Social Media: How Hard is it to Become an Influencer

Posted on by Griffin Psaila

Over the span of the last 90 days, I have taken it upon myself to improve my Twitter game for COM 427. After starting fresh, I began tweeting from my new handle and grew my follower base from 0 to 48 followers. While it was tough starting from scratch, by staying consistent with my tweets and interacting with influencers, I was able to gain followers and extend my reach. In addition, I tried to utilize rich media in my tweets and play to my demographic of Syracuse fans and students. Over this 90 day period, I watched my Klout score increase from 10-28 and was able to get a final snapshot of my influence via Sysomos MAP’s Detail Authority Score:

In conclusion, here is a list of my top 10 tweets, along with some personal analysis. While I may not be at verified status yet, I have come to understand what it takes to become a social media influencer:

 

1.)

View post on imgur.com

Analysis: Professor Keen is an established economist, joining into his conversation allowed me to capitalize on his follower base as an influencer in my field. By inserting myself into an ongoing conversation instead of just a general tweet @ him, I was able to gain the attention of all participants and evoke a response from Keen himself.

2.)

Impressions: 187

Media views: 19
Total engagements: 19
Media engagements: 12
Detail expands: 4
Hashtag clicks: 2
Likes: 1
Analysis: I found that some of my highest engagement rates coordinated with tweets containing rich media that I created myself. This tweet had an engagement rate of 10.2% and solidified the idea that user-generated content draws higher engagement. It also appealed to my target demographic of Syracuse fans.

3.)

Impressions: 172

Total engagements: 22
Media engagements: 12
Link clicks: 4
Likes:2
Detail expands: 2
Hashtag clicks: 1
Profile clicks: 1

Analysis: During the basketball teams’ trips to the Final Four, Syracuse Univesity ran a #IBleedOrange campaign that I was able to use to drive engagement. I crafted this tweet at the demographic of Syracuse fans and students, since many are quite familiar with Bird Library and also utilized Snapchat to create a unique piece of media.

4.)

Analysis: In light of recent events this year, the mental health of college students has been a hot topic. Bringing attention to this epidemic allowed me to capture a wide audience with this tweet and raise awareness. This is an example of stock content that is relevant far longer than any piece of news, therefore, I received engagement long after I sent the tweet out.

5.)

Analysis: In honor of the Syracuse Women’s Basketball team making the national championship I was able to utilize a trending emoji and target the Syracuse community to drive engagement. Playing to the target demographic is integral to driving engagement as well as using trending topics to gain awareness.

6.)

Analysis: I have a growing interest in politics and enjoy curating information from the election. I have found that with the increased focus as the election comes a desire for content regarding the candidates and current events related to it. While Jeb Bush has since dropped out of the race, this flyer that surfaced during his campaign was a hot topic, that combined with humor created an interesting piece of content.

7.)

Impressions: 163
Total engagements: 11
Media engagements: 4
Detail expands: 4
Likes: 3

Analysis: A large part of being an influencer is being able to create your own content. While I’m not the most artistic, I am very proud of this media that I created and saw solid engagement and reaction to it. Being able to create variety is an essential tool that keeps the interest of followers.

8.)

Analysis: Who doesn’t like breakfast food? Buzzfeed churns out great content that I was able to incorporate into my post and increase engagement, while also providing an educational piece of content to my followers. Aside from being educational, it is also relatable and useful, therefore, it provides many different functions to my audience.

9.)

Analysis: Another one of my Syracuse Basketball tweets utilized a twitter list that compiled a collection of accounts relating to the team and March Madness. Twitter lists are a great way of curating content and showing influencers that you think that they are important to their field, leading to higher engagement.

10.)

Analysis: Always in the tabloids, Johnny Manziel provides many opportunities to break news and raise awareness, however, his tribulations may have jumped the shark as this tweet only got two engagements. I still feel as though it is relevant content, it just seems that stories come out about his behavior faster than I can create content as its always something new about him in the media. Keeping up with the news and being the first to break it is imperative to getting positive reactions on content.

Leave a Reply