Personal Influence Growth — Twitter

Posted on by Catherine Leffert

Part 1: Influence

Followers at start of course (8/29): 271

Followers at end of course (12/3): 316

Percentage growth: 16.61

Month by Month Follower Growth: September – 19, October – 18, November – 16, December (until 12/3) – 2

Total Followers gained (from 8/29 – 12/3) : 55

Total Followers lost (from 8/29 – 12/ 3) : 10

Part 2: Execution

Tweet 1

Analysis:

  • This received 7 likes
  • 515 impressioins
  • 25 engagements
  • 4.9% engagement rate

What worked:

  • Followed meme format.
  • This was on brand for me, it included my likes, dislikes, and was slightly humorous.

What didn’t work:

  • I think across all my tweets, the #NHsmc would sometimes sway people from liking. Out of all of my top tweets, according to my Twitter Analytics, none of the ones from this class made it.

Tweet 2

Analysis:

  • This tweet received 30 likes
  • It got 3 retweets
  • Since it was a video, it got 356 views
  • 1,432 impressions
  • 129 engagements
  • 9.0% engagement rate
  • 10 profile clicks from the tweet

What worked:

  • Many of my followers are Daily Orange- related people, so they love being able to see things that are relevant to them.
  • I think since it was a video, it got far more engagement than other types of media would.
  • The 3 people who retweeted the video have a larger follower span with a wider variety of followers, which I think helped increase impressions.

What didn’t work:

  • The “social media irl” comment isn’t something I’d normally say, and people actually texted me after I posted this and asked why. However, I think it was fun to find and overall, people enjoyed seeing the newsroom.

Tweet 3

DISCLAIMER: this tweet wasn’t meant for this class, but I noticed it blew up and it got featured in one of the powerpoints, so I’m including it as a bonus on this blog post.

Analysis:

  • 205 likes
  • 8,729 impressions
  • 314 engagements
  • 3.6% engagement rate
  • 5 replies
  • 3 retweets

What worked:

  • In the niche world of dogs on twitter, the two accounts that I tagged in this tweet are two of the most popular, so anyone who follows both of them could have seen this reply.
  • The opinion I’m expressing is a common one among the followers of these accounts.
  • The text is simple, short and punchy (though grammar is atrocious) it is easy to digest.

What didn’t work:

  • Almost none of MY followers were able to see this, because it really belongs in a dimension of twitter where my followers don’t go
  • It didn’t have any media
  • It didn’t really persuade anyone who engaged with it to go to my account and follow me

Tweet 4

Analysis:

  • 13 likes
  • 1 retweet
  • 1 reply
  • 621 impressions
  • 65 total engagements
  • 39 link clicks
  • 10.5% engagement rate

What worked:

  • Featuring other peoples’ work was really strong for this tweet because they would engage with it as a form of self-promotion. The single retweet was from someone who had an article featured in my Moment. This is one of the highest engagement rates I’ve seen on my tweets.
  • Again, because my followers are Daily Orange-related people, producing content marketed toward them was generally effective.

What didn’t work:

  • On the flip side of being Daily Orange-related, any followers who aren’t, wouldn’t find this particularly interesting
  • It was probably slightly jarring to see me tweet in a Moment, because I hadn’t done that before. I’m not sure if this could’ve negatively affected my engagement, but it’s possible people were thrown off.
  • I learned that it’s really difficult to have successful tweets if they’re super off-brand.

Tweet 5

NOTE: I wanted to highlight this tweet because of how poorly it did and contrast it with my other work

Analysis:

  • 0 likes, replies or retweets
  • 3 engagements
  • 223 impressions
  • 1.3% engagement rate

What worked:

  • I truly believe the only reason anyone saw this tweet was because of the tag and hashtags.

What didn’t work:

  • Everything else. But in all seriousness, it was so unclear who I was trying to emulate (NY Times out of context) that no one understood my tweet. Everyone who saw it probably thought it was some weird inside joke or something like that.
  • I should’ve made it clear who I was emulating and made it more directed to my follower base, and potentially included some sort of media.
  • I learned that context is super important on tweets like this.

Tweet 6

Analysis:

  • 22 likes (and that’s only on the first tweet of the thread. On all photos I received 125 likes, though they weren’t all from unique accounts)
  • 3 retweets, which retweeted the whole thread. Other individual tweets got retweets as well
  • 140 engagements
  • 1,287 impressions
  • 10.9% engagement rate (my highest all time of tweets for this class)

What worked:

  • The idea, featuring my friends’ dogs, was honestly probably the strongest part of this tweet. People loved having their dogs featured, and if they didn’t, they loved seeing other peoples’ pets. Converging this with the hot topic of trusting media really worked for me, and my follower base.
  • Including that media, the photos, was strong here and I think drew a lot of people in.
  • It was marketed toward my followers, who are mostly journalists.
  • I had told my friends by word of mouth to keep an eye out for the tweet, so they were ready for it when I published it
  • I included the #NHsmc in the last tweet, which I think helped not deter people from clicking on the thread, but it also brought some classmates in to see the last tweet, who then looked up through the thread.
  • I learned that dogs really encourage people to click.

