My trek as a social media influencer in 2015

Posted on by Connor Grossman

Enrolling in Newhouse Social Media Class was one of the more captivating, educational experiences I’ve had in my college career. As someone who’s interest was always piqued by technology, social media hasn’t ever been an exception. It’s been fascinating to learn about the trends and turns brands, individuals and even single tweets take on in the realm of social media — especially Twitter.

Here’s how I’ve grown virtually in my class time.

Twitter followers as of August 31: 752

Twitter followers as of December 7: 805

Klout score as of September 8: 46.89

Klout score peak: 48.31 on November 3

Klout score as of December 7: 46.34

I’ve been an active Twitter user since October 2009, when the social media site was still in its growing stages. I built up a following under the handle @GiantsBaseball and tweeted out San Francisco Giants news and updates. I stuck with that online presence until joining The Daily Orange sports staff in January, when I changed my Twitter handle to my name (@connorgrossman) and tried to balance sharing Syracuse Athletics and Giants news. Tweeting out for Newhouse Social Media Class further diversified my Twitter portfolio and challenged me to appeal to my baseball-centric and Syracuse-centric audiences in different ways.

My follower influx would indicate I at least did a passable job of accomplishing that, but I think I could have done even more in utilizing social listening and measuring tools during baseball’s World Series, for example. Twitter even branded certain team hashtags with small icons to bring extra attention to them.

Tweeting for this class taught me the ever-growing importance of including media with tweets. Text-only tweets are no longer a commodity like media-enriched ones — complete with images, GIFs, videos and more — and are the industry standard for sports teams and corporations alike.

I learned to further distinguish a unique voice in my tweets, still coming off in a professional manner while trying to infuse a bit of my sarcasm-heavy personality into some tweets. Overall as a Twitter user I feel like I walk away from this class as a better communicator, especially since Twitter’s character limit doesn’t lend itself to run-on sentences or using extra words.

The fluctuation in my Klout score likely has to do with the frequency or infrequency in which I tweeted media-rich content, with some weeks going by with nothing but a couple media-rich class tweets. Some weeks I tweeted out my Daily Orange stories with images and those helped boost my score, but in all likelihood my fluctuating score has to do with a lack of consistency in tweet quantity.

I feel like a more knowledgable member of the social media world, and with the tools we’ve gotten our hands on in Newhouse Social Media Class, I’m aware of the infinite amount of social media knowledge still to garner.

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