was another example of using a trending hashtag and getting retweeted by people who don’t follow me and wouldn’t have seen the tweet without the hashtag.

This was my first GIF I ever created and I felt it was appropriate to use it to celebrate the end of a very stressful week! Popping champagne is always a good way to celebrate.

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