My Top 10 Tweets

Posted on by Helena Battipaglia

Below are my top 10 tweets of the semester.  They all contain the hashtag #NHsmc.  Below each tweet, I further elaborate on why I believe it is significant and received the kind of engagement that it did.

Using Topsy, I found that this was the top tweet of the day, earning a score of 61, among all of our other class tweets using the hashtag #NHsmc.  I used the Topsy Social Analytics tool, which allows you to search and compare the number of mentions for any term or user on Twitter.  I think this tweet was popular in particular because it includes two popular hashtags, #WednesdayWisdom and #humpday, which many users utilize on a weekly basis.

This tweet ended up getting more engagement than I expected.  According to Twitter Analytics, the post had 16 media engagements, two likes and a total of 218 impressions.  I am presuming this is because I tagged Ethan Zuckerman, who is in fact a widely known media scholar.  He also interacted with the tweet by liking it, which may have helped drive more engagement to the tweet.  I also included a photo, and as we’ve learned in class, imagery always helps with engaging Twitter users and followers.

This tweet was my top media tweet for December so far, according to Twitter analytics.  It got the highest amount of engagements out of all my December tweets (54 total) and received 246 total impressions.  I believe this was a popular tweet for a few reasons.  First, I shared a link, which always promotes more engagement because users can actually click on and explore your content.  Second, I attached a screenshot from snapchat, which is a popular social media platform at the moment and is only growing.  I also used the top ranking emoji, as this was the week our class was required to include a popular or trending emoji in a tweet.  Finally, hashtags were included, which is crucial if you want many people to see or engage with your tweet.

Although this tweet did not get a tremendous amount of engagement, it did show me how tweeting out content that allows users to interact with your tweet can be very beneficial.  My poll got 6 total votes, which is still more engagement than I even anticipated since my activity on Twitter only started to increase at the beginning of the semester.  I now realize that quick, fun polls like this one keep followers engaged and more willing to read what you have to say, as it enables them to contribute to the conversation.

I decided to tweet about this supermoon eclipse after seeing the topic appear on Google Trends.  This tweet received a high amount of user engagement for me, with seven total link clicks.  I believe that this is because it included both a GIF and a popular trending topic many were already tweeting about throughout the day.  I made sure to hashtag #supermooneclipse to join the conversation and ensure that my tweet would appear with all of the other ones.

Although this was not necessarily a class assignment, I was asked my many people in class to tweet from the Murrow Awards using the class hashtag so they could see what was going on during the night.  According to Twitter Analytics, this tweet received a good amount of engagement.  I think this is largely because I tweeted from a widely known event that many journalists were tweeting about and attending as well.  This tweet received 30 total media engagements, and I received five profile clicks from it.  In short, a decent number of people wanted to look at the picture and further engage with this tweet from the awards.

For class, we were all required to tweet about and promote News Engagement Day at Newhouse.  The event is promoted pretty well throughout the Newhouse school and on its various social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) so I was unsurprised by the fact that my tweet received a high amount of engagement.  It received two retweets and three likes, so it clearly drew in a good amount of Twitter users.  According to Twitter Analytics, it also got 384 total impressions.  I used the #NewsEngagementDay hashtag as well as other hashtags, tagged the Newhouse school, and included a link.  As we’ve learned in class, these are all surefire ways of increasing engagement and viewership of a tweet.

I am including this tweet because although it only received one like, it still got much more engagement than when I tweeted out the very same link the next day, but in a different way.  According to Twitter Analytics, this tweet in particular received a total of six detail expands, and five link clicks.  When I tweeted out the same link but phrased this tweet in a slightly different way, that tweet only received one detail expand and one link click.  When analyzing the potential reasons why this tweet was more popular, I believe that it could be that my followers already saw this first tweet the day before.  Therefore, they felt no need to click and engage with another tweet containing the same link.  Or, I realize that the above tweet is much more concise and talks to a wide audience.  My second tweet contained “Attention journalists” at the beginning, which could have deterred a large number of my followers from engaging with the tweet, as some are in fact not journalists. Those people might not see a point in engaging with a tweet that is only reaching out to journalists specifically.  I realize this now, and want to make a conscious effort for my tweets to appeal to a wide audience.

Twitter Analytics revealed to me that this tweet received 15 total engagements.  Among the highest were six media engagements, four link clicks and two profile clicks.  I definitely see a trend in that the more media and visuals I include, the more engagement the tweet receives.  I did not think this tweet got much engagement at first because it only received one like.  However, Twitter Analytics definitely showed me that not only likes or retweets reveal how much interaction and engagement a tweet actually can receive.

This tweet got the greatest amount impressions within the last 28 days, with 301 impressions total. I believe this is because I shared a link to Pinterest, which is definitely a popular social media platform users would probably be interested in checking out or tweeting about themselves.  I also included a number of relevant hashtags in order to increase viewership and engagement, as I have found this has worked for me multiple times in the past.

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