Social media is the most prominent form of public mass communication to ever exist. It interconnects every user across the globe and can create dialogue between groupd of people that never existed before. Social media gives power to each individual to have the opportunity to grow in influence and network. Our generation and every single one that comes next will play and speak through social media. A few days ago, I spoke with my little sister and asked where she receives her news from. Her response, “I don’t”. For her, at the age of 17 to say that means that they don’t view social media as a separate entity from themselves but is rather a part of the process of growing up. It also means she does not watch a lot of TV, which could be called good parenting but heads up, I may biased on that subject. Social media is where the information that matters is found, so why go look anywhere else until social media fails you?
Honing specifically onto my Twitter account: @theSteinTimes (the one aspect of social media where I experienced the most outreach and growth). I grew my followers from the small number of 73 to 154 over the course of the fall semester. A number I am proud to have because any positive change is still at the end of the day, positive.
How did I do it? With help of course. Without insightful opinions and small tidbits on how to manage and use functions such as hashtags, I would not be as successful as I was. For example, did you know that websites such as Klout can give you a feedback barometer reading of your influence on Twitter? At the beginning, my score sat at a lowly 17.52 but now stands at 40.49 with at peak number at 42.38. That is a growth of over 117%!
This score rose by being interactive, positive, embedding content, using trending hashtags and adhering to the social in social media. Hashtags are the subject line of where you are directing your content. News Flash: Hashtags that are trending are sometimes even better than just your own unique hashtags! i.e. #superman > #supperman
The number one aspect of social media that can hurt your social media presence is not interacting. How else do your received the re-tweets that lead to new followers, the mentions, the likes and shared hashtags that create a digital connection between a stranger and yourself? By interacting with other social media consumers you may find it to be rewarding and also entertaining.
Early on in the teaching of our #nhsmc class, I sat down after the first class and followed every single student in my class. Why? So that at anytime I can support my fellow #nhsmcers and build relationship and strengthen my network. It may have hurt my ratio of following to followers ratio, instrumental in a person’s analysis of twitter success, in the short-term but as seen by my Klout and number of followers the long-term results are exactly as I expected.
My best tweets were the relevant and contained easy to process information that that eye can see easier through images rather than words. By making my tweets easy to see differentiating them and reposting/repeating them from a Twitter thread full of words, I stood out. The most trending tweets I created contained hashtags and imagery but would be lost if the timing is off. And furthermore, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again!