Semester Recap: Growing My Influence and My Top 10 Tweets & Posts

Posted on by Megan Swanson

Growing My Influence

I started the semester with 144 followers on Twitter. I created my account in December of 2013 and used the account sporadically throughout the first six months that I created it. It was not until I got to college that I started using Twitter multiple times a week. Immersed in journalism classes my first semester, one of the first things I did was follow many of the major news platforms and would find my self scrolling through Twitter at breakfast to quickly get the latest headlines. When I switched my major to advertising at the end of the semester I followed many advertising trade publications to help stay abreast of trends.

Since then I’ve continued to use Twitter at least once a day and built up my following gradually. I now follow a mix of publications, friends and coworkers, and just people I find interesting (including a large number of Syracuse University and Newhouse alumni who I have met during my time here).

I ended the semester with 153 followers (a 6.25% increase) which was a bit disappointing. I set out at the start of the semester with the goal of breaking 200 followers on both Twitter and Instagram since I was starting with similar numbers on both. I was able to reach this goal on Instagram where I now have 223 followers.

I did see a slight increase in my Klout score from the start of the semester as it rose from 36 to 48. I think this might be in part from me connecting a greater portion of my social media profiles towards the end of the semester which gave a more accurate picture of my online presence as a whole.

Throughout this course we went over many ways to grow your network on social media and offline that I will continue to use in the future. I think one of the biggest takeaways from this course was the importance of tagging people and using the right hashtags. I learned that using video, GIFs and images can go a long way in boosting engagement on Tweets. I used to usually only tweet humorous observations and life updates with plain text and would not use images unless I was tweeting out a link to on of my pieces of writing. However several of my tweets I made for this class are proof that you can drastically increase engagement just by including an image with the tweet.

Social Media Strategy Execution: Top 10 Tweets/Posts

This tweet garnered the most impressions by far of all my tweets this semester. I tweeted this as part of the #voice assignment since I noticed I enjoyed seeing the accounts I follow tweet out quotes and use popular, relevant hashtags such as #WednesdayWisdom. This tweet got 864 Impressions and 21 total engagements including 8 Likes and 1 Retweet. Kara Goucher, an American long distance runner who I quoted actually ended up liking this tweet and after that I noticed the traction surrounding it really pick up as her followers saw and liked it as well. I do not think this tweet would have done as well had I not tagged Kara Goucher, used a timely hashtag and created a quick graphic for it (as opposed to just tweeting it out as plain text).

Another one of my tweets that did well in terms of impressions was this tweet which I posted after attending Stacy Minero’s talk at Newhouse. Here, I tagged three accounts, Stacy Minero’s personal account, Twitter (where she works) and Newhouse. Stacy Minero liked the tweet shortly after the event which caused impressions to jump to 200 and gave me a few more likes. I was hoping for a retweet or some more engagement after tagging Newhouse but overall I’m happy that Stacy Minero was able to see it and it showed my followers that I am active in going to outside speakers on campus.

My #FollowFriday tweet also did well. I chose to include all Syracuse related accounts since it happened to coincide with the first football game of the semester. I ended up having engagement from all three accounts that I tagged including a reply from @kimincuse who works at the University and who I had been following for awhile but never interacted with. I plan on creating more #FollowFriday tweets in the future, possibly around the theme of people I’ve worked with at past internships (#networking) and another with some interesting tech focused accounts I follow. I also used TweetDeck to schedule this tweet ahead of time which made it really easy not to forget to tweet it out on a Friday.

Another post that did well was the first post I posted for the class on Instagram. I had been watching this tree change colors for awhile so when presented with the assignment to show some part of campus I knew that I would feature this tree with one of my favorite quotes about fall. After taking the photo, I used the VSCO app to edit and apply a filter. I ended up getting 70 likes which is about 10 more than I usually get. I credit this to using both hashtags and the location which I usually do not use on most of my posts. My biggest “win” from this post was getting one of my favorite accounts, travelling_with_coffee, to comment “Cool!” on it. It was really nice to see that engagement since I usually only get comments from friends.

Despite not getting much engagement (only one hashtag click) my tweet from National Coffee Day got above average impressions (255 total). This was likely because of the timeliness of the tweet since many people were searching for that hashtag on that day. I also tagged Recess Coffee and included a link to a Syracuse.com article about National Coffee Day deals in CNY. To further increase the impressions on this tweet I should have included an image and also should have hashtagged #CNY somewhere in the post.

I had some success with my GIF tweet that I posted about getting brunch with my friends who were coming to visit me in Syracuse. The tweet 394 impressions overall with 47 people viewing the media in the tweet. I was surprised how easy it was to create a GIF from an Instagram story video I had saved over the summer. I then replied to my own tweet with another GIF of my friends at brunch. The reply tweet got about a third of the impressions that the original tweet got (164 total) which I found interesting.

One particularly dreary and rainy Sunday I took a short video of the rain while I was sitting at the bus stop and put a poll over it. The question I posed was “Should there be an extra day between Saturday and Sunday?” and I edited the options to be “YES” and “YES!!!!!” Almost immediately I started getting votes. Unsurprisingly the results were overwhelmingly “YES!!!!” showing that others shared my same thinking when it came to the weekend. While this was a somewhat silly example of the poll feature, I’ve been seeing Instagram influencers using it to poll their audience in real time and see what they want to see more of so. It would definitely be helpful for getting engagement and feedback about your account or just seeing what others think.

My tweets featuring photos from a park back home did well garnering 160 overall impressions and 4 likes. One of the likes was from the park’s account which surprised me because their account did not seem very active. This tweet did well because it featured photos. If I were to tweet about it again I’d use some more relevant hashtags such as #nature to target even more people who might be interested. Given the visual nature of the post, it would probably also do well as a slideshow post on Instagram.

Another one of my Instagram posts that did well was this photo I took of the New York City skyline from the Sky Lounge in the Conde Nast building. I was there on a trip with the School of Information Studies visiting a few media and entertainment focused companies and used this as an opportunity to post about the trip. I also included some relevant hashtags such as #ischoolrt (the official hashtag for the trip), #nyc, and #nycskyline which helped me get extra likes from a few NYC focused accounts. I also set the location as One World Trade Center since that is where the office is located and tagged the iSchool’s Instagram account which further helped my engagement.

One final tweet that did well was the tweet I posted promoting the newly created Syracuse University Color Guard Instagram account. In the body of the tweet I included a link to the account and included one of the first photos we had posted on the account as a teaser of what people could see if they followed. I ended up getting 146 Impressions and 2 Likes on the tweet. In retrospect, I could’ve also included a #colorguard hashtag and have tagged the Syracuse University Marching Band’s Twitter in order to get more exposure to some of their followers.

Overall, this class forced me out of my comfort zone when it came to social media and encouraged me to post new content and try out new engagement strategies that I probably would not have tried on my own. Throughout the semester, I learned the importance of tagging accounts and using relevant hashtags in posts as well as using some of the newest features on different platforms, such as Instagram Story polls. Moving forward I now have skills that I can not only apply to my own social media accounts in order to grow my influence and following, but also skills and knowledge that I can apply at a company if I am tasked with helping to grow their presence on social media.

Bonus: LinkedIn Post

Though no LinkedIn posts were assigned throughout the semester, I recently posted my first ever status update on LinkedIn announcing that I had received a nomination for the Syracuse University Scholar Award. This post ended up getting a whopping 2,261 views in the feed as well as 32 Likes and 4 Comments. I was amazed at the engagement rate of this post and will definitely try to continue posting on LinkedIn including interesting articles I find and professional updates in order to grow my number of connections.

 

 

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