Social Media Influence and Growth Analysis

Posted on by Andrew Noll

Throughout the semester we were asked to post on various social media platforms and try to grow our social media influence. We were also asked to specifically benchmark our growth on Twitter by taking note of how many followers we started with and then ended with during this course. To start the semester off I had 100 followers on Twitter. At this point in the course when writing this post I ended it with 139 followers. My Twitter had a 39% growth increase throughout the course, which is a solid increase over a three and a half month period. Some techniques that worked to help grow my social media platform was using hashtags, tagging people, companies, sports teams, or other influencers, which drew more engagement. Also using photos or videos in tweets was a good technique to get a lot of engagement. A third and final technique that worked well was retweeting things with comments on it to help engage people. Some techniques that didn’t work were trying to engage with people who have too big of a following because they would end up not responding or engaging with my post. In one of my Instagram posts, I posted a photo with my dog and it turned out to be one of my least liked posts on my whole grid. Using my dog seemed not to be a great technique for my Instagram grid. These were different techniques that helped and didn’t seem to help grow my influence.

Many of my tweets garnered a lot more engagement than ever before throughout the semester. Here are my ten best:

This was my top tweet throughout the semester according to Twitter Analytics. This tweet was executed as a retweet with a comment about a video and also had a few hashtags in order to engage viewers about a trending topic on Twitter. At the time of this tweet Nascar driver, Ryan Newman, was seriously injured in this accident and many people on social media were talking about it. This tweet received two likes, a 0.9 engagement rate, 6 total engagements, which is the number of times someone interacted with the tweet, and 817 impressions, which is the number of times people saw the tweet. We learned in class it was important to use hashtags and tweet about things that are trending topics that would engage our viewers.

This was my second best tweet from the semester according to Twitter Analytics. For this post, I used photos, hashtags, and tagged important accounts to try and get as much engagement as I could. I attended my first Syracuse Crunch game and wanted to tweet a thank you to Jim Sarosy who works for the Crunch and gave me two free tickets as part of my sport management class assignment. We learned in class that doing something like this while also using photos could be super helpful in helping our social media influence grow. This tweet received three likes, a comment from Sarosy himself (who is verified on Twitter), a 9.2% engagement rate, 60 total engagements, and 650 impressions.

This was my third best tweet according to Twitter Analytics. For this post, I tweeted out about a trending topic and tagged a very influential person in the basketball community. I also used a hashtag that was being used by many others about Bryant because it was a famous thing he would say about himself. This definitely helped with the engagement of the tweet. This tweet received zero likes, a 0.5% engagement rate, three engagements, and 567 impressions. From class, I learned that it is important to tweet about trending topics as they can help you get tons of engagement on your social media content.

This was my fourth-best tweet according to Twitter Analytics. For this tweet, I tweeted out a photo of the OnCenter War Memorial Arena, home of the Syracuse Crunch, when I took a tour of the facility for my sport management class. Using a photo, tagging the Syracuse Crunch official Twitter account, and hashtagging the class I believe were three helpful techniques learned in class that helped me achieve a higher engagement rate than most of my other posts. This tweet ended up with four likes, a 5.3% engagement rate, 25 total engagements, and 468 impressions.

This was my fifth-best tweet according to Twitter Analytics. This post was executed as a retweet with a comment tagging the person the tweet was about and using a few hashtags along the way to try to engage viewers. In class, we were taught to use hashtags and retweets with a comment that could be helpful to engage viewers. This post was an in case you missed it post and retweeted about something that had happened seven years ago that people either may have missed or forgotten about. This tweet received three likes, a 1.7% engagement rate, seven total engagements, and 418 impressions on Twitter.

This was my sixth-best tweet according to Twitter Analytics. This was a retweet with a comment type of post. The tweet included a video in the retweet about a college basketball player at Tulsa who hit a game-winning shot in the first game his father had ever attended for him. It was a super memorable moment and a trending topic on Twitter the day it came out. I tagged the school in the post and used a hashtag for the class to try to engage viewers on the tweet. The tweet received two likes, a 1.3% engagement rate, six total engagements, and 400 impressions.

This was my seventh-best tweet according to Twitter Analytics. This was a reply tweet to a member of our social media class who tagged me in a Blecher Report video about Trae Young honoring Kobe Bryant. This video was viewed and engaged with by many on Twitter so that was the reason for it receiving a lot of engagement. In the reply, I also tagged the NBA and Jake who tweeted and tagged in it at first. We learned in class that tagging people in a tweet and important social media influencers like the NBA in this instance. This tweet received zero likes, a 0.5% engagement rate, three total engagements and 384 impressions from viewers on Twitter.

This was my eighth-best tweet of the semester according to Twitter Analytics. For this post, I retweeted with a comment on a video about Kobe Bryant after he passed away. In order to get more engagement I used hashtags and tagged the NBA in the post to try to get people to view the post. It was also a trending topic at the time so that was something we learned in class to use to our advantage when trying to gaining social media following. I also used a lot of hashtags that were used by others and during Bryants time in the NBA that would engage with viewers. This tweet received one like, a 2.2% engagement rate, eight total engagements, and 369 impressions.

This is my ninth-best tweet according to Twitter Analytics. This post was a tweet introducing myself to Professor Grygiel through Twitter so she could get to know me a little better. I was able to tag her in the post (she is verified so that helps with engagement viewers since she has so many) and I used the class hashtag to help this get as many views as it could. Like mentioned before about other posts we were taught to tag people who have an influence over social media because it can help you get more engagement. Professor Grygiel has a pretty large following on Twitter with almost 3,000 followers. This tweet received three likes, 2.0% engagement rates, nine total engagements, and 356 impressions.

This was my tenth-best Twitter post according to Twitter Analytics. This tweet was posted a day after Syracuse beat Wake Forest at the buzzer in an exciting game during ACC play at the Carrier Dome. I tagged multiple accounts that have a big following: Syracuse Men’s Basketball official Twitter account, the Wake Forest University official Twitter page, and Brycen Goodine’s official Twitter account since he was the player who hit the game-winning shot. I also used a few hashtags that are used by many in the Orange community. These were techniques like mentioned about the other posts by tagging important influencers and using hashtags that many people use. This tweet received three likes, a 3.4% engagement rate, 12 total engagements, and 327 impressions.

In conclusion, I learned that it is not easy to engage with tons of people over social media and sometimes using certain techniques can help you get a larger following. Throughout the semester I saw my following grow as I gained followers and engagement on my tweets throughout the course. After completing the course I plan to continue trying to grow my social media influence and gain a bigger following on all platforms after learning many new techniques from this class over the semester.

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