What didn’t work:

  • The thread may have been just a couple tweets too long, and people began to trail off toward the end.
  • It wasn’t particularly professional, in the sense that employers might think it’s juvenile, but that’s more of an issue for the future.

Tweet 7

Analysis:

  • 8 likes
  • 1 reply
  • 548 impressions
  • 38 engagements
  • 6.9% engagement rate

What worked:

  • Personally, I thought this tweet was hilarious, but I believe context is what was missing. I didn’t think you needed to be a John Mayer fan for this, but that probably factored in. This is a GIF I pulled from literally the funniest music video I’ve ever seen in my life:

  • Anyway, I also thought the caption was relatable to Newhouse students doing assignments last minute.

What didn’t work:

  • I should’ve linked the video because I think the tweet would’ve been a lot more popular with context.
  • Maybe a different caption would have worked better promoting the GIF, or a different GIF with the caption. I’m seeing now it’s possible they don’t mesh well together.

Tweet 8

Analysis:

  • 9 likes
  • 462 impressions
  • 20 engagements
  • 9.0% engagement rate

What worked:

  • People who actually saw this tweet, seemed to really enjoy it. I’m not totally sure why it seems like so many people just didn’t see it. I’m wondering if it’s because of the time I posted, and the fact that there’s no media.
  • I thought the content was funny, and one person actually DM’d me and said it was.

What didn’t work:

  • I should have had a picture of me drinking coffee or something like that to help support the tweet.
  • It wasn’t super original, I know I’ve heard this type of format before and just substituted it with coffee, but it’s possible people didn’t like that.
  • I learned here, and in other tweets, that media can really expand impressions and engagement.

Tweet 9

 

Analysis:

  • 6 likes
  • 421 impressions
  • 36 engagements
  • 9.0% engagement rate

What worked:

  • JJ! No, but seriously, people love my dog, JJ. When I post photos of him, they’re always more likely to get a higher engagement rate. For some reason, I feel like not many people saw this tweet, which is a little confusing to me. But the people that saw it, based on the engagement rate, really enjoyed it.

What didn’t work:

  • It might have been the caption. There wasn’t really any timeliness to posting JJ on a random September morning, but I thought it wouldn’t matter because he’s a dog. It might have made a difference.
  • The content wasn’t relatable enough to be retweeted. If I had done a funny caption like “when you’re human says see you soon, but she really means see you in 3 months :(” or something to that effect, I could’ve squeezed a retweet out of this. It was really more personal, which possibly hindered interaction.

Tweet 10

Analysis:

  • 7 likes
  • 330 impressions
  • 19 engagements
  • 5 link clicks
  • 0 new Spotify followers

What worked:

  • I think people may have just been reacting to my music taste if they agreed. I checked out the people who liked it and all of them are friends of mine who identify with at least one of the musical genres I wrote here.

What didn’t work:

  • The actual promotion did absolutely no good because no one followed my account. I should’ve done something like what Jake Smith did with his Spotify tweet:
  • My Spotify honestly isn’t super unique, so anyone who did click on the link probably wasn’t super impressed

Tweet 11

Analysis:

  • 268 impression
  • 19 votes
  • 3.4% engagement rate

What worked:

  • I know my follower base loves Mamma Mia, and it was still fairly relevant in mid-October because the new one was still showing in movie theaters.
  • I think the easy-to-read aspect of the tweet helped it gain traction. Some polls can be complex or difficult, and this one was light and easy.

What didn’t work:

  • I expected some people to retweet with comment what they thought of this, because in my experience it’s been a controversial topic among Mamma Mia fans, but no one did that.
  • It didn’t get any retweets, so maybe the content was just starting to lose its momentum when I tweet this, because the movie had come out during the summer.

 

THINGS I LEARNED IN GENERAL

When it comes to my Twitter, staying on brand and marketing toward my known follower base was super important in maintaining a high engagement rate. That being said, it was low-risk, and often times wouldn’t disperse my tweets as widely as if I had added more hashtags and included more rich media. I also could have networked on Twitter to better grow my follower-base, as opposed to trying to maintain the followers I had.

Another thing I should’ve done more is engage with accounts or tweets I wanted to engage with me. This is something I will definitely do in the future: replying, liking and following when I know that I want to begin communication with that person or account.

With that being said, go throw me a follow, like a couple tweets, and I’ll engage back: @ccleffert

Thanks for reading!

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